Mary Di Biase doesn’t want to become part of a quiet but growing migration out of Brampton. But after living there for almost 43 years, leaving is often on her mind.

Di Biase loves the home her family has lived in for decades, but she says the city’s lack of a strategic plan ignores many residents who feel they’re no longer part of Brampton’s future.

“In Brampton, developers have been allowed to build sprawling subdivisions with big-box stores. People get in their cars, drive to work, drive to Walmart, then drive home to their subdivision. It’s built in a way that keeps people segregated.”

Brampton faces a complex situation: massive suburban-style growth coupled with a huge influx of new Canadians, mostly South Asian, settling in a community that for decades was mostly white.

Di Biase says if not for the two elderly parents she cares for in the home they share, she’d probably leave.

Brampton has boomed over the past two decades, more than doubling from 234,445 residents in 1991 to 521,315 in 2011.

But drilling into the just released National Household Survey reveals a paradox: While the visible-minority segment has exploded to represent two-thirds of Brampton’s population, white residents are dwindling. Their numbers went from 192,400 in 2001 to 169,230 in 2011.

That’s a loss of more than 23,000 people, or 12 per cent, in a decade when the city’s population rose by 60 per cent.

That’s hardly a picture of the multicultural ideal so celebrated in this country.

“What’s happening in Brampton is out of fear,” says Satpaul Singh Johal, a journalist from India who is now raising a family in Brampton. “South Asians think that white people don’t like immigrants and white people are leaving because they fear this group they don’t know, that’s arriving in such large numbers.”

But sociologist Jason Edgerton sees a little more complexity in those numbers.

“After you control for retirement, low birth rate, etc. some of the other (shrinkage) could be white flight — former mainstream communities not comfortable being the minority. Let’s say, for example, 2 per cent is (due to) higher retirement migration, 2 per cent is lower birth rate, 2 per cent is job change; they might only account for one half of the overall decrease, and the other half is unexplained,” says Edgerton, a University of Manitoba professor who teaches research methods and social statistics.

He says more study would be needed to say for sure why people are leaving Brampton.

“The phenomenon of white flight, it’s important to understand, appears to be multi-dimensional. Elements of racial/ethnic shift perhaps, but the causation is probably more complex. In Canadian history, many city neighbourhoods have followed a pattern of demographic shift: first settled by people from the British Isles, then southern Europeans, and then immigrants from Asia and Africa.”

He says such displacements often happen as people aspire to and then succeed in moving up the economic ladder.

Margaret Mary sits at an A&W on Queen St. E. in Brampton, where she regularly gathers with friends for a morning coffee and some lively talk on the hot topics of the day.

Brampton’s cultural tension is often the elephant in the room.

“The people I know who are moving out, it’s mostly because of demographics,” she says. “They’re starting to feel like strangers in their own neighbourhood.”

She laughs at the use of the phrase “non visible minority.”

“I’m the visible minority now,” Mary says.

Mary, who moved from Toronto in 1967, says she welcomes the opportunity to raise the issue, one she insists is not about racism or intolerance.

“All cities go through this period. In Toronto you had Little Italy, Greektown, Chinatown. It wasn’t intolerance that pushed the other people out, it’s just the pattern.”

But she fears what’s happening in Brampton may be different.

“I just think there’s this disconnect. In Toronto people eventually came together, integrated. I just think that with the religious differences and such big cultural differences, both sides in Brampton are on different pages.”

Her friend Deborah Ann, across the table, points out that people leave Brampton for many reasons, such as retirement, crippling traffic congestion, and the increasing cost of living. But she agrees that cultural tension is the factor most people talk about, quietly.

“Words like racism and intolerance get used pretty quickly,” she says, adding that people are loath to talk openly about leaving Brampton because they’re scared of being labelled as bigots.

Mary realizes her comments might come off as intolerant, but says being politically correct only makes things worse by putting a lid on an issue that’s boiling beneath.

People on both sides agree that dialogue is desperately needed.

Johal, who hosts a current affairs show on a Canadian Punjabi language specialty channel and writes for a newspaper in India, says he’s covered the issue of South Asians creating enclaves such as the large ones in Brampton.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“We shouldn’t have Indian pockets, or Chinese pockets, in Canada. We need to be coming together, not isolating ourselves from each other.”

But, increasingly it seems, issues in Brampton are dividing the city along cultural lines. Many long-time residents have complained that illegal basement apartments — popular among recent immigrants because they’re affordable — are leading to overcrowded neighbourhoods and schools.

New Canadians are looking for a place where they fit in, feel comfortable and can start a new life.

Two recent controversies, one over a monster home constructed in an established neighbourhood, the other involving the Punjabi community’s opposition to a townhouse development, highlight the divisive issue of extended families wanting to live under one roof in large houses.

Message boards and online media comments often reveal an “us vs. them” dynamic as long-time Bramptonians write they want to leave because such practices don’t allow for fair property taxation and are overcrowding the city.

Di Biase, who travelled extensively before retiring from the airline industry, blames the unease on a deeper problem: a lack of vision from the city’s leaders.

“We wouldn’t have isolated communities or such uncontrolled growth if the city wasn’t planned so poorly.” She says the tensions have little to do with intolerance. “There’s no leadership” as the city undergoes a massive demographic change.

Di Biase recalls from her days living in Toronto that proximity allowed people from different backgrounds to come together and celebrate their diversity.

“It’s a walking city; people had to mingle, bump into each other. They started living close. We had Italians, Germans, Jews, Romanians, blacks, all living near each other.”

Johal, who worked as a journalist in Switzerland before taking his current assignment in Brampton, says he was struck by the city’s segregation. He thinks some in the South Asian community need to adjust their views about what being a Canadian means. He says they should stop looking at issues only from the perspective of their own ethnic community.

“When the townhouse debate took place at city hall, the chamber was filled. Every single person was South Asian. Instead of making it a South Asian issue, why didn’t the community leaders invite all Bramptonians?”

But despite the community’s insular instincts, which Johal says are driven by a political strength-in-numbers attitude, he believes things will change.

For that to happen, the mainstream community also needs to do a better job of welcoming immigrants into the establishment, giving them opportunities they're often cut off from.

“This (white) flight will stop when the next generation from both sides, all born in Canada, shed these fears and bring everyone together.”

He echoes Di Biase’s point: “Government should facilitate this, help bring them together.”

Di Biase remains hopeful about staying. She doesn't want to leave.

But she wonders if she has a future in a city that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be.

“It's really on my mind,” she says. “More and more.”

Read more about: