Long before diversity became part of Canada’s identity, the Ward in downtown Toronto, near today’s city hall, was already a place where people from different cultural backgrounds lived and worked together.

From the 1830s until the mid-20th century when the land was gradually expropriated, the neighbourhood was the first settlement destination for many newcomers to the city, including previously enslaved Black Americans, Eastern European Jews, Italians, the Irish and the Chinese.

Although the neighbourhood — bounded by College St., Queen St. W., Yonge St. and University Ave. — gave way to new developments such as Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, the memories have stayed with many original residents and their descendants in photo albums and artifacts in basements.

Now those memories are part of a multimedia exhibition by a group of storytellers who share the early-day immigrant experiences in the Ward. Called Block by Block, the project has been launched online with stories, audio interviews and personal photos of the storytellers and their families.

“There were lots of families. The street was filled with Jews, Italians, Blacks, Chinese down at the bottom of Elizabeth (St.). All around there,” said George Carter, who was born in 1921 in Toronto, near Queen and Spadina Ave., and graduated from Harbord Collegiate Institute in 1941 before being appointed to become the first Canadian-born Black judge in 1979.

John Ackerman was born the same year as Carter. His parents, Jacob and Mindel, ran a small grocery store at Dundas and Elizabeth Sts. A graduate of Jarvis Collegiate, Ackerman enrolled in University of Toronto’s dentistry school and opened his own practice above the Royal Bank at the same intersection where his parents’ store was.

“My dad grew up very poor, and yet he never talked about it as something that was negative or bad. He ended up living in the Ward his whole life,” said his youngest son, David Ackerman.

“He grew up there, and then his dentist office was down there. So he was very comfortable in that place. There were a lot of different groups but everyone seemed to get along.”

Funded by Canada 150, Ontario 150, 6 Degrees and Artscape Toronto, the national project focuses on three historic immigrant neighbourhoods: Côte-des-Neiges in Montreal, the Ward in Toronto and Strathcona in Vancouver.

“The project brought together diverse people and perspectives into conversation around the role that neighbourhoods play in settlement, as well as engaging folks in a critical dialogue around how neighbourhoods can or cannot be welcoming places for newcomers,” Gracia Dyer Jalea of The Ward Museum, the project’s Toronto partner.

“How can newcomers continue to advocate for their interests and rights particularly in areas close to the downtown core, as the Ward once was? What has history taught us and what are strategies that we can borrow and adopt to fight current development plans that do not act in the best interest of these communities and seek to displace folks from their homes and communities?”

Meet the storytellers

George Carter attended the old Hester How Public School and Harbord Collegiate before getting his undergrad degree from Trinity College. He served in the infantry during the Second World War before studying law at Osgoode Hall and becoming one of Canada’s first Black lawyers.

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Arlene Chan’s mother, Jean Lumb (1919-2002) was raised in Nanaimo, B.C. before she moved to Toronto to work at age 16. Lumb and her husband, Doyle, had six children and they opened Kwong Chow, a popular Chinese-Canadian restaurant in the Ward in 1959. After most of Toronto’s first Chinatown was demolished for the new city hall, she led the Save Chinatown committee to fight further demolition of the community.

Joseph, John and Paul Piccininni were the children of Viola DeFrancesco Piccininni (1922-2012), who was born in Toronto to Italian immigrant parents. She grew up in the ward, living first on Chesnut St. and then Elm St. She attended Hester How Public School and later went to Central Technical School, studying sewing and dressmaking. She married Joseph Piccininni, who went on to become a Toronto city councillor. After having three kids, she went back to school to be a teacher and taught at her alma mater, Central Tech, before retiring in 1980s.

David Ackerman is one of three children of John Ackerman (1921-2008), a lifelong resident of the Ward. The family’s story in the neighbourhood began with David’s grandparents, Jacob and Mindel, who ran a small grocery store at Dundas and Elizabeth Sts. Besides being an accomplished dentist, John was an avid photographer who had collections documenting his family life, Toronto and his military involvement. He retired in the mid-1990s and died in 2008.

Correction – October 10, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Toronto’s Ward neighbourhood was the first settlement destination for many newcomers to Toronto between 1830s until the mid-19th century.

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