“In this book, Toronto’s “renaissance strip” comes alive, thanks to editors Denis De Klerck and Corrado Paina, by showing us how often College street has been reborn and reinvented. The essays gathered here are scholarly, yet personal. This is a history of a place influenced by immigration cycles set off by world events, but it is also the story of the individuals who are too often left out of history books. In the wonderful photographs that accompany the essays, we can see vivid proof that the buildings and streetscapes of the city are always changing, yet what has remained constant is the evolving creativity and commitment of the people who have made their lives here. For every story that is told, there are countless others that have not been told, because the life of College Street has been so rich and various. This book is the reflection of this richness – it shows us as we were and as we are. It is a gift that will allow future generations to know a little bit more about ourselves”.
Joe Pantalone, Deputy Mayor of the City of Toronto 2003-2010 – Introduction
In 2006, the GOHM provided funding for the publication ofCollege Street Little Italy, Toronto’s Renaissance Strip, which was edited byDenis De Klerck and Corrado Paina, 2006, Mansfield Press, on behalf of the Gallery of Human Migration.
What has not changed since the book’s initial launch in 2006 is the assertion that “Toronto is a city of perennial immigration and arrival, and its main streets have a habit of forming neighbourhood clusters that are both hamlets of identity and universal breath.”
Reading about how migration waves have transformed the landscape can be fascinating, both in terms of what is featured and how things have changed now. As Joe Fiorito stated in the chapter on the Renaissance Strip, Toronto is fine with its unfinished business.
By the late 1890s, Italians were fleeing poverty, resulting in a massive migration to North America, particularly Montreal and Toronto.
The most prominent “Italian wave” of migration occurred during the years preceding World War I and the early 1970s, peaking at approximately 750,000 persons. “Toronto’s Italian-origin population has grown to become one of the largest and most significant outsides of Italy, and the role of the city’s College Street Little Italy proved crucial in that development.”
A long-lasting transformation began in 1959 with the Galipo family’s establishment of the Sicilian Ice Cream Café, which became a neighbourhood hub while alsoculturally grafting the idea of public enjoyment and entertainment onto the street. Following the good contamination effect, new businesses such as Bar Diplomatico, Risorgimento, Bertucci’s restaurant, and Gatto Nero established.
Up until that point, when “strong coffee, inspiring discussion and affordable prices turned Little Italy into a more inclusive and diverse destination – a crossroads where everyone was welcome.” Where “seniors of Italian and Portuguese background stopped for an expresso with a new generation from different walks of life.”
It’s fascinating to read how different generations—migrants from the 1950s and modern students, professionals, intellectuals, and artists—managed to connect and coexist while College Street or Little Italy changed.
Because migration is such a powerful common experience, what happened in Toronto is likely to happen in other places as well: “built out along dirt roads with horse and cart until streetcars and cars come along and, with them, so many people all over the world. Their lives were not so different from ours: they were going to work, they were coming back tired, and the light of the same sun was flooding over the roofs of the city.”
What this book reminds us, through the story of Toronto’s College Street, is that human history is shaped by waves of migration. The Italians who once filled these streets with their cafés, bakeries, and music were themselves preceded by others, and followed by new arrivals whose stories are still unfolding. Each wave changes the texture of the neighbourhood, shifting its sounds, its colours, and its rhythms. The faces may change, the languages may shift, but the questions, the controversies, and the preoccupations remain surprisingly constant.
Too often, prejudice takes root where ignorance prevails. And ignorance is not only a lack of knowledge—it is also the absence of memory. This book, by preserving fragments of memory, challenges that forgetting. It shows us how streets are made not only of bricks and storefronts but of countless lives, layered one upon another.
Though it tells the story of Italians in Little Italy, it also gestures beyond, toward the many other communities who have shaped, and continue to shape, Toronto. For every story written here, there are countless others waiting to be told. That is both the challenge and the promise of migration history: it never ends.
College Street, in all its transformations, is proof of that. It stands as a living archive of change and continuity, of struggle and celebration, of leaving and arriving. By revisiting it through these essays and photographs, we see not only what has been lost, but also what endures: the creativity, resilience, and commitment of people who made a life here.
This is the gift of the book. It ensures that future generations will not only know a little more about College Street, but also a little more about themselves.