Historical and generational perspectives of ethnic residential segregation in Toronto, Canada : 1851-1971

An understanding of Toronto's patterns of ethnic residential segregation is sought in early census data, historical accounts, and the cross-sectional generational data from the 1971 census. The growth of Toronto's ethnic populations is charted from 1871, and the extent of ethnic residential segregation is examined from 1851-52 to 1971. While the population has become more ethnically diverse, the ethnic populations have remained relatively constant with respect to both their degree of segregation and their hierarchical order. However, intergenerational analysis reveals that for some groups> this apparent stability may have been due, in part, to the effects of continuing heavy immigration on the indexes of segregation based on total ethnic populations. If there is a strong multicultural dimension to Toronto's spatial structure that will survive the cessation of immigration, it is to be found in the rather limited number of ethnic populations that show persistently high or increasing levels of segregation through successive generations.The analysis reported in this paper was supported in part by a SSHRC grant for the project "Ethnic Pluralism in an Urban Setting"