Abstract

“Meet Me at Eglinton and Oakwood!”: Re/Invention of a West Indian Small Business Class in Toronto during the Mid-Twentieth Century

In the second half of the 20th century, West Indian men, women, and children from the English-speaking Caribbean migrated and settled in Toronto, Ontario as part of a significant wave of immigration to Canada. As these newcomers established themselves in local communities, they also created a small business class, which catered to the needs of a Caribbean-identified population. I argue that the establishment of a small business class in Toronto provided an essential resource for West Indians, but also created a localized, national, and international group identity and a sense of belonging in the city. This paper addresses an understudied social, cultural, and economic history of a Caribbean small business class in the largest city of Canada during the second half of the twentieth century. While current historiography overwhelmingly examines significant European migrant groups in Canada, histories of West Indians in the mid-to-late 20th century are marginalized in the scholarship and scattered across other disciplines. It is necessary to include the contributions of Caribbean Canadians in a larger historical scholarship to have a more complete narrative of Canadian history, society, and peoples. This paper will argue that a West Indian small business class in Toronto also supported the economic, political, and social development of the Caribbean diaspora. Businesses such as groceries, bakeries, restaurants, bars, night clubs, record shops, and barbershops provided services and imported items from the Caribbean and acted as gathering spaces for Black customers within a majority white society. Additionally, these small businesses created rootedness for West Indians, through a physical and economic determination to stay within Toronto and Canada at large. By examining newspapers, advertisements, interviews, personal papers, and GIS data, this paper aims to contribute to the social, and cultural histories of Canadian scholarship, and redefine what it means to be Canadian in the 20th century.