South Asian Markets and Gerrard India Bazaar
On Gerrard Street East between Greenwood Avenue and Coxwell Avenue, there are many Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Afghan and Sri Lankan restaurants, cafés, videos/DVD stores, clothing shops, electronic goods & home decor stores catering to the South Asian-Canadian communities. Along with Jackson Heights in New York and Devon Avenue in Chicago, it forms one of the largest South Asian marketplaces in North America. The area has never been home to a large South Asian population, rather it has served for several decades as commercial centre for South Asians living in the Toronto area. Today, it attracts visitors from the Toronto area, and from elsewhere in Canada and the United States. It celebrates the annual Festival of South Asia in late August.
A group of merchants have formed the "Gerrard India Bazaar Business Improvement Area" (BIA). The BIA sponsors events that appeal to the different South Asian groups that shop in the area: in 2004, Diwali, the Hindu and Sikh festival of lights, and Eid ul-Fitr, the Islamic feast day that marks the end of Ramadan, occurred around the same time in November. The BIA held a joint Diwali-Eid festival. The area is also commonly referred to as "Little India", Little Pakistan, or little South Asia.
The neighbourhood originated in 1972 when businessman Gian Naaz purchased the Eastwood Theatre and began to show Bollywood films and also Pakistani films and dramas. This attracted large numbers of Indo-Canadians from across the GTA. This large traffic led to a number of other stores in the area to be created to cater to the South Asian community. The area expanded rapidly and features houses some 100 stores and restaurants and has spread over almost the entire length from Greenwood to Coxwell. While originally shop owners mostly spoke Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Bengali. The Gerrard India Bazaar was able to develop without a corresponding South Asian enclave because the vacancy of businesses in the area came before residential vacancies that could attract South Asian settlement in the area. In recent years a wide array of Pakistani stores have opened in the western part of the neighbourhood (near Greenwood), which is closely linked to the large Muslim community in the East Danforth area just to the north.
Beginning in the 1990s, Gerrard Street lost its central position as South Asians have settled in large numbers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) suburbs. The new shopping centres and plazas in Toronto (Etobicoke/Scarborough), Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, Vaughan and other areas of GTA have become more popular. Many sari, jewellery and other business catered to the Sri Lankan Tamil community have moved, first to the Kennedy and Eglinton area and subsequently to the Middlefield and Finch/Markham and Dennison areas.
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