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CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 43 

 

                                                                                  

 
 

                                                       

Gentrification in Toronto’s Little Jamaica: Food for  

Resistance 
 
Elizabeth Wong 

Individual Undergraduate Research 

Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto 

 
Elizabeth is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto majoring in Diaspora and Transnational Studies and Ethics, Society, and Law. She 

was previously an undergraduate fellow at Victoria College's Northrop Frye Centre. Her work is interdisciplinary, often drawing on philosophy, an-

thropology, and cultural studies to think through the intersections of race, culture, and colonialism in Toronto and abroad. 

                                                                                  
 
KEYWORDS: 

Gentrification 

Cultural identity 

Little Jamaica 

Resistance 

Food 

Community  

Hybridity 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

ABSTRACT 

                                                                                        
Over the past decade, the Toronto neighbourhood, commonly known as Little Jamaica, has experienced gentrification 

through the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit. This gentrification has perpetuated social and 

economic inequalities affecting the Caribbean diaspora in Little Jamaica. Urban planning tools, such as the Heritage 

Conservation District, have been central to the effort to preserve and protect the distinctive culture in Little Jamaica. 

Nevertheless, community members recognize these measures as inadequate to curb gentrification and reduce economic 

inequality. I argue that analyzing gentrification only as a matter of urban planning fails to account for how the local 

community uses cultural forms, like food, to resist gentrification. Though food is widely recognized as a means of con-

structing identity and building community in the diaspora, less attention is paid to the political implications of food's 

social power. Drawing on interviews with community members and local activists, this essay examines how the Carib-

bean community in Little Jamaica constructs cultural identity through food, highlighting a tension between authenticity 

and hybridity that exists within this cultural identity. I conclude that because food produces cultural identity and com-

munity, food and food spaces may play a role in communities' resistance to gentrification and inequalities in the urban 

sphere.  

 

 

 

Preface 
This project was born from my interest in how cultural 
forms might become political tools. Though this research 
is centred on Little Jamaica and the Caribbean diaspora, I 

am not a member of the Caribbean diaspora nor a resident 
of Little Jamaica. I am interested in Little Jamaica because 
it has become an intersection of Toronto's culture, identity, 
and gentrification. This essay does not speak for Toronto’s 

Caribbean Quilt 
Journal Homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index 
 
 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

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Caribbean diaspora but instead seeks to shed light on alter-
native methods of political resistance at work in a diasporic 
city such as Toronto. This essay was not completed for a 
course but rather was the result of my receiving the 
Northrop Frye Undergraduate Research Award. 
 
Introduction 
Little Jamaica is a commercial corridor between Keele 
Street and Allen Road on Eglinton Avenue West. Though 
Little Jamaica includes a small residential area around 
Eglinton, it consists primarily of a cluster of Caribbean res-
taurants, grocery stores, hair salons, and music stores. 
Since 2011, Little Jamaica has been the site of the con-
struction of the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit 
(LRT), a new branch of Toronto’s public transit. This con-
struction has driven the gentrification of Little Jamaica. 
This gentrification has worsened social and economic dis-
parities between the racialized Caribbean diaspora living 
and working in Little Jamaica and wealthy white Toronto-
nians. The construction of the Eglinton LRT has thus con-
tributed to the displacement of the Caribbean diaspora 
from Little Jamaica. 
 
Gentrification in Little Jamaica has been perceived as a 
matter of urban planning and thus has been tackled with 
urban planning tools. However, analyzing gentrification 
only as a matter of urban planning obscures how the local 
community engages in cultural resistance, taking up food, 
among other cultural forms, to resist gentrification. Be-
cause food remains central to community-building and the 
production of shared cultural identity in the diaspora, food 
and food spaces can contribute to communities' political 
projects, including their resistance to urban change and dis-
placement. 
 
Gentrification in Little Jamaica 
For over a decade, the construction of the Eglinton LRT 
has slowed traffic, restricted parking, and obstructed street 

 
1 Romain Baker et al., “A BLACK BUSINESS CONVERSATION” (To-
ronto: Black Urbanism Toronto, July 2020), http://www.blackur-
banismto.com/our-work/. 
2 Ross Cadastre (President of the Black Business and Profes-
sional Association) in conversation with the author, November 
2, 2021. 
3 Baker et al., “A BLACK BUSINESS CONVERSATION.” 

access to businesses in Little Jamaica. As a result, the small 
businesses that makeup Little Jamaica have suffered a 
steep decrease in sales. The city-wide closures during the 
COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the effects of construc-
tion.1 Many businesses could not keep up with increasing 
commercial rent prices and did not qualify for financial re-
lief from the federal government because they were unreg-
istered.2 As a result, many businesses moved or shut down. 
Since the beginning of the Eglinton LRT construction, over 
140 businesses along Eglinton have closed, many of which 
were Black-owned.3 Gentrification has and continues to 
displace the Caribbean diaspora in Little Jamaica towards 
other parts of the GTA. 
 
Community members are concerned about mass displace-
ment for its effect on the culture of Little Jamaica. If Car-
ibbean businesses and residents are driven out of Little Ja-
maica, Eglinton Avenue West will no longer be the cultural 
hub it is today. While the concern that gentrification can 
erase diasporic culture is widely shared, less attention has 
been paid to how the community takes up precisely these 
cultural forms to resist gentrification because gentrifica-
tion continues to be framed as a problem to be solved 
through urban planning. 
 
To mitigate displacement and cultural erasure in Little Ja-
maica, city councillors have motioned for Little Jamaica to 
be assessed as a possible Heritage Conservation District 
(HCD). Under the Ontario Heritage Act, the HCD protects 
areas with “significant cultural heritage value, character 
and integrity.”4 Though one might expect HCDs to protect 
various aspects of culture in neighbourhoods, urban plan-
ners have primarily applied HCDs to protect building fa-
çades and only those of British and French colonial settle-
ments, not ethnic enclaves.5 Thus, HCDs, among other ur-
ban planning tools, are not designed to protect minority 
cultures and prevent the displacement of disadvantaged 
groups. Little Jamaica has become the first primarily 

4 Scott Barrett, “Heritage Conservation Districts in Toronto,” ed. 
Mary MacDonald (City of Toronto, City Planning Division, Janu-
ary 2012). 
5 Gordon W. Fulton, “Policy Issues and Their Impact on Prac-
tice: Heritage Conservation in Canada,” APT Bulletin: The Jour-
nal of Preservation Technology 29, no. 3/4 (1998): 15. 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

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racialized area and ethnic enclave to be considered for her-
itage designation. However, given that heritage designa-
tion has worked to protect only a community's aesthetic 
value, community members in Little Jamaica recognize 
that heritage designation is not enough to support social 
and cultural life in the neighbourhood. 
 
Caribbean business owners have been further marginalized 
because they are under-represented in the three Business 
Improvement Areas (BIAs) in Little Jamaica that work 
alongside the City of Toronto to manage this neighbour-
hood’s economic development. 6  Because many Black 
business owners have neither the time to volunteer in the 
local BIAs nor the money to buy into the BIAs, the di-
asporic community has only a peripheral influence on 
plans for Little Jamaica's development. Black Urbanism 
Toronto affirms that BIAs in Little Jamaica has not been 
"accountable and responsive to the Black business owners 
they represent."7 In sum, the racialized owners of Carib-
bean businesses have difficulty resisting gentrification and 
shaping how Little Jamaica evolves through existing polit-
ical networks and using urban planning tools. 
 
Food for Cultural Identity and Cultural Resistance 
Having recognized that HCD status is insufficient to sup-
port social and cultural life in Little Jamaica, community 
members have taken up several cultural forms, including 
food, to resist gentrification. Food has long been recog-
nized as a means of constructing cultural identity in the di-
aspora. Those living in the diaspora might imagine a con-
nection to the homeland by cooking, eating, and sharing 
particular “home” foods.8 For many, food fulfils a nostal-
gic desire for a lost homeland and makes Little Jamaica a 
liminal space between the homeland and the host land.9 
Many community members described the food as a key-
stone of cultural identity in the Caribbean diaspora. 

 
6 Sipo Maphangoh (senior urban planner at the City of Toronto) 
in discussion with the author, October 20, 2021. 
7 Baker et al., “A BLACK BUSINESS CONVERSATION.” 
8 Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, “Introduction - Diaspora 
and Transnationalism,” in A Companion to Diaspora and Trans-
nationalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani (Oxford, UK: 
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 2; Michelle Obeid, “Home-Mak-
ing in the Diaspora,” in A Companion to Diaspora and Transna-
tionalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani (Oxford, UK: 
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 372. 

Caribbean restaurants, farmers’ markets, and grocery 
stores in Little Jamaica have provided the diasporic com-
munity with the foods that form a shared cuisine. Though 
Caribbean produce is now widely available in the GTA, 
many diaspora members who grew up or have developed 
ties to Little Jamaica and now live outside of Toronto con-
tinue to visit the neighbourhood grocers and restaurants. 
So, food draws the diaspora community from the wider 
GTA towards Little Jamaica to engage them in a continual 
production of cultural identity.  
 
Because the community regularly interacts and gathers in 
their local restaurants and cafes, these have become im-
portant sites for producing and reproducing a shared cul-
tural identity. Many in the diasporic community define Lit-
tle Jamaica by its Caribbean restaurants, saying that the 
neighbourhood would not be the same without Rap’s jerk 
chicken and Randy’s patties, for example.10 Randy's Pat-
ties closed this year, after 43 years of business, due to the 
Eglinton LRT construction and the pandemic. Some used 
gustatory metaphors to describe the neighbourhood’s cul-
ture: Little Jamaica is a “taste” of the Caribbean, they 
would say. 
 
Community members described cultural identity in Little 
Jamaica in different ways. Some community members ve-
hemently maintained that Little Jamaica’s culture is au-
thentically Caribbean as a microcosm of life on the islands. 
They held that the social customs, culinary practices, and 
tastes represented in Little Jamaica were pure, insulated 
from foreign––mainly white Canadian––influence. One 
might question these claims of authenticity because culture 
inevitably changes in the diaspora. However, I argue that 
one might dismiss these claims of authenticity too quickly 
if one does not interrogate the socio-political context in 
which they are made. On my account, these community 

9 Debbie Gordon, “The Erasure of Little Jamaica: Exploring the 
Role of Design in the Gentrification of Toronto’s Eglinton Ave-
nue West” (York University, 2018), https://yorkspace.li-
brary.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/35802/Gor-
don_Debbie_M_2018_Masters.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y; 
Robert Murdie and Carlos Teixeira, “The Impact of Gentrifica-
tion on Ethnic Neighbourhoods in Toronto: A Case Study of Lit-
tle Portugal,” Urban Studies 48, no. 1 (2011): 1. 
10 Josh Matlow (city councillor) in discussion with the author, 
October 13, 2021. 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 46 

members did not describe cultural identity as hybrid or un-
stable because cultural authenticity became a political 
strategy. Community members took up claims of authen-
ticity to make a stronger argument for curbing gentrifica-
tion in Little Jamaica. Claiming that Little Jamaica has a 
distinct, authentic culture allows the community to use a 
persuasive language of protection and preservation. To gar-
ner political and economic support from the provincial 
government, activists and city councillors insisted that Lit-
tle Jamaica's distinct culture be preserved and protected. 
Though this rhetoric is restrictive because it assumes that 
culture is fixed, it remains helpful in drawing attention to 
how gentrification affects local culture. In Stuart Hall's 
terms, this authentic cultural identity is a strategic “posi-
tioning” that allows the diasporic community to pursue 
economic and social relief.11 
 
Many community members claiming cultural authenticity 
were acutely aware that aspects of Caribbean culture have 
been co-opted and altered to fit Toronto's multicultural 
agenda. The founder of the Afro-Caribbean Farmers' Mar-
ket in Little Jamaica insisted on the market’s African and 
Caribbean nature to prevent this cultural form from being 
co-opted in the same way that Caribana had been made a 
celebration of multiculturalism.12 The city renamed Cari-
bana the Toronto Caribbean Carnival and couched it in the 
language of diversity and multiculturalism. What was once 
a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved people in 
Canada and an important political platform for the Carib-
bean community in Toronto became a heavily commodi-
tized multicultural parade.13 Claims of cultural authentic-
ity help the diasporic community prevent their cultural 
forms from being incorporated into multicultural projects 
that perpetuate the idea that multiculturalism yields eco-
nomic equality. 
 
Though the effects of displacement are seen through the 
closure of many Caribbean restaurants, food is also a lens 
through which we can see the community’s efforts to resist 
gentrification and displacement. Restaurants have become 

 
11 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Stuart Hall: 
Selected Writings on Race and Difference, ed. Paul Gilroy and 
Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 
261. 

primary spaces for organized community meetings in Little 
Jamaica. Two not-for-profits held several community con-
sultations and information sessions on resisting gentrifica-
tion and working towards community land ownership at 
local restaurants. These organizations sought to support the 
restaurants during times of financial hardship, and they 
recognized the symbolic value of these restaurants for the 
residential and diasporic communities. In this way, food 
spaces became important sites for community organizing. 
Food, then, has the potential to be a tool for and site of 
cultural resistance because food contributes to the creation 
of cultural identity.  
 
Conclusion 
To sum up, I have suggested that gentrification ought to be 
analyzed not only through the lens of urban planning but 
through the lens of cultural resistance. The community in 
Little Jamaica is taking up cultural forms, including food, 
to resist gentrification. Food contributes to constructing 
cultural identity, which has been central to this communi-
ty's political projects. Thus, I have identified that food and 
food spaces can play a role in communities' resistance to 
gentrification. Further research might examine how food 
contributes to different communities’ political projects. 
  

12 Lori Beazer (founder of the Afro-Caribbean Farmers’ Market) 
in conversation with the author, October 25, 2021. 
13 Ibid. 



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