Toronto Events - The battle for Little Ethiopia

The battle for Little Ethiopia

IS THERE ROOM FOR A LITTLE ETHIOPIA ON THE DANFORTH?

20 July, 2010 | By Josh Hume
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We’ve got the Gerrard India Bazaar, Korea Town, Greektown,
Portugal Village and even Malta Village — and now one community
leader wants to add Little Ethiopia to that list.

Only the local Business Improvement Area isn’t biting.

Ethiopian-Canadian Samuel Getachew, co-founder of Friends of
Ethiopia and a city council candidate in multi-ethnic Scarborough E.
ward 43, says there were earlier attempts to establish a Little Ethiopia
around Ossington and Bloor, but that the recent influx of Ethiopian
businesses in the east end has inspired him to give it a shot there instead.

Over the past decade a satellite community has coalesced around the
Danforth and Monarch Park area where a number of Ethiopian
restaurants call the strip home, including Rendez-Vous, Wazema, Blue
Nile, and Lalibela. (The latter has feet in both camps with another
location at Roxton and Bloor).

But the BIA representing the area sees things differently. “Our strength is
that we are a mini-United Nations,” explains Danforth Mosaic BIA chair
Patricia Silver.

Recognizing a specific ethnic group, she says, “is not something we want
to do as a BIA because we feel it’s not very reflective of who we are.
We are very clear about our brand. Our brand is mosaic. Our brand is
to honour the 20 or 30 different cultural groups that thrive within our
catchment area.”

Danforth Mosaic is sandwiched between the Greektown BIA to the
west and the Danforth Village BIA to the east. Until three years ago
there was no BIA to represent the “orphan” strip in between. Now it is
the longest BIA in Toronto and stretches approximately from Jones
Avenue to Main Street.

Getachew says he isn’t asking for much. “We just want a street sign. We
don’t even want a flag like the Italians,” he says. The designated Little
Ethiopia area would run no more than a few blocks between
Greenwood and Monarch Park.

"It isn’t about ghettoizing anything,” he says, “it has everything to do with
empowering immigrants."

Getachew first went to area councillors with the idea, but they deferred
him to the BIA: "The city listens to the BIA because they assume it
speaks for the area.”

In a sense it does. The bodies are legally empowered by the city to
make decisions at a community level, which are then brought to city
council to be stamped for approval.

"It isn’t so simple to say ‘give somebody a street sign,’” says Silver. “It’s
all done in a very democratic way. The general membership would have
to vote on this and they only meet once a year.”

Still, some neighbourhoods managed to develop identities before the
advent of BIAs, before it was the responsibility of one body to brand

Courtesy

Social Determinants of Health
THE CANADIAN FACTS

May

(

Juha Mikkonen

and Dennis Raphael) - The

primary factors that shape the

health of Canadians are not

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