STORIES OF MIGRATION
LIFE AND CHANGE IN TORONTO
Image credit: MATTHEW HENRY on Unsplash.
As many Torontonians navigate the rising cost of living, pandemic recovery, and new developments, the Toronto Ward Museum’s Block by Block Exhibition shares neighbourhood-specific stories of migration and survival in a rapidly changing city, building solidarity and fostering conversations between diverse storytellers.
Block by Block represents the culmination of 3.5 years of youth-led community research, showcasing over 100 in-depth oral histories collected from newcomer, migrant, racialized, and Indigenous community members in Agincourt, Parkdale, Regent Park, and Victoria Park. This
unique exhibition immerses visitors in their experiences through video, audio, and photographs – never before displayed together in their entirety. The exhibition also serves as a model of what a museum of Toronto can be, reimagining how to excavate the story of a city where an unprecedented concentration of cultures intersect and interact with one another.
Each of the 4 neighbourhoods featured in this exhibition has historically served as a landing site for newcomers, and all face rapid redevelopment in the coming years. The stories of displacement, migration, arrival, and settlement documented by TWM’s citywide network of young curators reveal how these communities have persisted through informal networks, grassroots activism, and local organizing that reaches across cultural and linguistic lines.
“Our exhibition honours the strength and survival of migrant communities that form Toronto’s cultural and social fabric,” says Brannavy Jeyasundaram, Co-Executive Director of Toronto Ward Museum. “These communities have clear aspirations for the future of their neighbourhoods, and deserve to be listened to as Toronto undergoes rapid change. Block by Block is a platform and vehicle for their stories.”
Toronto is changing rapidly, making it more crucial than ever to preserve stories of the city’s immigrant neighbourhoods while they still exist in living memory. As well as illuminating newcomers’ lived experiences in these neighbourhoods, their robust insights have the power to reshape our understanding of Toronto’s past and enhance our dialogue about its future. Recent newcomers and youth in particular can benefit from stories of past community-building: how have newcomers traditionally supported each other and staked their place in these neighbourhoods? How can we learn from and integrate their practices at the municipal level?
How does their inclusion support healthy, vibrant development as the city changes?
Block by Block opened on August 20th and will run until November 20th, with a launch event at Toronto Reference Library’s Beeton Hall on September 12th. Visitors will have access to video and audio stories as well as a historical timeline of migration and urban change in Toronto. The exhibition invites people of all backgrounds to explore their connection to place and identity within the context of creating community in a new country.
“Each element of our exhibition—photos, quotes, videos, text—was created and curatedin collaboration with local storytellers and community partners,” says Maggie Hutcheson, Block by Block Program Director. “The texture and richness of the stories are a testament to the process within which they were preserved and animated.”
After multi-year engagement in four neighbourhoods, TOWard Museum turns the conversation over to the wider city of Toronto: How are these stories like your own, and how can they guide future city-building? What can we do within our own neighbourhoods to celebrate and preserve Toronto’s global role as the world’s most diverse city — and make it a safer, more equitable arrival point for newcomers?
Toronto Ward Museum thanks the Toronto Public Library for providing a space where these historically overlooked communities can be represented by carefully curated oral histories which, both individually and combined, tell a deeper story of who we are.
WHEN AND WHERE
August 20 to November 20: Stories of Migration, Life, and Change in Four Toronto Neighbourhoods, TD Gallery at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto.