Parkdale
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For the federal electoral district see Parkdale (electoral district)
Parkdale is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Village of Parkdale was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1889. It was once an elite residential suburb, home to large Victorian mansions and views of Lake Ontario.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Parkdale's desirability stemmed from its proximity to Sunnyside Beach, a favourite day vacation for Torontonians. Cottage industries sprung up in the neighbourhood, creating a vital economic region. Theatres such as the Brighton, and hotels like the Edgewater flourished.
The Palais Royale, at the eastern edge of Sunnyside Beach, was used for social gatherings. Many important big bands played there in the 1930s and the 1940s, and this attracted a large youth patronage. Many war generation Torontonians courted their future partners in this building.
In 1955, the city began work on the Gardiner Expressway, a limited access highway that separated Parkdale from Sunnyside Beach. The expressway effectively halved the amount of usable lakeside parkland. A reorganization of the area's residential streets and the demolition of a local amusement park were also necessary. Patronage of the beach declined rapidly.
Concurrently, Toronto was experiencing the urban white flight of the mid-twentieth century. As property values plumetted, great swaths of land were expropriated to erect social housing. Parkdale's businesses and wealthy residents now had no reason to stay.
Parkdale Village, the area of Parkdale closest to the beach, became one of the poorest areas in Toronto. It is bounded on the west by the intersection of King Street, Roncesvalles Avenue, and Queen Street West, on the north by Queen Street West, on the east by Dufferin Street, and on the south by the Gardiner Expressway, roughly half a square kilometre in area. Jameson Avenue is home to a series of unsightly tenements which contributed significantly to the unattractiveness of the area.
In the mid 1990s, the Ontario provincial government decided to release thousands of long-term care mental illness patients from its Queen Street and Lakeshore Hospital facilities as a cost-cutting measure. The old Victorian mansions of Parkdale had long been converted to boarding houses, and were only a short distance away from both hospitals. The inexpensive rental stock of Parkdale soon became home to many of the released patients. While this migration did not create any real problems, the news drew greater negative attention to the area. By the late 1990s, "Parkdale" became synonymous with poverty, crime, homelessness, and large numbers of people living with mental illness.
Parkdale Village is still home to some soup kitchens and day centres for the homeless. A pilot programme for a needle exchange is new to the area. Nonetheless, local taverns have begun receiving a new patronage from artists and urbanites seeking refuge from the fashion boutiques further east on Queen Street. Many expect the same regentrification process to occur here that occurred twenty years ago in the east.
The area that extends northward along Roncesvalles Avenue, on the other hand, saw new life when Polish immigrants settled in the area in the mid 1960's. Delis and restaurants are still the majority of storefronts that line the thoroughfare from Queen Street West to Howard Park Avenue. In recent years, young professionals have begun gentrifying the area and raising property values.
Parkdale is also seeing signs of gentrification, as Queen Street West's sphere of influence extends further westward.
See also
External links
- Parkdale history (http://www.parkdale.tv/history.html)
- Parkdale Collegiate Institute (http://www.parkdaleci.on.ca/)
- Parkdale Toronto Ontario Canada (http://www.icomm.ca/madmagic/Writing/intro.html)