Township of Scarborough
The Township of Scarborough was given its name in 1793 by the wife of John Graves Simcoe, first governor of Upper Canada. In that same year, the British government began distributing land grants to people who wanted to settle in the area. In 1796, David and Mary Thomson obtained land on the banks of Highland Creek and began to tame and settle the land with their 5 children. The Thomsons, along with other early settler families such as the McCowans and the Cornells, hailed from the British Isles, just as the majority of Scarborough’s population would up until the 1970s. The foods that these families produced were largely based on what they could farm, as Scarborough was primarily an agricultural settlement until the 1960s. The recipes that they produced were heavily influenced by traditional British foods, as well as ‘new’ recipes originating in the various colonial possessions of the British Empire. In the years following the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, which lasted from 1803 to 1815, thousands of immigrants from the continent started making their way to Canada and eventually Scarborough, adding some diversity to the suburb’s demography.
Around 1860, Scarborough saw a small influx of immigrants from the German States and the Netherlands. By 1911, Germans were the largest non-British ethnic group in Scarborough and brought with them their own culture and traditions, including foods such as sauerkraut. By the 1930s, Italians were another visible non-British minority in Scarborough, and they brought with them a rich culinary culture and settled in ethnic boroughs collectively known as “Little Italy” across the suburb. In these ethnic boroughs, Italians operated many fruit and vegetable street stalls and restaurants specializing in Italian cuisine throughout Toronto and its various suburbs. A few decades later, during the 1940s and 1950s, more and more Europeans of diverse ethnic backgrounds came and settled in Scarborough, the most notable group being the Ukrainians. Despite the steady influx of immigrants to Scarborough during the early to mid-20th century, both the World Wars and the Great Depression severely limited the total number of migrants to the suburb.
​
The decades which followed the Second World War saw a dramatic growth in Scarborough’s population, the largest since the mid-nineteenth century. This growth can be primarily attributed to the creation of the Golden Mile in 1949-50, which was a booming industrial and commercial space within the suburb. Furthermore, throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Scarborough also grew significantly demographically due to the post-war baby boom, the influx of European migrants and refugees from war-torn Europe, and the lifting of racial immigration bans and the introduction of the Point System. The lifting of the said ban allowed immigration of non-Europeans to Canada, creating a new, multicultural community in Scarborough.
By the 1980s and 1990s, Scarborough saw a large increase in its East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Indo-Pakistani, Middle Eastern, and Black populations, all of which contributed to the suburb’s growing multicultural society, celebrated through rich traditions, languages, and of course, cuisines. An example of this comes from Scarborough’s largest population during this influx, the Chinese. Scarborough’s Chinatown, located in Agincourt as a conglomerate of plazas contained various Chinese businesses including grocery stores and restaurants such as the Ching Kee Market, New World Oriental Cuisine, and the East Court Restaurant. According to the 2006 Canadian National Census, Whites only made up a third of Scarborough’s population, and of the remaining 67%, 22% were South Asian, 19.5% Chinese, 10.3% Black, 6.3% Filipino, and the remaining 9.9% were from various other minorities.
An example of one of many restaurants in Scarborough's "Chinatown."
Golden Mile Plaza has transitioned from industrial space to a essential food market.
The Thomson Family are joined by other Scarborough locals to celebrate the 1896 Centennial.
