The Market Gallery - Settling in Toronto

A couple weeks ago, Mom and I went to The Market Gallery at St. Lawrence Market. There is an exhibition on about Settling in Toronto: The Quest for Freedom, Opportunity and Identity. 

Yesterday, we returned so we could spend a little more time with the Exhibit. 

(It is on until July 15.)

It is all about people who have come to Toronto and the things they may have experienced.

William Peyton Hubbard was the first African American elected to Politics. He was a City of Toronto Alderman from 1894 - 1914. His parents escaped slavery in Virginia and sought refuge in Toronto. 

John George Howard came to Toronto from England in 1832. He and his wife, Jemima (below) settled in the Town of York. He was a Drawing Instructor at Upper Canada College; he was the first City Surveyor, the first City Engineer and an Architect.

We just visited Colborne Lodge earlier this week and I did a blog post about the visit.

It wasn't always easy for Immigrants. If Canada was at war with the country they were from, they might have been interred because their loyalty was questioned. There were also racial tensions which have resulted in riots such as the Anti-Greek riots in 1918 and the anti-Semitic Christie Pitts Riots in 1933 

Laws have changed throughout the years reflecting changing attitudes towards Immigration:

Immigrants themselves have challenged injustices:

Here are some pieces of art that I found interesting:

 Scarborough Village by Yasmine Louis

Dorset Park by Yasmine Louis

The Market
Aba Bayefsky

Portrait of the Son of Laurent Quetton St. George
Artist unknown
Laurent Quetton St. George fled France and arrived in Upper Canada in 1799 and became a leading merchant in the town of York.


I don't know if this is intentional or not, but from The Market Gallery you can see the work on the site for the North Market and the St. Lawrence Hall which opened in 1851 with a anti-Slavery lecture. That same year, Frederick Douglass spoke at the Hall.

My favourite part of the exhibit was the recipe wall.
One of the ways that people express their culture is through food. My Mom is Jamaican but she loves her Indian food... One of her Grandfathers was Indian.
We eat a lot of Jamaican, Chinese, Indian and Scottish food. :-)

Of course, we shared a recipe, but you'll have to visit The Market Gallery to get it.

There was a video about "The World In Ten Blocks" from Lost Time Media and it got Mom talking to me about her experience migrating to Canada. It took her a long time to have Canada feel like home, and that it is really the people around that helped her feel like she belongs. Even just while we were out, she saw someone from her choir, ran into an old friend on the subway and pointed out that we even recognize some of the strangers walking on the street. When she goes back to Jamaica, it doesn't feel like 'home' anymore, she has changed and things have changed.

When we were leaving we looked at some of the books they had. This one reminded us about how much more we have to learn about Dad's family's experience when they moved to Canada. Dad's paternal grandparents came from China and his maternal grandparents came from Scotland.