Kensington Market - The World on a Few Blocks

Photo: Arild Vagen, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on Toronto Downtown Walk, a free self-guided tour.

You finish where Toronto's immigrant story is most alive. These narrow streets of Victorian row houses were built in the 1880s for Irish and Scottish workers, on land that had been part of the Denison family estate. In the early 1900s Eastern European Jewish and Italian families moved in, and by the 1920s the neighbourhood was known simply as the Jewish Market, crowded with pushcarts, butchers and small synagogues.

Then came wave after wave: Portuguese families from the Azores, newcomers from the Caribbean, East Asia and Central America, each adding shops, spices and music. When 1960s planners wanted to replace the old houses with apartment blocks, the plans were dropped, and the market was named a National Historic Site in 2006.

Wander Augusta Avenue, Baldwin Street and Kensington Avenue for vintage clothes, cheese, empanadas, patties and fresh fish, and look for the Garden Car, an old car turned into a planter. On warm-weather Sundays, Pedestrian Sundays close the streets to traffic. The Spadina streetcar will carry you back toward Union Station.

Getting here: Continue west along Dundas Street through Chinatown and across Spadina Avenue, then turn right up Kensington Avenue or Augusta Avenue into the market.

Did you know?: In 2021 a community land trust bought a building in the market to keep its rents affordable, one of the ways residents are working to protect the neighbourhood's character.

Photo op: Stand at Augusta Avenue and Baldwin Street to capture the painted storefronts, racks of vintage clothes and fruit stands spilling onto the sidewalk.

More on Wikipedia: Kensington Market · Chinatown, Toronto

Kensington Market - The World on a Few Blocks

Stops on this tour