If you walk through Canada’s largest city, and venture 30 mins north of the CN Tower, you will reach a very unique neighbourhood with colorful Victorian row houses.
Eclectic vintage shops, and restaurants mix with arts spaces, specialty grocers, bakeries and cheese mongers.
The energy here is like nowhere else in Toronto because you can stroll the vibrant neighbourhood, picking up bites from local establishments, check out handmade goods and groove out to tunes played by musicians on the street.
And in the summer on the last Sunday of every month pedestrians take over as the neighbourhood is closed to traffic as shoppers, vendors, musicians and more flood the already bustling streets.
This is a place steeped in multiculturalism and history.
From its time as a parade ground for troops in the 1830s, to a starring role on Canadian television in the 1970s, this area is more legend than district.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we are doing more than window shopping as we walk like Al Waxman through the iconic… Kensington Market.
Long before Europeans ever set foot in North America, the area that Kensington Market sits on sits on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples…
For centuries, the area was heavily forested, home to various animals. Prior to European settlement it was on path for whoever happened to walk through on a journey to parts unknown.
In the late-1700s the land was surveyed by colonial administrators and divided into pieces for officers and officials.
During these years, the future Kensington Market sat on what was known as Lots 16, 17 and 18.
The next part of this story might be familiar to you if you listened to my episode about the Family Compact from February 2025.
You will remember just how powerful that group was.
One of the members was Captain John Denison.
He was a militia leader, miller, and brewer, and he married Sophia Taylor in December 1782.
Ten years later John and his wife moved with their three young sons, George Taylor, Thomas John, and Charles, to Upper Canada in 1792.
The Denisons initially settled in Kingston and were family friends of Peter Russell, who you might recall succeeded John Graves Simcoe as administrator of Upper Canada in 1796.
Together, they became influential figures in the development of York (now Toronto), Ontario.
When Captain John Denison died in 1824, George Taylor inherited the land and quickly used the family fortune to buy more property.
Among his many purchases were Lot 17 and half of Lot 18, where he established a beautiful family estate, including a mansion he called Belle Vue.
As the eldest son in such a prominent family, George lived in the lap of luxury.
He cut down swaths of trees so sunlight could reach the windows of his new home.
He also cleared a square of land on the property in front of his house to be used by the local volunteer cavalry unit he financed as a parade ground.
Today, it’s known as Bellevue Square Park.
By the time George passed away in 1853, he owned 2.25 square kilometres of land which son, Robert, inherited.
He immediately took over Belle Vue house and the land around it which he parcelled out into smaller lots more suitable for homes.
He sold each one for $350.
When those did not sell, he divided the lots into three mini-lots thereby lowering the price.
This decision had a major impact on the future of Kensington Market as the narrow Victorian homes were built on those thin strips of land.
In 1858, Robert Denison donated land and funds to build the Anglican Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields.
This beautiful church, which stands to this day, was designed by Thomas Fuller, the same man who built the original Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.
As Victorian row houses popped up in the 1880s. They were quick to build and moderate in size and before long, Scottish and Irish immigrants moved in.
They were the first of many.
The first threads in a rich and colorful tapestry of immigrants forever woven into Kensington Market.
These were the early years, and they shaped the look and feel of the neighborhood.
Along with the row houses some of Kensington’s most famous buildings were built during this time.
The No. 8 Fire Station, which sits at the corner of Bellevue and College, was built in 1878. The station was home to horse drawn hose car.
Even today, the most notable aspect of the building is the tall tower, which was added in 1899 and quickly became one of the tallest structures in Toronto.
That tower served as a lookout for fires and came in handy for hanging hoses out to dry.
By the time Robert Denison died in 1900, he had already sold the Belle Vue family home which had fallen to disrepair.
In fact, by 1889 the land the home sat on was worth more than the structure itself and a year later the house was torn down.
Robert Brittain Denison died, no longer being a landowner of the Kensington area which had been built up almost solidly from College to Dundas.
As the 19th century marched into the 20th, Eastern European and Jewish immigrants moved into Kensington from The Ward.
St John’s Ward, colloquially known as “The Ward”, was the area between University Avenue, Queen, Yonge, and College Streets.
It was the receiving point for many immigrants arriving in Toronto.
Italian, Jewish, and Chinese immigrants settled in, and their cultural, political, religious, and commercial practices left a deep impression on both the neighborhood and the city as a whole.
But at the time the neighbourhood was overcrowded, and antisemitism was on the rise.
Jewish residents looked for safety in Kensington which had a lower population, better homes and opportunities for new businesses.
Their arrival is often considered the beginning of the modern Kensington Market as it transformed the look of the neighborhood.
The new homes allowed for the ground floor to be converted into stores, while the family lived on the top floors.
The result was an open market feel as shoppers could look at wares through front windows from the sidewalks.
The Jewish population skyrocketed in Kensington through the 1910s.
By the early-1920s, it was known as The Jewish Market as over 60,000 people operated restaurants, bakeries and tailor shops.
The Jewish Market was typically open until sundown on Friday, when it shut down for the Jewish Sabbath and would reopen after sundown on Saturdays and remain open until midnight.
The growing Jewish population had certain niche needs, e.g. kosher meat or Eastern European staples which the residential community infused with niche businesses was happy to provide.
The population growth in the area accelerated through the 1920s, especially considering the proximity to both the garment industry, and other Jewish institutions centred on neighboring Spadina Avenue.
In 1921, the Standard Theatre was built, as a Yiddish Theatre which became a centre for Jewish political activism for years.
It was said that when you gave your ticket to the doorman, you entered the theatre as a member of society without a class system, where everyone was equal and could enjoy productions as one cohesive group.
Decades later the building hosted some of the most famous bands in the world including Rush, The New York Dolls and The Stooges.
The theatre has taken on many roles through its life, but today its doors are closed as it awaits a new life in the spot it has occupied for a century.
With such a large Jewish population, Kensington Market once had over 30 synagogues.
There was quite literally a synagogue on every corner, each catering to a different community in Eastern Europe.
The first one built was The Kiever Synagogue.
If you’re wandering around Kensington today know that beside the Kiever Synagogue on Denison Square is where the Belle Vue estate home once sat.
Kensington’s first synagogue was constructed from 1924 to 1927 by Jewish immigrants from modern-day Ukraine, fleeing persecution in Russia.
Only two synagogues stand today.
Along with The Kiever Synagogue is the Anshei Minsk Synagogue, which opened in 1930.
It was established by Russian Jewish immigrants who came to Canada from Minsk.
Sonya Lunansky was a member of this thriving community.
She opened a fruit shop in a rented place in Kensington in the 1930s.
With her son Sam, she worked the stand rain or shine, to make ends meet.
Like many other vendors, she displayed her wares on the sidewalk to encourage visitors to enter the store.
Sonya became a respected member of the community and what started out as a few boxes of fruit and a simple scale became the Augusta Fruit Market, which operates to this day in Kensington.
The nearby Sonya’s Park is also named after her.
During The Great Depression Kensington market became a village within a city.
Outside the market, antisemitism was rampant which means the market wasn’t safe from attack.
Jewish shop owners hid bottles under the counter in case of trouble.
If bottles were not handy Jewish residents found other ways to defend themselves including using a mackerel from their stand to fend off a would-be attacker.
While the Jewish residents of Kensington helped shape the market, they eventually moved out as more immigrants were waiting in the wings to add their spice to this cultural melting pot.
And Salvatore Sanci was the first non-Jewish merchant in the market.
He moved to Toronto from Sicily in 1914 and opened a banana store in 1928.
Known as Sanci’s Tropical Foods, the small business was at the risk of becoming obsolete until it was proposed to his daughter Frances Borg that the family branch out from bananas and start receiving mangoes from Jamaica.
The change and spurred on a growing Jamaican presence in the market and Toronto in general and marks an important shift in Kensington Market’s history as a new wave of immigrants was ready to arrive to continue to shape the market’s cultural mosaic.
Following the Second World War, the Jewish population had started to move to uptown and into the suburbs and the population dropped from 2,685 at the start of the 1950s, to just 780 by the end of the decade.
During this time, under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Ellen Fairclough, our system went through an overhaul.
Racist immigration policies had been enacted since the turn of the 20th century.
They restricted immigration from non-European countries, meaning Asian and Black immigrants dealt with many roadblocks in their efforts to start a new life in Canada.
Fairclough and Diefenbaker introduced regulations that virtually eliminated racial discrimination in Canada’s immigration policy.
This allowed for people claiming refugee status, as well as immigrants from countries seen by some white residents as undesirable to enter.
As a result of this, Canada saw a drastic increase of immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia through the 1960s and 1970s.
This new policy had a massive and positive impact on Kensington Market.
The first of this new wave started in 1953, when Canada and Portugal signed a labour migration agreement.
Many new Canadians settled into the area and continued the tradition of operating storefronts out of the front of their homes.
Grocery stores, bakeries and book stores all popped up in the neighbourhood.
A Portuguese-language newspaper offering a wide range of political perspectives was published in the market during this time.
In 1956, the first Portuguese Canadian Club was founded to help visitors and new arrivals l. A decade later, the club created a credit union to serve the Portuguese population.
Along with Portuguese immigrants there was also an influx of Hungarians and Jamaicans along with many other nations which gave, Kensington Market had a multicultural flair that was rare in Canada at the time.
Many cities each had their own ethnic clusters in various neighbourhoods. A mosaic of multiculturalism where Kensington offered a melting pot But worrying changes were on the horizon.
As Kensington Market became a beacon of multicultural cooperation, the city was looking to alter everything about the historic area.
During the 1960s, Toronto’s city council was pro-development, and into tearing down old and historic buildings to make way for apartment buildings, office towers and highways.
Council even wanted to demolish Toronto’s Old City Hall after the new city hall was built in 1965.
Plans were made to replace that stunning building, once the tallest structure in Canada, with a retail complex and several skyscrapers.
A massive public outcry, led by people like David Crombie, prevented the destruction of Old City Hall.
But it was not the only piece of Toronto’s history in danger of demolition.
Toronto City Council also had their eyes on Kensington Market with dreams of massive apartment buildings in its place.
Crombie, with John Sewell, led a grassroots movement to limit development in historic neighbourhoods in favour of improving social services and prioritizing community interests.
He took his fight to city hall, literally, when he won a seat on council in 1970. Two years later, he was the Mayor of Toronto and all plans to level Kensington Market stopped.
The market was saved and throughout the early-1970s, immigrants from India, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines arrived.
At the same time, Chinatown was expanding westward, eventually reaching the border of Kensington Market.
These two neighbourhoods eventually blended their borders making the market a unique place to work, live and visit just as Kensington Market was about to have a starring role on Canadian television.
On Sept. 25, 1975, CBC debuted a new TV show starring an unknown actor named Al Waxman.
Titled King of Kensington, the show focused on the market’s multiculturalism and made Kensington one of most famous neighbourhoods in Canada.
It followed the life of Larry King, the owner of a corner store and a community leader who solved neighbourhood problems.
Larry’s wife Cathy was Protestant, his mother was Jewish.
His best friends were Black and Italian.
The show’s star was VERY familiar with Kensington Market.
Al Waxman, the son of Jewish immigrants, grew up in an apartment above a poultry shop only one block away from where the show’s intro was filmed.
The gentle but politically conscious humour was celebrated by many critics.
Each episode was filmed a week before airing so that it could be topical with its content and often brought in 1.5 to 2 million viewers each week.
Easily beat the American competition which aired at the same time including The Six Million Dollar Man.
The show became notable for its many guest stars, including John Candy, Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin and a little kid known as Mike Myers.
He made his acting debut on the show in 1975 when he was just 12 and later honoured the part by naming character Vanessa Kensington in Austin Powers after the famous neighborhood.
He also kept in touch with Al Waxman throughout his life, often referring to him as Mister Waxman.
After the show ended, it was referenced and honoured in subsequent Canadian productions.
The first episode of Twitch City, a Canadian sitcom produced by CBC Television, which first aired in 1998 was also set in Kensington Market.
It featured Al Waxman in a cameo role as a symbolic connection to the King of Kensington.
Waxman went on to star in Cagney and Lacey in the 80s.
In 1996, he was inducted into the Order of Ontario and, a year later into the Order of Canada.
By 1998, he had received the Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in Canadian television.
Waxman died in Toronto in 2001, and following his death, a statue of him, created by Ruth Abernethy, was erected in Kensington Market.
The inscription in front of the statue reads.
“There’s lots to do down the road, there’s always more. Trust your gut instincts. In small matters trust your mind, but in the important decisions of life – trust your heart.”
Today, Kensington Market is the beat of Toronto’s heart.
It’s a major tourist attraction and visitors can co mingle with artists and writers and anyone in between.
The vibrant community has been under threat of gentrification as property values soar.
Despite that increase, the neighbourhood remains unique. Thanks in part to Toronto’s policies which include having low-scale buildings with retail at grade level, minimal setbacks and open-air display of goods on the boulevard.
This has kept it mostly intact as it is not suited to modern transportation. Streets are narrow with minimal parking.
Pedestrians have mostly free-reign to walk down the street in what feels like an open-air market.
This pedestrian-friendly atmosphere is symbolized in the garden car.
This non-permanent landmark was first installed in 2006 by Streets are for People. There have been three cars so far, which also double as a community garden.
In November of 2006, Kensington Market was made a National Historic Site of Canada.
But before I leave you, did you know a war that was fought in Kensington Market?
The Jamaican or beef patty began by mixing an empanada-styled turnover introduced by the Spanish, with pastries from Cornish immigrants, and spices used by immigrants from India.
Some Jamaican immigrants who settled in Toronto began to sell their beef patty pastry.
It quickly grew in popularity and small Jamaican bakeries opened in Kensington Market.
But trouble was brewing.
Fast food restaurants selling hamburgers felt that the “beef patty” sold by Jamaican bakeries did not meet the definition under the Meat Inspections Act.
That act defined a beef patty as seasoned meat not encased in dough.
In the mid-1980s, war came to Kensington Market because in 1985, government inspectors ordered the Jamaican restaurants to change business names, signage and packaging and remove the words “beef patties”.
If they failed to do so, vendors would be forced to pay fines of $5,000 to $11,000.
Michael Davidson, who owned Kensington Patty Palace, organized and led Jamaican vendors in resistance.
He argued that changing the name would erase the history and heritage of Jamaican food.
At the time, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was planning an official trip to Jamaica so there was pressure to resolve the issue.
On Feb. 19, 1985, Jamaican vendors were invited to meet with Consumer and Corporate Affairs to address concerns in what was called The Patty Summit.
The vendors argued that not only was changing the name erasing Jamaican heritage, but the changing of their signage and menus would cost thousands of dollars.
The public was mostly on their side in what was dubbed The Patty Wars.
A compromise was reached. The vendors did not have to rename their businesses or change signage.
In return, they would start advertising the pastry as a “Jamaican Patty” rather than “beef patty.”
It was a victory for the Jamaican community.
And for our stomach as they became known as “Toronto’s favourite snack
