Protecting Toronto’s Black culture in Little Jamaica
- Aug 18, 2025
- 2 min read
Tina Yazdani with City News reports on the movement to protect Little Jamaica on Eglinton West, a neighbourhood with a rich cultural heritage that has been forced to endure years of hardship.
"The shameful trend has always been that whenever there was an expressway or gentrification coming into a neighbourhood, Black neighbourhoods, Black communities were the first to be displaced,” says local councillor Josh Matlow.
A decade of transit construction and nearly a year of pandemic have taken their toll on Eglinton West’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood, and community members are saying now is the time to intervene to ensure it survives.
“As a long-time resident here, walking along Eglinton West is shocking,” says Bill Worrell, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 37 years. “The economic devastation: so many closed stores. It’s partly gentrification but it’s also the chaos of the construction.”
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT has been under construction since 2011, snarling the neighbourhood in closed lanes, pylons, and holes in the ground. Along with it has come advertisements for new condominiums replacing existing buildings promising transit at their doorstep.
Countless stores, particularly black-owned small businesses, have closed their doors. A report released Thursday, called Black Futures on Eglinton, estimates that between 2009 and 2019, the stretch of Eglinton Avenue West between Keele Street and Allen Road lost about 10 per cent of its Black businesses. It’s a loss felt not only by local residents, the report notes, but by people all over the city who would drive into the area to access its services.
The report says while the Eglinton Crosstown LRT is a factor, the city’s gentrification in general is a contributing force. Tenants have seen their rent skyrocket, says resident Prophetess Reid, who is also a member of a tenant association.
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