0918 From Data to Narrative

What could be better?

No one imagined Toronto to be a city with the “multicultural” tag in the early periods. The first Act was highly discriminatory in practise, as the country put its primary focus on farmers, labourers preferably with a Eauropean or American nationality. The main purpose of immigration was never about to enrich the cultural and social context for people but simply to occupy uninhabited suburban areas and boost the economy. During the industrial revolution period, rapid increase of population resulted in heavier demands on transportation systems. The Canadian government “imported” many Chinese to build the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway). Chinese people wanted to come no matter how dangerous the job would be because at the time many lived in poverty in China. Soon after the last spike of CPR was driven, the Chinese Head Tax Act was passed as a way to limit numbers of Chinese people entering Canada.

I wanted to know the reasoning behind this Act, as well as the later Chinese Exclusion Act. Every action must has a motive behind it, so I went on to find out why the government decided to pass such acts. It was because of the fear of “cultural overwhelming”. During that period of time, many Chinese migrated from San Francisco to British Columbia seeking for new gold rush opportunities. Looking at this from a purely objective perspective, an inflow of thousands of mainly illiterate workers would have had a huge impact on the society both socially and culturally. The act was actually objected several times with reasons being “Chinese will spend money on goods” and “Canada’s or Britain’s trade with China might be jeopardized”. It can be seen that the government (of B.C at least) focused entirely on the economic value of immigrants rather than realizing that maybe developing proper control and means of integration could be a potential way of creating a win-win situation. Although this event didn’t happen in Toronto, it can be seen as an example of bringing migrant groups into a city without having any integration strategies.

The demographic shift in Toronto was drastic, especially from 1998–2001. The birth of a “megacity” led to the need of more population. Immigration became once again, a main strategy to develop economic growth. The weakness I see from examining the historic is how we have always neglected the emotional needs of newcomers. What immigrants can contribute to the city is undoubtedly important, but as a city we can’t just always be the taker. To support and encourage them to integrate into the city and make them feel like they belong to Toronto also becomes part of our responsibility. The visible ghettoization in ethnic boroughs that we see today are results of people looking for comfort and familiarity because of the lack opportunities that we have given them to really be part of the city.

Justin Trudeau once tweeted “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” Maybe that was merely a politic show, maybe it truly came out of his heart, but anyways that’s not the point of this discussion. The important thing is, I have an odd perspective where I think diversity alone is not sufficient to be a strength. In fact, just by welcoming everyone and saying that we embrace every culture without finding a way to properly integrating and educating those who come to this city will result in a highly divided and segregated city, which then becomes a weakness. Converting diversity into a strength requires more than allowing people to enter the city. Diversity itself is neutral, it isn’t a strength.The ability to help diverse people to be integrated into the city is. Integrating newcomers into the city is one weakness that I’ve identified but when I dug deeper something else relating to immigration stood out to me.

From the city’s census of 2006, it is found that 68% of Torontonians who are 55 yrs or older were immigrants, further data has shown that on average, 8000+ permanent or temporary residents will land each year in the future. This visible minority group usually don’t speak the official languages, have lower income and are in need for health care. So how do we, as a city, address that? Through research I’ve found that long-term care homes in Toronto only deal with residents who are older, more frail, and have more complex care needs (as of 2010, only seniors with high or very high care needs are eligible for long-term care). From looking at neighbourhood demographics, what also stood out to me was how many elderly are living alone. Additionally, because of the continuously rising living expenses, more and more of them are being forced out of the city, moving to suburban where it is inconvenient to go anywhere. Toronto neglected them, those once contributed to the city. It is certainly exciting to design for the young, for the energetic. However to be a “human-centered” city we must also not forget about those who made the development of the city possible. What kind of city do I wish to see when I’m say, 65 years old? What kind of city do I wish for my parents?

These two weaknesses of Toronto are the ones that I found resonate with me the most and I’m leaning more towards the latter subject at the moment. This led to the choice of theme for my studio project — Benevolence. Respond to the emotional needs of seniors, especially the migrant group that came here before this city became so vibrant. We have the responsibility to help them to better interact with this city. Before we confidently welcome refugees around the world to our city, maybe we should first face the existing problems and help those in needs that we’ve “welcomed” throughout these years.

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