wild goose chase
Active Member
I think the number is like 40% - 50% of newcomers settle into the GTA and I know many people who immigrate first to other towns and cities end up in Toronto too.
Was it inevitable that after Montreal was overtaken as biggest city, Toronto would be the biggest draw?
I could image a hypothetical situation where immigration was more divided evenly among the Canadian cities the way it is in the US, so that even if Toronto was like a New York analogue, other cities would pick large shares too.
One particular thing I find interesting is how for so many ethnic communities, Toronto has the highest population in either absolute or relative terms. In the US, you have ethnic minorities being far more regional (eg. Mexicans in the Southwest, Italians in Northeast, Chinese in California etc.) as opposed to going to one big city. We are almost more like London, UK in how we draw immigrants to our country.
Even East Asians have greater population in Toronto than Vancouver, unlike the US where East Asians are heavily West Coast, primarily Californian, but British Columbia, with its cities like Vancouver or Victoria never kept up having the lion's share of Asian Canadian immigration the way California did. I'm curious why though both countries more or less started having Asian migrants on the same count, Canada's biggest city drew Asians eastward to Toronto unlike eastern US cities.
I could imagine a hypothetical scenario where the new immigrant communities are very distinctly localized to a city (so that say Vancouver has the most of groups A, B, C... Calgary has the most of groups, D, E, F... Winnipeg has the most of ... you get the picture etc.), but that never really happened and Toronto just ends up being the hub for everyone, not known for any one group (it is kind of the case for Montreal for some communities that are Francophone or Arab/North African such as groups like Lebanese, Haitians etc).
Was it inevitable that after Montreal was overtaken as biggest city, Toronto would be the biggest draw?
I could image a hypothetical situation where immigration was more divided evenly among the Canadian cities the way it is in the US, so that even if Toronto was like a New York analogue, other cities would pick large shares too.
One particular thing I find interesting is how for so many ethnic communities, Toronto has the highest population in either absolute or relative terms. In the US, you have ethnic minorities being far more regional (eg. Mexicans in the Southwest, Italians in Northeast, Chinese in California etc.) as opposed to going to one big city. We are almost more like London, UK in how we draw immigrants to our country.
Even East Asians have greater population in Toronto than Vancouver, unlike the US where East Asians are heavily West Coast, primarily Californian, but British Columbia, with its cities like Vancouver or Victoria never kept up having the lion's share of Asian Canadian immigration the way California did. I'm curious why though both countries more or less started having Asian migrants on the same count, Canada's biggest city drew Asians eastward to Toronto unlike eastern US cities.
I could imagine a hypothetical scenario where the new immigrant communities are very distinctly localized to a city (so that say Vancouver has the most of groups A, B, C... Calgary has the most of groups, D, E, F... Winnipeg has the most of ... you get the picture etc.), but that never really happened and Toronto just ends up being the hub for everyone, not known for any one group (it is kind of the case for Montreal for some communities that are Francophone or Arab/North African such as groups like Lebanese, Haitians etc).
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