Why Toronto surpassed Vancouver/BC in Asian-Canadian population?

[the lemur]

What about Thais? I see Thai restaurants everywhere in Toronto.

I suspect that many of them are run by non-Thais. There's one in the Annex that makes of a point of stating that all its cooks are Thai, possibly to emphasise the authenticity of the food. Many, if not most, Japanese restaurants in Toronto are actually run by Koreans.

 

[wild goose chase]

I suspect that many of them are run by non-Thais. There's one in the Annex that makes of a point of stating that all its cooks are Thai, possibly to emphasise the authenticity of the food. Many, if not most, Japanese restaurants in Toronto are actually run by Koreans.

I do wonder how accurate the general assumption is that a restaurant serving a cuisine will have people of that ethnic background as cooks, if not as managers? In theory, there's no reason why anyone can't learn to cook any cuisine with training or experience, but generally there is that desire to have cooks from the country of origin to reflect the "authenticity" of the cuisine.

 

[the lemur]

Come to think of it though actually, the West coast presence for Asian-Americans is mostly driven by California -- the Pacific Northwest states probably don't seem to contribute that much to Asian-American population by sheer population, compared to California's sheer demographic weight (after all, it's the one US state larger in population size than all of Canada!).

I also kind of find it interesting that BC and California have so many of Asian descent (15-20%), but the states in between, Washington and Oregon, not so much with only single digit %'s. Portland isn't particularly evocative of Asian-Americans, with Seattle perhaps slightly more so, though both cities are seen as low in population of minorities broadly speaking. I'm guessing BC and California were favored as destinations but not so much in between? Perhaps it also means that the Asian-Canadian west-coasters didn't intermingle much with their stateside counterparts otherwise they'd be a more continuous distribution going north to south.

Portland's not very diverse at all, and the Oregon Territory (now Oregon, Idaho, Washington and a bit of Wyoming) was originally intended as a place for white settlers. The federal government gave away thousands of 320-acre land parcels in the mid-1800s to single white males, white couples and people of mixed white and Indian backgrounds while moving the native population onto reserves.

Seattle is also pretty white, although it does have a fair number of different Asian and Pacific communities. It is also apparently the US metropolitan area with the highest percentage of inhabitants who identified themselves in a census as being of mixed race (although why Honolulu doesn't hold that honour, I don't know).

 

[the lemur]

I do wonder how accurate the general assumption is that a restaurant serving a cuisine will have people of that ethnic background as cooks, if not as managers? In theory, there's no reason why anyone can't learn to cook any cuisine with training or experience, but generally there is that desire to have cooks from the country of origin to reflect the "authenticity" of the cuisine.

That's true, and the 'Thai cooks only' thing kind of bothers me for that reason. People don't expect French food to be made by French people every time and in many cases the staff at a restaurant may be from a nearby country that is very familiar with the cuisine anyway or has similar dishes.

We also have a large number of restaurants that offer dishes from multiple countries, so I don't think it's worth being pedantic about.

 

[wild goose chase]

Portland's not very diverse at all, and the Oregon Territory (now Oregon, Idaho, Washington and a bit of Wyoming) was originally intended as a place for white settlers. The federal government gave away thousands of 320-acre land parcels in the mid-1800s to single white males, white couples and people of mixed white and Indian backgrounds while moving the native population onto reserves.

Seattle is also pretty white, although it does have a fair number of different Asian and Pacific communities. It is also apparently the US metropolitan area with the highest percentage of inhabitants who identified themselves in a census as being of mixed race (although why Honolulu doesn't hold that honour, I don't know).

Yeah, I found it interesting how the Pacific Northwest is mostly white while BC and California are much more diverse. I think that more Asian laborers/immigrants were driven out from there while perhaps BC and California's populations were just able to stay more due to critical mass? The Bing cherry famously associated with the Pacific Northwest was named after a Chinese immigrant, Ah Bing, and Washington had a governor of Chinese descent, Gary Locke who was a third-generation Seattle-born American, that also served as US ambassador to China.

 

[wild goose chase]

https://books.google.ca/books?id=FPxJ_aG_B-8C&pg=PT64&dq=one+third+of+idaho+chinese&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj41aHqgP7JAhWK6IMKHUmPAHgQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=one third of idaho chinese&f=false

I remember reading this fact which was really surprising. At one point, in 1870, one third of Idaho's population was Chinese. With violence and rioting, they were driven away so by 1910, almost none remained.

 

[King of Kensington]

Chinese and Japanese populations in West Coast cities, 1940/1941:

Los Angeles

Japanese 23,321 1.6%
Chinese 4,736 0.3%

San Francisco

Chinese 17,782 2.8%
Japanese 5,280 0.8%

Seattle

Japanese 6,975 1.9%
Chinese 1,781 0.5%

Vancouver

Japanese 9,299 3.3%
Chinese 7,174 2.6%

 

[wild goose chase]

I suspect that many of them are run by non-Thais. There's one in the Annex that makes of a point of stating that all its cooks are Thai, possibly to emphasise the authenticity of the food. Many, if not most, Japanese restaurants in Toronto are actually run by Koreans.

That's true, and the 'Thai cooks only' thing kind of bothers me for that reason. People don't expect French food to be made by French people every time and in many cases the staff at a restaurant may be from a nearby country that is very familiar with the cuisine anyway or has similar dishes.

We also have a large number of restaurants that offer dishes from multiple countries, so I don't think it's worth being pedantic about.

It seems like things like Thai food, sushi and other Japanese foods etc. often became popular in Canada and the US at similar times and places anyways even if there was not a large community or wave of immigrants from the place of origin. For example, the popularity of sushi across North America happened in times and places long after the major wave of Japanese immigration already peaked.

Though there is something to the idea that greater familiarity with an ethnic community increases popularity of its cuisine (eg. popularity of Indian food in Britain, Mexican in the US Southwest, Italian in New Jersey, pierogi on the prairies), there are also many cases where popularity isn't always tied to an immigrant community being present there, nor does an immigrant community there necessarily mean that its cuisine will be prevalent in an area (eg. German cuisine isn't as common relative to the amount of German immigration, while Thai is common in US and Canadian cities like Toronto despite few Thai immigrants).

 

[King of Kensington]

Chinese and Japanese populations in West Coast cities, 1940/1941:

Los Angeles

Japanese 23,321 1.6%
Chinese 4,736 0.3%

San Francisco

Chinese 17,782 2.8%
Japanese 5,280 0.8%

Seattle

Japanese 6,975 1.9%
Chinese 1,781 0.5%

Vancouver

Japanese 9,299 3.3%
Chinese 7,174 2.6%

And just for comparison, here's the Chinese population for some eastern North American cities (very few Japanese lived outside the West Coast prior to 1941).

New York 12,753 0.2%
Toronto 2,326 0.3%
Chicago 2,018 0.1%

Vancouver and San Francisco had the largest Chinese populations in Canada and the US pre-WWII, but were eventually surpassed by Toronto and NYC, probably (I would guess) in the 1980s.

 

[ehlow]

Some major factors that affect where an immigrant moves to are: jobs, affordability, and where their family/friends are, also schools for their kids.

Toronto has a huge amount of jobs from being the financial capital of Canada and many spin off jobs resulting from it, in addition to tech, insurance, construction etc. Many Canadian companies have headquarters in Toronto. Even a company like Telus which is based in Vancouver has at least one huge skyscraper in downtown Toronto, not to mention all the banks, etc etc. You can see at least 3-4 RBC buildings in downtown Toronto. Not to mention the huge employment areas of Mississauga and Markham.

Toronto also has large immigrant communities which can help immigrants feel at home and get settled or support, and many good Universities within driving distance.

 

[Johnny Au]

I find it interesting that most Thai restaurants in North America don't serve authentic Thai food. I always wondered what sparked the Thai food craze here, despite the paucity of Thais in North America.

 

[wild goose chase]

I find it interesting that most Thai restaurants in North America don't serve authentic Thai food. I always wondered what sparked the Thai food craze here, despite the paucity of Thais in North America.

Not sure how accurate it is, but this Wikipedia article on Thai cuisine claims it rose in popularity due to many American troops returning after the Vietnam war as well as the later popularity of international tourism to Thailand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_cuisine#International_recognition

 

[King of Kensington]

I find it interesting that most Thai restaurants in North America don't serve authentic Thai food. I always wondered what sparked the Thai food craze here, despite the paucity of Thais in North America.

Los Angeles has a Thai Town, and I believe the largest Thai population in North America.

 

[wild goose chase]

Los Angeles has a Thai Town, and I believe the largest Thai population in North America.

So, it could be that Canadians only took up Thai food after Americans did?

Sometimes it is hard to tell when so-called "ethnic foods" become popular in North America, did Americans and their immigrant communities popularize it first, and then Canadians pick it up from the Americans, or did Canadians independently pick it up? For example, did Canadians learn to love sushi from Americans or from Japanese-Canadians?

This video from the CBC archives about pizza in the 1950s seems to imply it became more popular south of the border before it did in Canada.

 

[King of Kensington]

"Petes-areas" LOL!

Italian mass immigration occurred in the US earlier, while Canada's Italian population was proportionately more impacted by postwar immigration, so it's not surprising pizza took off earlier than here. Still most accounts I've read suggest pizza did not exist at all in Canada until the 1950s, which is a surprise, given that places like Detroit and St. Louis developed their own style of pizza and these cities were not "more Italian" than Toronto and Montreal even in the 1920s.

In Manhattan's Little Italy, Lombardi's (founded in 1905) is said to be America's first pizzeria.