So here I am, just arrived in Toronto. And it strikes me that we Brits uncertain about the vote on Thursday and unnerved by immigration in particular could learn much from this quietly confident city. It’s the fourth largest in North America (which I did not know), after New York, LA, Mexico City and just before Chicago.
It boasts 2.9m inhabitants (6m in the larger metropolitan area) and is about as multicultural as it can get. 100,000 immigrants arrive each year and over half the city’s population was born outside Canada. My Serbian cabbie tells me that 130 different languages are spoken here and that the City of Toronto publishes information for its citizens in a remarkable 30 languages.
And, naturally, this is all reflected in the local cuisine which is famously diverse. There are some 7,000 restaurants in town dotted around Little Italy, Corso Italia, Little India, Greektown, Koreatown, Portugal Village, Little Poland and not one, not two, but three Chinatowns.
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