By: Ana Ionova

On most Saturdays, shop owner Kveta Kral had stood behind the high counter of Prague Deli in Toronto’s west end, swiftly wrapping blood sausages and spiced salami in coarse brown paper as she chatted to customers in Czech. The place had been bustling with them; they crowded near the glass display, taking in the spicy scent of borscht in the air, peering at the artfully displayed meats and cheeses and chattering incessantly. For many, shopping there was like being back in Czechoslovakia  for a few brief minutes.

The Prague Deli was a staple of the neighborhood in the late sixties, when immigrants flooded the Queen West strip. Photo: Courtesy of Prague Fine Food Emporium

That was the atmosphere of the deli when it opened in 1968, at a time when Queen Street West and the rest of Trinity-Bellwoods was an enclave for Czech, Polish, Ukrainian and Portuguese immigrants who flooded the area in the 1950s and 1960s. In those days, signs written in swirling Cyrillic lettering could be spotted in the windows of bookshops and snippets of European dialects could  be overheard in bakery line-ups on any given day of the week.
 
Queen Street West’s changing communities

Kral and her husband, Walter, arrived in Toronto in the late sixties and, like many others, settled in the west end of the city where Walter’s parents ran the small deli. The Prague stood among dozens of other European stores that offered patrons crisp schnitzel and boasted baklava in pyramid-shaped window displays.
 
But, four decades later, the deli has changed and so has the surrounding neighborhood. The eatery, now called the Prague Fine Food Emporium, is the only such shop left on the Queen West strip and its clientele is no longer primarily Czech. In fact, most of the Czechs that used to stroll in to buy sausages and dumplings on Saturdays have moved out of the neighborhood and taken with them its identity as an immigrant hub.
 
Instead, in the 1990’s, Trinity-Bellwoods began attracting more and more artists who opened galleries and studios in the area. Tanya Read, a contemporary artist who has lived in the neighborhood since 1998, remembers when others like herself began trickling into the Queen Street West strip. The area was still known for high crime rates and dingy storefronts when she and her partner, Scott Carruthers, decided to turn the window of their living room into an art exhibition space. They started the Fly Gallery, 1172 Queen St. W. in 1999 and have been showcasing the work of local artists since then.

Tanya Read and Scott Carruthers use the Fly Gallery on 1172 Queen St. W. to showcase local artists. Photo: Ana Ionova

“There was a real artist, musician community living in this neighborhood,” Read recalls. “That was the neighborhood, that was it’s own culture.”

But now, with condominium development on the rise, artists that defined the area for the last decade are being replaced with a new generation of young professionals. Trinity-Bellwoods began its second demographic shift in the early 2000s, as more and more professionals began to move into the neighborhood. In 2001, young singles and professionals made up only 36 per cent of households but, by 2006, they comprised 45 per cent of the area’s population.

At the same time, the prevalence of families decreased from 57 per cent to 40 per cent during that time. As the remaining small businesses and the dozens of galleries began to be replaced by trendy bars and glitzy restaurants, the area  was transformed from an artistic community to a centre for entertainment. 

This growth in popularity was in part fueled by the dramatic revival of the Drake Hotel in 2004. The hotel had fallen on hard times and had turned into a cheap flophouse in the 1970’s, after which it was converted into a rave bar in the 1990’s.

The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen St. W., became a neighborhood hotspot after it reopened in 2004. Photo: Ana Ionova

After Jeff Stober bought the property in 2001, the building underwent major renovation and in three years, the hotel had been completely transformed. The crumbling facade was replaced by clean, cream-colored brick and sleek marble steps beckoned passersby into a luxurious and elaborate lobby. Soon, the hotel became known a popular hub for modern culture and bohemian art, which drew young hipsters and trendsetters to the area.

Driven out by property costs

The new-found popularity of Trinity-Bellwoods has naturally meant a sharp increase in housing prices and rental costs. In 2008, the average price of a house in Trinity-Bellwoods was $562,318 and rents for stores in the area can cost business-owners up to $20,000. Michael Camber, a real estate agent who has worked in the area since 2003 says that the area has quickly become on of the trendies in the city, which has meant that the value of property in Trinity-Bellwoods has risen dramatically.

The Trinity-Bellwoods neighborhood has quickly become one of the most sough-after real estate areas in Toronto. Photo: Ana Ionova

“This used to be a value area but the prices have caught up with the rest of the [downtown] core,” Camber says, adding that this has lead to a change in who can afford to buy property in the area. Now, many of the galleries and small shops lining Queen Street West and Ossington Avenue have become scarcer as owners have been forced to shut the creaking doors to their decades-old businesses. In their place, dozens of lounges, bars and restaurants have sprung up, which are often those who can afford to shoulder the steeper cost of rent in the area.

This has also meant that, for many new immigrants and the children of older immigrants, it is impossible to live in the neighborhood because the cost is too high. Kral says that many of the new generation of Eastern Europeans—whose parents settled in Trinity-Bellwoods in the 1960s along with the Krals—have fled the area in search for lower-cost housing in other parts of the GTA.

“Queen Street before, like in the eighties used to be a cheap place to live. Now, immigrants can’t afford the rent anymore, it’s not like before,” says Kral.

 Although The Prague is still standing on Queen Street West, it has now become a popular lunch spot for young professionals in the area and it is the only reminder of the immigrant hub that the area once was. Similarly, the Fly Gallery still displays art but its exhibits have become few and far apart.

 “The vibe of the neighborhood has definitely changed,” says Read. “I feel badly that the diversity hasn’t been kept; to me, I think a neighborhood can accommodate both. You can have the different cultures, the different class levels, you can have the community housing, you can have the condos, you can have the galleries. I think it can coexist.”