At Toronto’s Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with Denise Balkissoon, co-founder of The Ethnic Aisle and writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like Toronto Life, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and The Grid. They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism and real estate; the wealth flowing into downtown, and the resulting push of “racialized communities” toward the periphery; the formerly working class neighborhood around Queen and Logan and its current, rapid gentrification; the appeal of “tiny little backyards”; how the real estate market’s “ferocious competition” made it an interesting beat, but may yet make it boring; on what levels Toronto has lived up to its multicultural promise, and on what levels it hasn’t; what her Trinidadian family of engineers, lawyers, and medical professionals thought of her choice to go into journalism; exploring neighborhoods through one’s own social links to them, or, alternatively, through the oft-joked about “festival every weekend” Toronto offers; the city’s reputation for a lack of physical beauty, and what preservation problems have to do with it; what you find “out there” in the suburbs, an essential part of modern Toronto’s multicultural experience; the nature of “Toronto’s moment,” including but not limited to residents’ newfound happiness living there and their enjoyment of the Malaysian, Uighur, and Tamil cuisine on offer; what count as things truly Torontonian, if anything does; the always-personal nature of Toronto’s appeal, and what a moment like her husband not eating the heads of shrimp and getting made fun of for it says about that; the Toronto articles she fantasizes about writing, such as studies of housing as a whole, a look at the emergence of “generation rent” as a political force, and the interactions between different waves of immigrants; and whether, after the election, people will still feel like they live between “two Torontos.”
Download the interview here as an MP3 or on iTunes.
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