Cabbagetown

This guide to Cabbagetown in Toronto traces how a mocking nickname stuck: wealthy Torontonians in the eighteen forties sneered at Irish famine immigrants for planting vegetables in front of their tiny east-side cottages, and the name never went away. You'll hear how the neighborhood stayed a hard, working-class district for a century, home to breweries and rooming houses, and how writer Hugh Garner grew up on these streets poor enough to write a novel about them. A later wave of newcomers, including gay and lesbian Torontonians drawn by cheap rent and quiet blocks, began stripping the grime off the same brick the Irish had laid.