The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92261   Message #1763145
Posted By: Little Hawk
18-Jun-06 - 05:59 PM
Thread Name: Folk Music Is for intellectuals
Subject: RE: Folk Music Is for intellectuals
When white folks use the term "Anglo", Azizi, it generally refers to people of English/Scottish/Welsh background...either from the British Isles or descendants of people from the British Isles. Canada used to be primarily an Anglo-French society, (with a strong Irish contingent too, of course). Now it is a huge multicultural mixture from all over the world. The French, however, still tend to refer to the English speaking majority as "Anglo".

Toronto was definitely an Anglo-dominated city in the cultural sense when I was a kid. It isn't that way any more. It's like a league of nations now...with the strongest new influences being Asian.

The "Anglos", in fact, have been moving out of Toronto in droves, heading for communities to the north, east, and west, such as the city of Barrie and numerous others strung out along the 400, the 401, and hiway 11. Some have referred to this redistribution of ethnicity as the "great White flight from Toronto". ;-) Suburbs that were all white when I was 20 are mostly Asian or Caribbean now.

The change in the city in the last 50 years has simply been incredible. It's a very different place now, culturally speaking. It's bigger, wealthier, more crowded, dirtier, busier, noisier. The variety of restaurant fare and other entertainment has improved tremendously, while crime, vandalism, and homelessness are also on the upswing. This is what happens when a relatively small and somewhat sleepy provincial capital becomes a huge international centre of commerce.