PEARSON AIRPORT – DIXON RD. – HIGHWAY 401 – ISLINGTON AVE.
Michele Henry
Staff Reporter
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Even before Fartos Hassan immigrated to Canada 17 months ago she'd already heard of "Dixon" and "Little Mogadishu." Born in Somalia but raised in Kenya, she was eager to trade the oppressive heat, political and socio-cultural landscape of her two homelands for urban, democratic, snow-covered Canada. Friends and relatives already living in Toronto enticed her family to this city with visions of peace, life with less hardship, streets without crime and a community, clean and safe, filled with native Somalians.
Indeed, Dixon Rd. is an epicentre of this city's Somalian community.
The street, referred to by locals only as "Dixon," is lined with highrises occupied by a large percentage of this city's recent Somali immigrants.
Clusters of those apartment buildings, starting at the corner of Dixon Rd. and Kipling Ave. and moving east, are together described as "Little Mogadishu," but most in the know just drop the "little."
Hassan "loves" her community and the three-bedroom flat she shares with her family – three brothers, two sisters, mom and dad.
The Grade 12 student walks to school, Kipling Collegiate, each morning with her best friend, who also lives in one of the 900 units in the three-building community near the intersection.
Women wearing silken headscarves and flowing dresses push strollers through the common area.
They wait at corners to catch public transit, line up at the local TD bank branch in the Westway Mall, a strip of convenience stores across the street. Men congregate in the local Country Style.
The Somali language is more common than English.
Do you stay around here mostly, or do you travel further into the city?
Most of the time, Hassan says, she stays in the neighbourhood, accompanying her mom on grocery shopping trips to No Frills, east of Islington Ave., every now and then. When she does need to go somewhere outside the area, her mode of transportation is the bus, says Hassan, who hopes her English continues to improve steadily.
Most of her friends live nearby, or around her high school, so they usually congregate at each other's homes.
Does this area remind you of your native country at all?
Hassan was "just a little girl" when she left Somalia for Kenya, so she doesn't remember the details of her homeland and danger-riddled Mogadishu, the capital city. What she likes about Toronto's Mogadishu, she says, is being surrounded by like-minded, supportive people. And the freedom she has to roam the city.
Back home, constant killing and the ever-present threat of being caught in the crossfire made that impossible. "Nobody fights here," she says. "It's peaceful."
Ali Abdalla, 32, moved into this hood when he immigrated to Canada, from Somalia, in 1991. Once here he persuaded many of his relatives to join him. Like many who settled here, Abdalla moved to a different part of the city a few years later. But he visits this community frequently to see friends and catch up on news from back home.
Today, he says, the neighbourhood also attracts newcomers from Pakistan and Afghanista.
What are some differences between Little Mogadishu and the real Mogadishu, in Somalia?
Aside from the civil war raging on the faraway continent, there are myriad differences, he says, but the biggest is freedom.
"You can go outside anytime you want to," Abdalla says. "See your friends anytime you want. Go where you want to go anytime. In real Mogadishu, it's not that way."
Is this local community close? What sorts of things do people do together?
In July, he says, everyone gathers in local parks to play soccer. At other times of the year, people assemble to pray, cook, and discuss shared memories of back home and experiences of integrating into a new society.
Both Abdalla and Hassan say they love Toronto and feel fortunate to have a home base such as Dixon/Little Mogadishu in this big city.
Would you change anything about this area?
No, says Abdalla.
"I don't change anything," says Hassan.
Source: Toronto Star, Sept 06, 2007