Quick Facts
Toronto’s annual average income (2016): $52,268
Here are the average incomes of Toronto’s wealthiest neigbhourhoods:
- Casa Loma: $165,047
- Rosedale/Moore Park: $207,903
- Forest Hill South: $204,521
- Bridle Path/Sunnybrook-York Mills: $308,010
Major industries in Greater Toronto (2022): financial services/mining finance; food processing; aerospace; life sciences; technology.
‘Strawberry Boxes’ provided housing for the working classes and returning soldiers. Working class neighbourhoods have been a fixture of the city’s social geography since the late 19th century. These included St. John’s Ward, now City Hall/Nathan Phillips Square, Corktown, now the Distillery District, and the row houses north and south of King Street West. The residents worked in distilleries, the Eaton’s factories, or the vast Massey Ferguson plant, now Liberty Village.
The design of late 19th and early 20th century workers’ row housing borrowed heavily from the blue-collar neighbourhoods in industrial British cities like Manchester or Glasgow.
In post-war East York, labour activists promoted designs for “the ideal workingman’s home.” The Federal Government also moved to confront housing shortages by promoting the construction of thousands of bungalows. These can be found in Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York, where companies like DeHavilland provided thousands of jobs. Today, there are still thousands of post-war bungalows, including some ‘Strawberry Boxes.’ These were named as such because their square foundations resembled the shape of boxes used to hold strawberries.
Like much of East York, Topham Park, near O’Connor Drive and Victoria Park Avenue, was built out following the Second World War — an enclave consisting of DIY bungalows, also known as ‘Strawberry Boxes,’ that were targeted at working class families and returning soldiers.