Cabbagetown and the Great Depression

Cabbagetown's name derives from the Irish immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood beginning in the late 1840s, said to have been so poor that they grew cabbage in their front yards. Canadian writer Hugh Garner's most famous novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the neighbourhood during the Great Depression.

Much of the original Cabbagetown was razed in the late 1940s to make room for the Regent Park housing project. The Cabbagetown name came to be applied to the Victorian neighbourhood a few blocks to the north, previously known as Don Vale. Corktown, to the south of Regent Park, dates to the 1820s and now includes some of the original Cabbagetown. The community is also rumoured to have been the site of Castle Frank, near where the once Castle Frank Brook flowed in the Don River.

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Largest remaining spread of Victorian Houses

Cabbagetown's history began in the 1840's when thousands of Irish immigrants settled here after fleeing the potato famins in their homeland. These first Cabbagetown residents were very poor. To put food on the table they grew cabbages on their front lawns, which is how this district came to be known as Cabbagetown.

Cabbagetown's working class community was particulary hard hit by the Depression of the 1930's. Cabbagetown historian Hugh Garner, wrote that the Depression turned Cabbagetown into "the worst Anglo Saxon slum in North America". The worst slums were concentrated south of Gerrard Street. These homes were razed in the 1950's and replaced by the Regent Park housing development.

Cabbagetown was revitalized in the 1970's and 1980's by new home buyers, who restored much of this neighbourhoods fine collection of Victorian homes. Cabbagetown is now considered one of Toronto's most gentrified neighbourhoods.