Multicultural Toronto

Last Week, I had the opportunity to visit the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition).  For those who do not live in Canada, the CNE is an annual event that takes place in Toronto during the last weeks of the summer. It is Canada´s largest annual fair and the 5^th largest in North America. It promotes Agriculture, Technology, International Trade, and also is a symbol of the multicultural life that exists in Toronto. 

However, there are 2 things that attract my attention, as a man who loves multiculturalism: The possibilities to find foods from different cultures and parts of the world, and the stand of the National Ethnic press and Media Council of Canada. For Language lovers like me, this last is one of the favorite exhibitions. With almost 200 different magazines and newspapers from all Canada, majority of them from Ontario, Publications in different languages can be seen. Languages go from the most common, starting from English, and French, and going through very popular languages in Ontario like Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi, Chinese, Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian or Greek, and arriving to less spoken languages like Yiddish, Estonian and Tigrinya. In the page http://www.nepmcc.ca/ the full list of publications can be seen and also a description of the work performed by this organization.

Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. More than 45% of the population was born outside Canada, and in almost one third of the homes a language different than English and French is spoken. According to the web page of the City of Toronto, among the top non-official spoken languages are Chinese, Spanish, Tamil, Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi and Tagalog.  Very Soon, the results of the census 2016 will be published and we will know more about the real numbers.

This Multicultural environment has its advantages. In Toronto, a great group of immigrants work using their own language. For companies who dedicate to support Customers in different parts of the world, a city like Toronto presents more opportunities to find highly educated professionals who can also express correctly in different languages. Toronto shows itself as starting point to know the world, through the different communities and the events they organize. People, who want to learn a new language, usually do not need to go very far to find someone to talk and practice it and gain experience.  Living in Toronto can be like living in different parts of the world at the same time.