Fairbank, Toronto

Fairbank is a neighbourhood located in the city of Toronto. It covers a large central portion of the former city of York, Ontario centered on the intersection of Dufferin Street and Eglinton Avenue. The western border is the CNR lines. The northern and southern borders are the former borders of York and the eastern border is most often Oakwood Avenue.

History

The area began as the Fairbank Postal Village at the intersection of Vaughan Road (an early settler's street crossing though farmland on the way to Vaughan Township) at Eglinton and Dufferin Street. St Hilda's Anglican church (St. Hilda's Retirement Residence, added in 1975) was built at the Fairbank intersection, although a cul-de-sac was later created at the northern end of Vaughan Road to simplify the Eglinton and Dufferin intersection when Eglinton Avenue began to develop as a commercial street with many mid-rise apartment buildings.

Character

The neighbourhood has many rolling hills and steep, climbing streets. To the west, Prospect Cemetery separates Fairbank from development along the railway. Most of the neighbourhood as it exists today was planned in the in interwar years (1920s & 1930s) with mostly small single family 2 and 1½ storey detached homes on north-south residential streets. The businesses along St. Clair Avenue to the south are organized into two BIAs: 'Corso Italia' and 'St. Clair Gardens'.

Districts

This neighbourhood contains several named areas.

• Caledonia covers the area along Caledonia Rd west of Prospect Cemetery and east of the railroad tracks. For demographic purposes the city has titled this neighbourhood Caledonia-Fairbanks.
• North Fairbank the area north of Eglinton and west of Dufferin
• Belgravia the portion of the neighbourhood east of Dufferin, north of Eglinton, and south of the former Belt Line, where the tracks have been removed as part of the York Beltline Trail.
• Briar Hill the area north of Belgravia and the Belt Line. Briar Hill and Belgravia are both modest areas with house values and average incomes in the lower quadrant compared with the Toronto average. The area's inhabitants are diverse; there is a very large Roman Catholic base, and Italian, Russian, and Portuguese are widely spoken as home languages. More than half of the immigrant population of Briar Hill-Belgravia arrived after 1981, with a majority of immigrants in 1996 and 2001 arriving from the Philippines, with Tagalog becoming a major immigrant language of the neighbourhood.
• York-Eglinton is the name the city gives for the Business Improvement Area at Eglinton and Dufferin.
• Little Jamaica a stretch of Jamaican and West Indian stores and restaurants along Eglinton.

Transportation

The Toronto Transit Commission bus routes that serve this neighbourhood include the 29 Dufferin, 32 Eglinton West, 47 Lansdowne (along Caledonia Road), and the 109 Ranee (along Marlee Avenue) during regular hours, and for night service, 307 Eglinton West and 329 Dufferin. Though there are no subway stations within the neighbourhood, they are within walking distance from its boundary; the two nearest stations are Glencairn station and Eglinton West station.

Landmarks

• Fairbank Memorial Community School,
• FH Miller Junior Public School, and
• Fairbank Middle School (DB Hood Community School is converted to a private Jewish school, as well as Lycée Français de Toronto, which is a private French language school).
• The main park is the Fairbank Memorial Park.
• Prospect Cemetery

Demographics

According to the 2006 census, the majority of the neighbourhood's population is Roman Catholic (over 65%) and there are a large number of people who speak Portuguese and Italian.

See also

• List of neighbourhoods in Toronto

External links

• Caledonia-Fairbanks - Demographic profile
• City of Toronto - Briar Hill-Belgravia Neighbourhood Profile