Once the home of working class Irish immigrants, walking the storied streets of Corktown one can see a showcase of the old, the new, and old and new side by side. Long past its days of being a working class neighbourhood, Corktown, like its sister neighbourhood Cabbagetown to the north, has become a gentrified hotbed just outside of the downtown core.
Corktown’s street layout has been reconfigured over the years to account for several changes in the neighbourhood. The razing of the House of Providence south of St. Paul’s Basilica allowed for the extensions of Adelaide and Richmond (which were Duchess and Duke, respectively) toward the Don Valley Parkway in the 1960s. In more recent activity, River Street was extended south of King Street for the Don Lands development.
Walking the streets of Corktown, I could trace the various aspects of life a resident would have encountered: the residential 19th century rowhouses on Trinity and Percy streets, the markets and factories on King Street, the religious institutions of Little Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Basilica, to the educational institutions like the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse and Inglenook (Sackville Street) School. It made it an experience to walk those steps.
And in the same sense, I could look forward into the future of the neighbourhood. Condo buildings erecting on King Street and the rippling effects of the nearby construction of the West Don Lands community and aptly named Corktown Commons parkland tells me of a neighbourhood going through some changes.
