Toronto, Canada’s largest city, has been described as a ‘brash, rag-tag’ town with its numerous and vibrant subcultures, its hodgepodge of architectural styles, and its city center jutting up over great plains and green islands. For aerial photographer and Latitude Image partner Bernard Dupuis, this multi-cultural and multi-faceted city is the perfect place to “satisfy your every whim.”
Originally purchased from indigenous tribes in 1615, Toronto’s ownership volleyed from the French to the British to, eventually, confederated Canadians in the late 1800s. During those almost-two-hundred years, the area saw French, British, Irish, and Americans land upon its Lake Ontario shore. Later, Toronto, and regions which now make up the Greater Toronto Area, became a safe haven for slaves who had made it through the Underground Railroad. After WWII, thousands of European immigrants arrived, followed by another influx in the 1970s of Asian and Indian immigrants.
As of 2011, the city boasted the most diverse population of any city in the world, with about 49% of the population born outside Canada. The diversity in the city’s people is reflected in their neighborhoods, as distinct as Chinatown to Little Italy, Greektown to Kensington Market, or Little India to Koreatown, to name just a few. As Dupuis puts it, “You can go almost anywhere in the world by simply going from one neighborhood to the next.”