ABOUT US

Filling a gap in Toronto's heritage sector

Toronto is home to 20 per cent of Canada’s immigrants. Almost half of Toronto’s population was born outside of Canada and over 180 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the city. As one of the most multicultural cities in the world, immigration has been integral to Toronto’s past, present, and future.

The Toronto Ward Museum works to strengthen the understanding of immigration history through innovation in interpretation and public engagement—one that serves all ages, welcomes all cultural backgrounds, and reflects the lived experiences of newcomers, long-established communities, and Indigenous peoples whose lands these stories unfold upon.

Working with schools, community organizations, cultural groups, settlement agencies, and individual storytellers across generations and backgrounds, the Toronto Ward Museum will brings the city’s untold history to life and engage visitors and locals alike in a conversation about pluralism and what it means for our communities. Integral to this is engaging youth in the process of exploring history, heritage, and identity, to build towards, and inspire a more equitable future.

Our work honors the past by preserving migration stories that have shaped Toronto’s neighborhoods, celebrates the present by documenting contemporary experiences of newcomers and established communities, and shapes the future by fostering dialogue about the city we are building together—a city where everyone’s story matters and where understanding our shared history of migration creates pathways to belonging for generations to come.

What sets us apart

Programming across the GTA

While some Torontonians can trace their history back to the Ward, the reality is that many of Toronto’s more recent newcomer communities now live outside of the downtown core.

Programming developed and delivered by immigrants

Supported by the museum and its institutional partners, immigrants will be invited to co-develop and co-deliver the museum’s programming.

A multi-disciplinary and multi-sector approach

The museum’s partners and supporters come from a variety of industries: academia, advocacy, settlement, heritage, arts and culture. In addition, in an effort to make our work both appealing to the public and relevant to the issues we hope to address, our research and programming will be informed by a wide variety of influences and disciplines.

A focus on individual narratives

Without losing sight of the common global forces that have pushed or pulled migrants from one place to another, we will focus on the lived experiences of individuals. By doing so, we hope to demonstrate the multiple narratives and experiences that have motivated migration to Toronto and that have made it the city it is today.