Gerrard India Bazaar, Toronto

History

Gerrard India Bazaar traces its start to 1972, when businessman Gian Naaz bought the Eastwood Theatre on Gerrard Street East and reopened it as the Naaz Theatre, screening South Asian films exclusively — reportedly the first cinema in North America to do so. The theater drew Indo-Canadian moviegoers from across the Greater Toronto Area and, with them, the first wave of businesses catering to that audience.

Restaurants and retailers followed through the mid-1970s, including Moti Mahal, opened in 1975 by Gurjit Chadha and his wife as one of the strip's first restaurants. Unlike many other South Asian enclaves, the bazaar grew primarily as a commercial destination rather than a residential one — shoppers and diners came from across the city rather than living on the block itself, and the area faced real hostility and occasional violence as it grew through the 1970s and 80s.

The Gerrard India Bazaar Business Improvement Area, formed in 1982, helped formalize the strip as it grew to nearly a hundred South Asian shops and restaurants spanning Greenwood to Coxwell Avenues. The Naaz Theatre itself closed in 1985 as home video reshaped Bollywood distribution, but the surrounding bazaar it sparked remains one of the best-known South Asian commercial streets in Canada.

Known for

• Sari, jewelry, and fabric shops lining Gerrard Street East between Greenwood and Coxwell
• Long-running South Asian restaurants serving Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, and Sri Lankan food
• Bollywood and Bhangra music retailers, a legacy of the strip's cinema-driven origins
• The site of the former Naaz Theatre, now redeveloped as the Multani Village mixed-use building
• Sweet shops and paan counters that anchor the bazaar's street-level foot traffic
• The Gerrard India Bazaar BIA's seasonal street events and festival programming

Getting there

Take the 506 Carlton streetcar or the 22 Coxwell bus to Gerrard Street East; the bazaar runs along Gerrard between Greenwood and Coxwell Avenues in Leslieville.

Best times to visit

The bazaar hosts street festival programming around diwali and vaisakhi; weekends are busiest year-round for grocery and restaurant traffic.