Little India in Toronto Gerrard Street

Gerrard Street is a street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It consists of two separate parts, one running east from University Avenue for 6 km to Coxwell Avenue, and the other starting 300 m north along Coxwell and continuing east for another 4 km to Clonmore Avenue (between Victoria Park Avenue and Warden Avenue). In the vicinity of Coxwell Avenue the southern piece of Gerrard Street is frequently referred to as Lower Gerrard, and the northern piece is referred to as Upper Gerrard.

On Gerrard Street between Greenwood Avenue and Coxwell Avenue, there are many Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afghanistani restaurants, cafés, videos/DVD stores, clothing shops, electronic goods & home decor stores catering to the South Asian-Canadian communities. Along with Jackson Heights in New York and Devon Avenue in Chicago, it forms one of the largest South Asian marketplaces in North America. The area has never been home to a large South Asian population, rather it has served for several decades as commercial centre for South Asians living in the Toronto area. Today, it attracts visitors from the Toronto area, and from elsewhere in Canada and the United States. It celebrates the annual Festival of South Asia in late August.

A group of Hindu and Sikh merchants have formed the "Gerrard India Bazaar Business Improvement Area" (BIA). The BIA sponsors events that appeal to the different South Asian groups that shop in the area: in 2004, Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and Eid, the Islamic feast day that marks the end of Ramadan, occurred around the same time in November. The BIA held a joint Diwali-Eid festival. The area is also commonly referred to as "Little India", or Little Pakistan.

The neighbourhood originated in 1972 when businessman Gian Naaz purchased the Eastwood Theatre and began to show Bollywood films. This attracted large numbers of Indo-Canadians from across the GTA. This large traffic led to a number of other stores in the area to be created to cater to the South Asian community. The area expanded rapidly and features houses some 100 stores and restaurants and has spread over almost the entire length from Greenwood to Coxwell. While originally shop owners mostly spoke Hindi, Punjabi, and Bengali, in recent years a wide array of Pakistani stores have opened in the western part of the neighbourhood (near Greenwood), which is closely linked to the large Muslim community in the East Danforth area just to the north.