Toronto vs. Dubai as Multicultural Mecca

I sometimes wonder who Toronto slept with to get designated by some UN body “the world’s most multicultural city.”

There is a lot of ethnic variety in Toronto, it is true. But for my money, Dubai seems at least as multicultural. Toronto may be over fifty percent foreign born now. Dubai is well over eighty percent.

I was up in Dubai with my four-year-old on the weekend. We went to the “Global Village,” a sort of permanent outdoor cross between Toronto’s Caravan and CNE. Unlike Caravan, which seems to have been a passing enthusiasm, it is growing bigger every year.

In a real sense, Global Village is how Dubai defines itself. It and its region, the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, has always been, and always considered itself, a crossroads. It was for millennia, since the days of Sumer and Mohenjo-daro, a crucial link in the trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, India, and China. And Africa: until quite recent years, neighbouring Oman and Zanzibar were one kingdom. Many Omanis and Emiratis look African today. For Toronto, by comparison, the enthusiasm for the international is only a generation deep, and may be gone tomorrow.

In the “Global Village,” each nation has its own permanent pavilion: traditional shopping, traditional food, traditional performances. This year, it is open for six months. Starting next year, it will be open all year round. Dubai is the world in miniature, and the Global Village is Dubai in miniature.

But not the only one. It is a motif repeated again and again. After the Global Village, we also visited the new Ibn Battuta Mall: divided into six sections, each recreating the traditional architecture and décor of a different civilization. China, India, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia, Spain. Again the same metaphor: Dubai is the world in miniature. Again, appearing slowly on the Dubai waterfront is something simply called “The World,” a series of artificial islands that together form a world map. Cottagers can own their own country. Rod Stewart has already bought England.

Toronto’s Chinatown is big? Dubai has Chinamexmart, a shopping mall 1.3 kilometers long in the shape of a dragon, the largest outlet for Chinese products outside China. It is the centre of a Chinese high-rise residential community in what is called “International City.” Similar malls and settlements at similar scale from other regions are projected. “Vancouver” is currently, I hear, under construction.

Another project on the drawing board is “Falcon City,” which is to feature reproductions of great world landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and so forth. Not miniature scale models, mind: more or less full size or, in the case of the Taj Mahal, larger.

The big local newspapers too balance their news sections by region of the globe: the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, the Far East, Europe, the Americas, each get two pages each day.

My wife, who is Filipina, can generally actually do her shopping in her native language. You can’t do that in Toronto, although you could probably manage it in Chinese or Italian. She also gets the full range of Filipino foods here, and Filipino restaurants; that’s not easy to find in Toronto. I can get whatever I crave from Canada. I can also get any ingredient I might want for South Asian cooking, the full range of cuisines north and south; all the array of Middle Eastern foods, of course; plus things from Europe I never see in Canada.

Toronto might have the edge in terms of the range of countries represented: last time I was back, it seemed to have even newly sprouted a Burmese neighbourhood. But for my money, to be multicultural to one’s soul really requires being a major seaport, and being more or less disconnected from any large hinterland with a solid majority culture. Dubai and Singapore fit that bill. Hong Kong used to. Beirut could. Montreal once did. Toronto does not.

Toronto has enthusiasms, and goes on moral crusades. Right now it is multiculturalism, and Toronto has grown very intolerant of anyone who is not tolerant. Next year it may be colonic irrigation or something else.

But I have a feeling Dubai will stay the course.