Toronto to Ocho Rios

As Toronto’s Little Jamaica fights gentrification, an independent report exposes gaps in Windrush outreach on the island, and Jamaica’s republic momentum grows after Charles III’s coronation

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Briefing

• Little Jamaica, Toronto: 140-plus Black businesses lost to transit construction.
• Independent Windrush report flags gaps in Jamaica outreach by Home Office.
• Windrush scheme pays £75m; 453 Jamaican claims among decisions made.
• Jamaica accelerates republic plans after PM Holness skips coronation.
• Return migration rises; 943 Jamaicans voluntarily came home in 2023.

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Along Eglinton Avenue West in Toronto, a stretch of road that Jamaicans and other Caribbean settlers began calling home in the 1960s and 1970s, a decade of construction has taken a toll that no simple infrastructure audit can fully capture. The Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit project has forced more than 140 Black-owned businesses to close — some of them long-established shops, restaurants, barbershops and community spaces that were not merely economic enterprises but cultural anchors. Little Jamaica — the informal name for the neighbourhood that grew around the Jamaican community’s concentration along Eglinton West — is fighting for its survival.

The Black population along Eglinton West declined by 13 per cent between 2006 and 2016, more than twice the overall population decrease in the same area. Rising commercial rents, compounded by years of reduced foot traffic during construction, have made it difficult for independent Black-owned businesses to survive. The City of Toronto has acknowledged the problem and initiated a Little Jamaica Cultural District study. Critics have noted the limitations of planning responses that arrive after the harm has largely been done.

The Windrush Report: Jamaica’s Perspective

In November 2023, Martin Levermore, the independent person appointed to scrutinise the Windrush Compensation Scheme, published his third report, focusing specifically on international engagement — whether the Home Office’s outreach was reaching individuals in Jamaica who might be eligible to claim. Levermore had conducted a qualitative evaluation visit to Jamaica in May and June 2023. His findings were measured but pointed: the scheme had done more to make itself known internationally than in its early years, but awareness among potentially eligible people in Jamaica was not as high as the outreach efforts might have produced. The difficulties of navigating the scheme’s bureaucratic requirements from Jamaica, particularly for elderly individuals without legal support, had not been fully resolved.

The report arrived as the scheme’s overall numbers continued to grow: by December 2023, the Home Office had paid out £75.87 million across 2,097 claims, with 453 claims from individuals who stated their nationality as Jamaican.

The Coronation and the Republic

When King Charles III was crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 6, 2023, Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica was notably absent. Neither was Mia Mottley of Barbados, nor Keith Rowley of Trinidad and Tobago. Their collective non-attendance said something about where the relationship between the British Crown and its former Caribbean colonies stood at the moment of the new reign’s formal beginning. In the months that followed, Jamaica’s own republican process continued to develop. Polling consistently showed majority support among Jamaicans for removing the British monarch as head of state. Both major political parties subscribed in principle to the republic transition.

Coming and Going: Return Migration in 2023

The return migration story continued through 2023 with quiet but meaningful momentum. Official data showed that 943 Jamaicans voluntarily returned to the island that year: 575 from the United States, 162 from the United Kingdom and 131 from Canada. The profile of those returning is shifting toward younger, working-age adults making deliberate choices about where to build careers and raise families. The north coast parishes — St Ann, with Ocho Rios; St James; Trelawny — continue to attract returnee buyers drawn by coastal living and relative amenities. Kingston and its environs remain the primary destination for those seeking career opportunities and urban community.

From Eglinton to Everywhere

The second half of 2023 closes with the Jamaica-diaspora relationship in its characteristic state of productive tension. In Toronto, a Caribbean neighbourhood fights to preserve what four decades of community building created. In London, the Windrush Compensation Scheme continues to process claims. In Kingston, constitutional reformers are preparing the legal architecture for a republic whose shape is still being debated. And in the offices of diaspora organisations in Birmingham, Brixton and the Bronx, people are planning how to send money, time, expertise and eventually themselves back to an island that holds them — whatever passport they carry — in a particular kind of grip.

The Jamaica diaspora is not a museum. It is not a fixed community with fixed concerns, defined entirely by what happened in 1948 or 1962 or 2018. It is a living thing — in Toronto, in London, in New York, in Kingston — that adapts, argues, moves and returns, across multiple generations and multiple definitions of where home actually is.

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