Somali Toronto History: Dixon Road, Rexdale and Community

Toronto has one of the two largest Somali communities in Canada, along with Edmonton. A few Somalis came as students in the 1970s, but most arrived as refugees in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when civil war and the collapse of the Somali state drove people out. Many settled in the apartment towers on Dixon Road in Etobicoke and in the nearby Rexdale area.

Before the civil war

Somali settlement in Toronto is recent compared with most other communities in this series. A reference summary of Somali Canadian history says the first arrivals in the 1970s came mainly to study, and that few of them stayed. There was no large neighbourhood, no mosque built for the community and no network of shops until the next decade.

That changed after the state in Somalia broke down. The same summary dates the main movement to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when most newcomers came as refugees, and some moved north from the United States. It reports that Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991. The claim that the Somali population in Canada rose from 1,000 to 11,000 in a single year circulates widely, but it is poorly sourced and is not repeated here as fact.

Why people left and who came

The war that followed the fall of the Somali government in 1991 displaced very large numbers of people. Some of those who came to Toronto were from Somaliland, the northwest region that declared independence from Somalia in 1991. The Globe and Mail reported that the war displaced two-thirds of Somaliland’s population. A 2007 report in the Globe and Mail on Toronto’s Somalilanders says many refugees from that region settled in Scarborough, forming a close-knit group (see Scarborough history for the district’s wider story).

Toronto’s Somali residents are therefore not one group. Some trace their roots to Somaliland and others to the rest of Somalia, and the report shows that people from Somaliland formed their own organizations.

The arrivals fit into a longer postwar pattern in which refugees and sponsored family members changed the make-up of the city (see postwar immigration to Toronto).

Dixon Road and Kingsview Village

The place most closely linked to Somali life in Toronto is Dixon Road in Etobicoke. A 2013 Globe and Mail feature describes it as a six-lane strip about one kilometre long between Islington and Kipling avenues. It has 18 apartment towers and no houses along its length. The first towers went up in the late 1960s and 1970s. By 2013 about 22,000 people lived in the towers and in the nearby streets of Kingsview Village and the Westway, according to the article.

The same feature says many Somali refugees arrived in the early 1990s, and that Dixon became the first significant gathering point for the Somali diaspora in North America. The strip is often nicknamed Little Mogadishu. The towers were already standing when the refugees came, since they had been built a generation earlier.

Kingsview Village, to the north, is older. It began as a 1950s subdivision on land north of Dixon Road, and a school there opened on December 16, 1956. Etobicoke was a separate municipality until the 1998 amalgamation, which is covered in the Etobicoke history article. Towers of this kind appeared across the city in the same decades, and St. James Town is the best-known downtown example.

Rexdale, Scarborough and other districts

Dixon is not the only centre. The 2007 Globe and Mail report describes a bazaar in a brick warehouse in the Rexdale area near Martin Grove Road, where Somali and Somaliland shopkeepers share the space and the stalls include a music shop and a snack bar. Reference works say Rexdale has one of the largest Somali populations in Canada. Scarborough, as noted above, became an important area for Somalilanders.

Schools were part of the story too. A reference summary says that, as of 2015, most Somali students in Canada attended schools run by the Toronto District School Board. That figure comes from a secondary source and is best read as an indication of how concentrated the community is in the city rather than as an exact count.

Community organizations and institutions

Somali Torontonians built their own organizations because new arrivals needed help with housing, language and employment. Some of the groups named in the available record are the Canadian Somali Congress, the Somali Youth Association of Toronto, the Somali Canadian Education and Rural Development Organization and the Somalilander Canadian Development Organization. Smaller groups, including youth and women’s associations, come and go, and their funding changes from year to year.

The best-documented institutional project is a planned cultural and recreation centre. On March 1, 2025, the federal government announced $20 million for the Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation, under its Green and Inclusive Community Buildings program. The announcement describes a net-zero emissions building of more than 100,000 square feet, with space for sport, art, music, dance and newcomer services, and says Somali Canadians had worked for about forty years to win a community centre. The money was described as a notional allocation that could change when the contribution agreement was negotiated, so readers should check the current status of the project with the organization.

Census figures and their limits

Census counts of Somali Torontonians need careful reading. Statistics Canada asks about ethnic or cultural origin, which is not the same as place of birth, and some answers are single and some are multiple. In its 2024 report on Black populations in Canada, which draws on the 2021 census, Statistics Canada lists 55,710 single and 6,355 multiple responses of Somali origin among the Black population, about 62,000 in all. That is a national figure for one population group, not a count for Toronto, and no Toronto figure was verified for this article.

Unofficial estimates of the community’s size circulate and are often higher than census totals. Because they are not sourced to a census, none is quoted here. The census also counts people by origin, so it cannot separate Somali-born residents from those born in Canada to Somali parents.

Housing, safety and public attention

Dixon Road has also drawn attention for problems, and a fair account needs to include them. The 2013 Globe and Mail feature reported that three condominium towers on the strip, including 320 Dixon Road, were under a court-appointed administrator from 2006 to mid-2012 because of poor management, and that a new condo board and property manager took over in January 2013. It also reported high unemployment in the community, difficulties for boys finishing high school and the creation of a two-officer police task force to improve relations with the Somali community.

The same article described the local park, which has a basketball court donated by former Toronto Raptors player Vince Carter, and community leaders’ calls for more after-school and recreation programs. The article was published in 2013, so conditions have changed. The story of the Raptors themselves is in the article on the Toronto Raptors.

Frequently asked questions

Where do most Somali Torontonians live?

Etobicoke and the Rexdale area, especially the apartment towers along Dixon Road, are the best-known centres. Scarborough also has a significant Somali and Somaliland population.

When did Somalis start arriving in Toronto?

A few came as students in the 1970s. Most arrived as refugees from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, after civil war began and Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991.

Why is Dixon Road called Little Mogadishu?

The Globe and Mail notes that the strip is often given that nickname because many Somali refugees settled in its towers in the early 1990s, making it the first major gathering place for the diaspora in North America.

Is a Somali community centre being built in Toronto?

In March 2025 the federal government announced $20 million for the Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation. The funding was described as a notional allocation, so check with the organization for the current status.

Sources

Globe and Mail, “Toronto’s Dixon Road: guns, gangs and second chances” (June 8, 2013)
Globe and Mail, “The little micro-nation that could” (May 19, 2007)
Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, news release on Wadnaha Dhexe and the Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation (March 2025)
Statistics Canada, “The Diversity of the Black Populations in Canada, 2021: A Sociodemographic Portrait” (2024)
Wikipedia, “Somali Canadians” (accessed October 2026)
Wikipedia, “Kingsview Village” (accessed October 2026)

Last verified: October 2026

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APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 31). Somali Toronto: Arrival, Dixon Road and Community History. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/somali-toronto-history

MLA: “Somali Toronto: Arrival, Dixon Road and Community History.” History of Toronto, 31 Oct 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/somali-toronto-history. Accessed .

Chicago: History of Toronto. “Somali Toronto: Arrival, Dixon Road and Community History.” Last modified October 31, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/somali-toronto-history.

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