Film captures vibrant history of Toronto’s Kensington Market [Video]

By the time Stuart Clarfield was born in 1963, Toronto’s Jewish community had largely migrated from downtown to the city’s northern suburbs.

Still, Clarfield was raised on stories of Kensington Market, the neighbourhood southwest of College Street and Spadina Avenue.

This was where his great-grandfather first arrived from Poland around 1910 and began to build a life, as well as where Clarfield’s mother was born.

“I’d always heard living in the market described as this mythological experience,” Clarfield said.

A filmmaker for the past 25 years, Clarfield has decided to capture the neighbourhood’s vibrant history and evolving landscape in a documentary called Kensington Market: The First 150 Years.

The film, which Clarfield is producing and directing through his Toronto documentary company, The Mission Media Company Inc., will chronicle the stories of the diverse communities that have made the market their home for nearly two centuries.

It will also examine the current forces of urban development poised …