For a while, it looked like the streetcar might just kill Roncesvalles.
 

From July 2009 to June 2011, the City of Toronto tore the guts out of Roncesvalles Avenue. It was difficult to walk, dangerous to cycle, and impossible to drive. The city was replacing the tracks, and while they were at it, they rebuilt the century-old sewers. It took forever. Signs went up in store windows urging folks to keep shopping. Locals did, outsiders not so much, and more than a dozen of those shops were shuttered in the first year of construction.
 

Some of those closings, like High Park Tailoring, were probably only slightly accelerated. The tailor had already been there for 45 years and local wisdom is that he just retired a little earlier than he otherwise might have. Others were some of the last remnants of the once largely Polish and Ukrainian strip, like Starpolska restaurant and Granowski’s, a bakery and deli that had been there for about 40 years and closed just after the roadwork finished. But many others, like The Silver Spoon, were more straightforward victims of the rubble-induced slowdown.
 

Yet soon after the streetcar work finally wrapped up, new businesses started opening. Places like The Ace, The Westerly, and Barque -- cool places that were not only drawing people back to Roncy from elsewhere, but were catering to the neighbourhood’s own new demographics, the folks moving into the homes and apartments that were vacated in the Polish and Ukrainian exodus to Mississauga. The census data says that the 25-64 year old demographic only increased by one per cent from 2001 to 2006, and another per cent by 2011. It doesn’t get more specific than that, but judging by the shops that closed, the ones that survived and the ones that moved in, the 25-40 year old bracket is likely a big chunk of that.

When Andrew Borkowski’s fictionalized profiles of Roncesvalles, Copernicus Avenue, won the 2012 Toronto Book Award, it seemed like an imprimatur on a fait accompli. Roncesvalles was here to stay.
 

One of the reasons Roncesvalles has come through their Ronces-valley of death may be that current residents aren’t acting that differently from the last crop. For example, though High Park Tailoring closed, one of the strip’s newest businesses is Tailoress, at 335 A, upstairs from Domani restaurant. It’s owned by Michelle Turpin, who despite living in the area for six years, tested her alteration-based business in a series of pop-up stores across the city over a period of three years to see where she could make the best go of it. Having the business close to home is convenient, but business is business and she says she would have opened her shop wherever she felt it had the greatest chance for success. So she tried Queen West, St. Clair and Eglinton, in addition to Roncesvalles, and found the Roncy response the most encouraging.
 

"Customers were really excited about it," Turpin says, "really into supporting the business community. Other businesses were really excited about it. It's got such a market feel to it as well, and it’s got a lot of street traffic, which really surprised me. I ended up with more walk-ins here than I did on Eglinton."
 

Councillor Gord Perks has a theory about Roncesvalles. He calls it "land-locked." It's bordered on three sides by great absences: High Park, Lake Shore and the lake, and the great mass of residential Parkdale which, he figures, turned Roncesvallians into daily shoppers (it's also why he thinks the 101-year-old Revue cinema survived the breakup of Review Cinemas several years ago).

As evidence, he points to the odd number of fruit and flower markets that survive on the strip’s corners, the sort of shops that live or die depending on the daily shopper.
 

"Daily shopping is the only thing that makes sense [in Roncesvalles]," Perks says, and then goes a step further. "As Toronto continues to intensify and driving continues to be more and more difficult, you’re going to see more and more of those neighbourhoods turn to daily shopping, and I think that’s great for the city."
 

What gives Roncesvalles this leg up, in Perks’s opinion, is the strip’s odd, possibly unique-in-Toronto dichotomy. From Howard Park almost all the way down to Queen, the east side is all shops, and the west side all houses. This serves to integrate the residential and commercial aspects of the neighbourhood, Perks says, though he says that’s not all Roncesvalles is good at integrating.
 

"The wonderful thing about ward 14 and these two neighbourhoods, is it’s the only place in the city where you have a census tract with all five economic quintiles. There’s a social and economic diversity, and celebration of diversity, that you don’t find in other places in Toronto," he says.
 

“Roncesvalles and Parkdale are the model for how Toronto can integrate different communities.”
 

Looking at some of the doggie boutiques, and the charming little shops selling charming little kitschy things, some might be concerned that the area’s going to fall victim to the sort of generic gentrification that’s claimed so many neighbourhoods, in this city and others. But as far as Perks is concerned, one needn’t worry.
 

"I would say there’s a gentrification pressure, but because of the huge amount of rental stock both on Roncesvalles and near Roncesvalles" -- he mentions the 20+-storey apartment tower on Harvard just north of Queen as an example – "there’s built-in diversity of class within the neighbourhood and the built form means there will always be a diversity. That’s a lucky accident, and it takes a little bit of shepherding to make sure that all works. But it seems to. Some of the most passionate advocates for mixed-income housing are some of the wealthiest people in the ward. Before I took office, when there was more controversy about rooming houses than there is now, there was an organization called Homeowners for Rooming Houses."
 

Allowing for a little councillor-style boosterism, it’s a fair rendering of the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is still pretty white, shockingly so, if the city’s not-terribly-precise-nor-terribly-up-to-date numbers are to be believed: 70 per cent of the neighbourhood identified as being of European, British or North American descent. Despite this, Roncesvalles is home to collection of businesses that tell a different story.
 

The diversity of the residents has created a remarkable diversity in the storefronts. Fat Cat and the aforementioned Domani are both thoroughly bourgeois boites. Barque and The Ace are unabashedly hipster joints. Alternative Grounds is a grungy-hippie-yoga café, and the two Aris diners (Aris Place and Aris Grill) are pleasantly working class (often complete with actual workers dining).
 

This diversity intrigued Tailoress' owner Turpin. In addition to her pop-up tailor shops, she’s had private studios in Kensington Market, King Street West and Parkdale, but she prefers what she’s seen evolve on Roncesvalles.
 

"I’ve seen the change over the years, with the construction, the new businesses coming in," she says. "It made a lot of sense to open up here."

Bert Archer is Yonge Street's development editor. He writes this series exploring neighbourhoods in Toronto.