Toronto's Little Jamaica is mourning one of its most cherished figures. CBC News reported that Monica Lewis, a businesswoman known across the neighbourhood as the Queen of Little Jamaica, has died at the age of 86, leaving behind a community that credits her with helping shape its identity over more than half a century.
Lewis arrived in Toronto in the 1960s and built a life rooted in enterprise. Together with her husband she ran a record label and a record store, and over the years she also moved into the beauty businesses that line Eglinton, becoming part of a generation of entrepreneurs who gave the area its distinctive character and rhythm.
Her family describes a household that did a bit of everything to make it work. In the words of her son, his parents became like Batman and Robin, mixing hairdressing and records, a blend of trades that kept the family business going and turned their storefront into a familiar fixture for people up and down the street.
What stayed with people most, though, was the welcome. Friends and customers recall that the moment you opened her doors she would greet you with a big smile, telling you that you looked beautiful and complimenting whatever you were doing, drawing you in like an old friend with her arms wide open no matter who you were.
That warmth made her store a gathering place, so much so that the phrase meet me at Monica's became part of the local language. To many, the shop was not just a business but a hub, a piece of the culture itself, and Lewis was remembered as someone who, as one person put it, basically grew the people around her.
Her story also carried weight as a matter of trailblazing. Coming from Jamaica to Canada and thriving in business at a time when few women were given the chance to do so, she was seen as a role model who kicked down barriers and set a standard she wanted others in the community to follow and surpass.
Like many businesses in the area, hers was deeply affected by the disruption of the Eglinton Crosstown construction, but those who knew her say it never dimmed her spirit. With Little Jamaica still rebuilding, her son Junior is working to carry her legacy forward, opening up the building as a space for pop-ups and community gatherings and helping new entrepreneurs get a start, hoping to restore Eglinton to what it once was. The saying, meet me at Monica's, lives on.