Tehranto as Lieu de Memoire and Site of Nostalgia

Yonge street in Toronto, Canada is the longest street in the world. A section of it in the northern part of the city from Sheppard to Elgin Mills has seen such a concentration of diasporic Iranian settlement in the last 30 years that it has been affectionately renamed “Tehranto.” What once a predominantly Anglo-Saxon lower-middle class area has been remapped into one of North America’s most vibrant and highest density Iranian community. Taking a cue from Pierre Nora’s understanding of cultural monuments as sites of memory, this paper considers how the diasporic Iranian community has reshaped the suburban landscape of Toronto to evoke a romanticized and often nostalgic pre-revolutionary Iran. With restaurants organized and decorated to produce an experience of dining, for example, in a village in Gilan or among the ruins of Takht-e Jamsheed, these sites offer a nostalgic revisitation for older generations, and a mediated memory experience for the post-revolutionary generation in the diaspora.