Photographed & Written by Jason Au

Earlier this fall, it was announced that the Dragon Centre in Agincourt would join the ranks and scores of buildings in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) marked for demolition and removal to make way for a new condominium development. On October 5, 2019, a commemoration exhibition held by an organization called the "Dragon Centre Commemoration Project" was held at the Dragon Centre shopping mall on Glen Watford Drive in Agincourt to celebrate the history of North America's first Chinese-themed shopping mall.

When it first opened its doors in 1984, the Dragon Centre wasn't an extravagant development by any means and looks even more unspectacular today. It was originally a roller-skating arena which was retrofitted with a pagoda-themed tower prior to its re-opening as a shopping mall. All of its stores and shops are located on a single story, while a narrow and cramped second floor, which used to house a handful of professional offices and both dental and medical clinics catering to the local Chinese community. Combined with the Cathay Plaza, a strip mall across the street which had opened earlier in 1977, these two buildings attracted a critical mass of Chinese residents into Scarborough and served as the initial catalyst for the birth of the Chinese community in Agincourt and its subsequent growth into Markham and Richmond Hill.

During my primary school years, my family would visit the Dragon Centre on a weekly basis. The entrance of the Dragon Centre did not have much visual appeal, but it had exceptional olfactory appeal, greeting your nose with the fragrant aroma of Hong Kong style waffles and egg roll pastries from Tung Tung's (東東蛋券皇). I would watch in awe as workers behind the main counter carefully rolling sheets of batter into cigar shaped rolls and transferring waffles off the griddle and onto cooling racks, only to have my parents push me from behind to keep walking. It was absolute torture to smell that aroma and get denied by my parents every single time. After finishing our dim sum lunch at the restaurant in the back, my parents would stop by the grocery store to see if the Chinese greens were fresh and worth buying. I also have memories of the weekend when we bought our large screen TV - a 30-inch Panasonic television from the electronics store beside the mall's lesser used side entrance. I think I also saw my first Laser Disc player at the same store, a now defunct technology that was once a key component in our family's home karaoke setup.

I missed the commemoration event at the Dragon Centre, but dropped by for a visit a few weeks after finishing brunch with my wife and mother-in-law. It was a cold and rainy autumn day and we were in the area to try a new restaurant across the street. We came to the area to eat, but since we were in there, I suggested it wouldn't hurt to pay a quick visit. There were very few cars in the parking lot, and most of them belonged to the shopkeepers manning the few remaining stores. Tung Tung's was closed and the lights were off. Waffle griddles almost as old as I am sat unused on the counter. The restaurant and banquet hall whose kitchen served countless meals for our community was also closed. After our visit I learned that it comes back to life on Friday nights when it serves as the venue for weekly drop-in live music and dancing club.

In 2018, my social media feed became flooded with friends' nostalgic posts mourning their loss the closure and demolition of Market Village. As a newer development compared to the Dragon Centre, the peak of Market Village's popularity and cultural significance spanned the mid-90s and extended well into the early 2000s - an era which coincided with the large cohort of pre-Hong Kong handover immigrants that landed in Toronto. Meanwhile, the Dragon Centre's demise was more relevant for smaller and older crowd of earlier immigrants and perhaps this explains why the online response was relatively muted. The combined loss of both of these once prominent public spaces reminded me that man-made places and things are transitory and do not last forever. At some point in the future, there will be a generation of people that will only be able to relate with it through pictures, videos, and stories of a long-ago time. They will relate to these spaces in the same way as I relate to the Hong Kong of my father's youth - the schools he attended have long since closed, and the places he lived have been demolished and re-developed multiple times.  

As of the publishing of this article, the Dragon Centre is still open and is still worth visiting if even for just a quick stroll around the perimeter. You may find yourself walking in and out to say a quick goodbye, or you may find yourself rummaging through collector's items for hidden treasure. The bookstore, for example, is a treasure trove of old Chinese books, calligraphy supplies and collectible items - the coolest of which was souvenir stamp sheet issued by the Guyanese Post Office in honour of Chow Yun-Fat.There are a couple of others stores with hard to find antiques, works of calligraphy, stamps and banknotes as well as two food stalls still serving up Cantonese dishes to its loyal and mostly Filipino clientele.

A store owner told me that the remaining store owners have not been given an eviction date, so she and her husband will continue keep their store open for business until their inevitable last day comes. A humble shopping mall that was the genesis for the Chinese community in the north-east end of Toronto will soon be gone, and its remaining storeowners would welcome you with open arms if you dropped by to say hello and goodbye one last time.