From a village in Punjab to the first dedicated Bollywood theatre in North America.

By Kevin Plummer

The Naaz Theatre, 1430 Gerrard Street East, 1981, from the Toronto Public Library.

It’s a weekend evening on Gerrard Street East in the mid-1970s and, as usual, there’s a line-up around the block to get into the Naaz Theatre. The first cinema in North America to show Indian films exclusively, according to its owner, the theatre was a brightly lit beacon, drawing South Asians from across Toronto and as far away as Niagara and Montreal. Many were recent arrivals to the country.

The films on show could be action-oriented like Sholay (1975) where Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan, two of Bollywood’s biggest stars, fight off a gang of bandits tormenting villagers, then—keeping to the familiar formula—court chaste women through song and dance. Or the films could be melodramas like Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), in which iconic beauty Rekha finds herself at the centre of a volatile love triangle. For just a $3.50 ticket, socializing over the latest Bollywood blockbuster could assuage homesickness or provide a tangible connection with the contemporary scene in India.

For many movie-goers, an excursion to the Naaz Theatre was a whole-day affair. Before or after the show, they visited the many South Asian establishments that had sprouted in the neighbourhood in the wake of the opening of the cinema: browsing the racks of saris on display in shops; picking up garam masala spice and other specialty groceries; or dining at one of the restaurants serving regional Indian cuisines.

“For people from India, there was nothing else at the time,” one local outlined the importance of such visits to the burgeoning Gerrard India Bazaar in the 1970s to Christopher Hutsul in the Star (January 18, 2004).

The easing of federal government regulations in the late 1960s opened greater immigration opportunities for those with skilled trades or professional backgrounds like Gian Naz (often spelled Naaz), who immigrated to Toronto with his family in 1968. A successful mechanical engineer who’d constructed dams in his native India, Naz worked a variety of jobs in his initial years in Canada, according to Bagashree Paradkar’s obituary in the Toronto Star (January 18, 2000), including at a chemical plant, at an oil company, and inspecting planes for Air Canada.

In the next decade, the burgeoning South Asian community in Toronto would become increasingly visible both in terms of population numbers and the establishment of institutions. But upon the Naz family’s arrival, there was little in the way of cultural or social infrastructure.

Rare occasions for cultural comradeship came with screenings of Indian movies in church basements and school auditoriums. Under less-than-ideal conditions, shows were constantly interrupted because the antiquated 16-millimetre film equipment required film reels to be rethreaded every 40 minutes. But, in the eager demand for Indian films, Naz recognized an entrepreneurial opportunity and sought a more permanent solution.

He found the former Eastwood Theatre, at 1430 Gerrard St. E., in 1972. Once part of the B&F chain of cinemas, the Beaux-Arts movie house had been closed since 1966. It was located on a desolate stretch of Gerrard Street East, along with a half dozen other empty storefronts, in a working-class neighbourhood that had seen better days.

The Eastwood’s appeal for Naz was not that its location connected him to an identifiably concentrated South Asian audience, however. It didn’t. It was simply the cheapest facility available. He went door-to-door collecting financial support for his all-Indian cinema idea. Although even those within the South Asian community were sceptical about the venture’s potential success, Naz raised enough capital to rent the 750-seat theatre and begin securing the rights to 35-millimetre Hindi-language films.

The Naaz Theatre, as he dubbed it, was not an immediate success. “But he refused to give up,” his son Ken later told Paradkar. The whole family pitched in. Naz’s wife Shobha worked the ticket counter and prepared snack food to sell. Their children—Tina, Sunila, Ken, and Sonny—distributed flyers at gurdwaras and Hindu temples to advertise upcoming films. Business picked up within months.

In 1972—a time before videos, DVDs, or Saturday afternoon movies on Omni-TV—the Naaz Theatre represented the only opportunity for watching Bollywood films on the big screen, short of a trip to the subcontinent.

Initially only open on the weekends, the abundant crowds prompted the addition of films on weekdays. Urdu and Bengali-language films would add to the variety of predominantly Hindi films being shown.

“The theatre brought in $5,000 every month, sometimes more,” Gagandeep Ghuman writes. By 1974, Naz was able to purchase the building outright. Naz also shared his success as a businessman with his home town. His remittances funded the construction of the first school and improved infrastructure in his Punjabi village.

South Asian entrepreneurs soon identified the large theatre-going crowds as a ripe market and businesses proliferated in the immediate vicinity of the theatre in the 1970s and 1980s. The Indian Record Shop was the first to open next door to the theatre. Spurred by the area’s low rents, Gerrard was then dotted with the eateries, specialty groceries, jewellery stores, travel agencies, and sari shops we recognize as the Gerrard India Bazaar today.

The majority of businesses were (and remain) mom-and-pop enterprises, Prithi Yelaja wrote in the Star (August 25, 2007), and was “a microcosm” of the cultural and religious diversity of the entire subcontinent with businesses operated by Punjabis, Gujaratis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis. “The Indians are the only ones who’ve drawn such a big crowd,” one fellow merchant told the Star on May 21, 1980. “They revived this area, brought it alive.”

“The local movie house is the focal point for all activity on this part of Gerrard,” this article added. “The closer your shop is to the cinema, the better is business.”

By 1982, the South Asian character of the business strip was formalized with the creation of the Gerrard India Bazaar Business Improvement Area. Over the years, the BIA would fund additional parking spaces, and improvements to the sidewalks and streetlights, and host annual street festivals that continue today.

Additional images: Obituary for Gian Naaz from the Toronto Star on January 18, 2000; photo of the Naaz Theatre as it looks today by Kevin Plummer/Torontoist.