Monica Lewis, Little Jamaica's icon, dead at 86
The beloved beauty supply store owner shaped Toronto's Jamaican community for six decades.
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Monica Lewis, better known as "Miss Monica," died this week at 86. Her beauty and records store on Eglinton West became a hub for Toronto's Jamaican community starting in the 1960s — one of the few Black hair supply destinations in the city at the time, drawing women from across Southern Ontario.
She and her husband George arrived in Canada in the late 1960s and opened a record store that later became Monica's Beauty Supply Ltd. George is credited with producing Canada's first hip-hop record. The couple worked in tandem — her son Junior described them as "Batman and Robin doing hairdressing and records."
"She came over here with her hairdressing skills and said 'all these beautiful girls need to be fixed up,' and she knew how to do it," Junior said outside the store's showcase windows, where mannequins in bejeweled mas costumes stood on display.
Like many Little Jamaica businesses, Monica's was hit hard by the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT construction. The store closed during the pandemic. The family still owns the building. Over 300 businesses shuttered during the 16-year transit project.
Jason McDonald, chair of the Little Jamaica Business Improvement Area, called her a "driven woman" who created the "blueprint" for other area businesses. "She is a woman that we revere within the Little Jamaica community," he said. "She should be read about in books."