From the Archives: The World’s Biggest Jean Store and Muslim history at Yonge & Dundas

For decades, The World’s Biggest Jean Store (aka Rockwell Jeans), was a popular landmark in Toronto’s downtown. The shop, which may or may not have been the world’s biggest jean store at the time, sold trending clothes in a building just a block away from The World’s Biggest Bookstore. The storefront added to a bustling, eclectic, and relatively affordable mosaic of businesses at Yonge & Dundas, alongside ‘The Shopping Mall’ (a multi-story flea market), arcades, currency traders, and fast-food restaurants.

The World’s Biggest Jean Store sometimes made headlines for defying legislation that prohibited businesses from operating on Christian holidays and Sundays. More specifically, most retailers in Toronto were barred from operating on Sundays until 1992 and prohibited from opening on Boxing Day until 1996. Despite numerous articles where the owner advocated for the importance of keeping his business open, no mainstream media acknowledged that Steve Rockwell, also known as Mohamed Twahir, was Muslim. While The World’s Biggest Jean Store is reminisced by many who frequented Toronto’s downtown before the development of Yonge & Dundas Square, its Muslim character and the role Steve Rockwell played in building space for Muslims downtown is under documented. Hailing from Guyana, Steve Rockwell (born Mohamed Twahir), is recognized as a pioneer of da’wah work in Canada and host of Call of the Minaret on Vision TV. Rockwell was a student of Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, a prominent South African-Indian Muslim scholar, orator and author. While an entrepreneur in his day job, Rockwell served the Muslim community into his 70s and until he passed away at 74 in 2020.In a 1997 interview with the Toronto Star, Rockwell shared that, as a businessman in the downtown core, he wanted a place to pray besides the basement of the World’s Biggest Jeans Store. He rightly assumed that workers and students in the area also sought out communal prayer space in the city’s busy centre. He eventually began renting empty rooms across the street from his business, “broadcasting the [afternoon] prayer call, handing out flyers on Yonge St. and advising people… who looked as if they might be Muslims that there was a place to pray on the corner.” On Fridays, as many as 300 people would crowd into the carpeted rooms.In the late 1990s, The World’s Biggest Jean store was among 11 other businesses expropriated by the city to make way for a public square and entertainment complex – now known as Yonge & Dundas Square or Sankofa Square. These businesses slated for demolition were described by Mayor Mel Latsman as an “eye sore” despite being of value to many racialized, low-income, working-class communities in the downtown core. Steve Rockwell is cited to have adjusted to the demolition plans adaptively, quickly finding a new location for his business. When Rockwell moved the store (renamed as Rockwell Jeans) to a nearby building at 100 Bond St, he soon opened Sheikh Deedat Centre on the second floor, which quickly became an essential masjid for Muslims in the surrounding area.

Although there were many shifts in the neighborhood, Sheikh Deedat Centre offered Muslims – many of whom were working class, newcomers, students, and people living on their own in Toronto’s downtown, a site of sanctuary. In a tribute to the life of Steve Rockwell, Sadat Anwar recalls that people doing dawah work nearby would store their materials at the Sheikh Deedat Centre in the face of an unexpected snowy or rainy day.

In the Muslims in Canada Archives collections, a 2002 letter from Steve Rockwell to lawyer Naseer Irfan Syed describes visions and dreams for the Sheikh Deedat Centre – including the building of additional floors to accommodate demand from worshippers. Ultimately, these additions were not carried through.

In the last month, Toronto Metropolitan University announced they will be constructing a 21-storey student residence building at 100 Bond St, where Sheikh Deedat Centre stood. As Toronto’s downtown continues to undergo major shifts, the story of Steve Rockwell and the World’s Biggest Jean Store highlights a past, present, and future of adaptation among Muslims, always forging new physical spaces for congregation and sanctuary.

MiCA archival materials courtesy of Naseer "Irfan" Syed fonds.