I’m not sure when it happens. Maybe, as the bus trundles doggedly down Martingrove, screeching and wheezing like an old man pausing to catch his breath before pushing its weary wheels forward again, it’s as it passes Eglinton West. Or maybe it’s as it passes Dixon Road, past the rusty skeleton of a playground and low brown apartment buildings advertising one and two-room vacancies. Or perhaps at Belfield, where the eclectic mix of humanity I am familiar with on my regular subway routes changes into a different diversity, and I am out of place among the mostly North African and South Asians populating the bus. Wherever it may have happened, by the time I get off at Martingrove and John Garland Boulevard, the change is complete. I am in Rexdale.
Rexdale/Jamestown[1] is one of Toronto’s thirteen “priority neighbourhoods”—areas of the city recognized for problems in issues such as crime, poverty, economic development, infrastructure, and housing. As well as being an extremely diverse community with a strong Somali and South Asian community, it is also a part of the city known for its gang violence and lack of economic oppourtunity. Following a wake of incidents in urban crime, neighbourhoods such as Rexdale were targeted by the City in 2004 with the Community Safety Plan, a comprehensive project to build safer cities by focusing on social infrastructure and youth.
I’ve spent the past three weeks interning in the Community Development Unit of the City of Toronto, supporting the Neighbourhood Action program for Rexdale/Jamestown. Neighbourhood Action is one important component of the Community Safety Plan, the crux of which is the Neighbourhood Action Partnership, a network of representatives from the city, community-based organizations, residents, and other stakeholders who together take on the task of identifying gaps in the community and working collaboratively on various initiatives to further Neighbourhood Action’s goals. In other words, a project to grow social capital.
The sidewalks run along patches of short, tough grass that cling resolutely onto the dry earth. I pass a small plaza that contains a Chinese supermarket, two pizza shops, and some corner stores. Today I head to the local community centre, one of the focal points for residents and community activists in the neighbourhood. Along with the public library, the media centre, and the community housing hub, the community centre is where residents come to not only to engage in recreational programs, but also to discover what’s going on and to meet, talk and take action on issues of concern. It is a small, brown brick building in the midst of wide fields taken over by an army of fierce-looking dandelions. Behind it is a soccer field and a local elementary school; beyond the field is a group of brown social housing buildings that make up the small district known as Jamestown, a.k.a. Doomstown.
I’ve brought a couple hundred flyers with me for a public consultation that is going to happen the next day. I’m supposed to be distributing them but Kevin, the youth worker, is waiting for two of the other social workers involved in the outreach to come pick some of them up, and so for now I volunteer to help prepare for a summer camp by cutting out construction paper letters. Well, I figure, at least this isn’t at 7 a.m. sitting awkwardly at John Harvard trying to avoid being caught in early-morning tourists’ photos.
Kevin announced the consultation at our last NAP meeting. The various stakeholders, members, and believers of the community gathered around tables in the basement of the community centre, and discussed the various initiatives that are in progress. There is the Crisis Response Protocol, a plan being developed by the city in conjunction with local activists that maps out how the community will react when a critical incident (such as a shooting, a fire, etc) occurs. Someone from the city talks about the community garden and playground that are in progress, and the new partners that are joining the project and working to expand the initiative’s vision. A representative from the Local Immigration Partnership, a group composed of representatives from various local agencies, reports on a convention that will occur where residents will get the chance to join workgroups targeting various aspects of new immigrant assistance. And so on.
The consultation is one of various that are occurring across the city by the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department. Essentially, after Toronto’s new mayor Rob Ford came into office last year, he discovered that there was a budget shortfall of $774 million for 2012 in order to maintain the current level of service provision. These consultations are spaces where the public will get a chance to voice its concerns about which services it regards as necessary or not, before Council makes its final budgetary decisions.
Kevin and I decide to leave a stack of flyers for the others, and we head out to hit the local agencies in his car. By now they are familiar to me—the Women’s Centre, the Community Health Centre, MicroSkills (an organization that assists with settlement and employment), Breaking the Cycle (a group that works to assist at-risk youth or youth already involved in gangs), the Community Legal Clinic, etc. We’re familiar with most of the workers we encounter; at one of the agencies, Brandon greets a youth worker warmly. He tells me as we exit that the worker is a good guy, that they go way back. “The problem is,” he muses, “these guys don’t last long. It’s hard to connect to youth when you’re in your forties.” By now I’m exhausted. Kevin drops me off at the library, where I am to meet one of the local youth to talk about an incipient project he has regarding civic engagement. I leave some flyers here too…
Photo credit: http://movein.to/stevenson-road/
[1] Jamestown, the area of social housing within Rexdale, was first identified as a priority neighbourhood; the neighbourhood eventually was expanded to include Rexdale.
