Anna Kay Brown is a known and well-respected activist living in the Jane-Finch community with her children; Anthony, Arianna and Amaya. As of 2019, she is a volunteer on several committee’s in the community with a focus on education, economic growth and paying it forward so that others may benefit from her own experiences.
Please start by telling me a bit about yourself and how you came to live in the Jane Finch Community?
I migrated to Canada almost 21 years ago – October 5th will make 21 years. So, I came here when I was nine years old so that gives away my age! I’m from Jamaica. It was my father and my stepmother who sponsored my brother and myself. When I came to Canada, it was an interesting experience. If I fast forward to when I was nineteen, when I moved to the Jane-Finch community, I was pregnant with my first child Anthony and I was experiencing homelessness. I was homeless. I lived in a shelter for quite some time until I was able to get affordable housing. The first place was at Jane and Finch – to be exact, 415 Driftwood.
At first I heard all the stories about Jane-Finch and I was like “no”, I did not want it, I protested – I carried on but I was seven months pregnant so the chances within that time to get another place…my housing worker really suggested that I take it. So, I did. I was quite unhappy for the first few months. Being here, I would even say for the years – for the first two years until I started to get to know my neighbours. It just so happened when I moved here a string of violence started to happen and there were more shootings. This was around 2008. There was quite a bit of shootings that was going on and that really just stressed me out because it added on to all the negative things that I had heard about the community. My friends, they didn’t want to come to visit me here, so I was trying to get out of here as fast as possible. But, as I said, after the two years passed by and I got to know the community more and started to engage more with my fellow neighbours, I started to realize, you know, its not so bad. I had a good neighbour who said to me, “You know, there’s ANC – Action for Neighbourhood Change, you should come and check it out and volunteer with us”. That’s what I did, and my act of volunteering started from there.
From your perspective, what issues were residents facing in the community?
Definitely, at that time when I moved here in 2008 and there was quite a bit of shootings so people were dealing with violence, people were dealing with the lack of employment and even in a sense, experiencing isolation, I would say. Even though, finding out from a few residents who were connected, that there are resources, but people were isolated in their own homes or situations because they felt it wasn’t safe to venture out to go to school, to go get groceries. They didn’t necessarily want to get to know their neighbours and the community in that sense. As I said, I go back and I would definitely say that part of employment, violence, a sense of safety and security were issues and overall, sometimes the conditions of housing.
How did governments or politicians respond to the issues?
No, not necessarily. I can’t really remember having a politician come to Driftwood and meet with residents. I know at one point, maybe about five years ago when it got really bad with the violence that there was a police town hall trying to figure out how to deal with violence at the Driftwood Community Centre. They asked the community for its opinion and ways to deal with it which I thought was interesting. But other than that, I’ve never really seen anyone come back into the community and to have that conversation with the community. A lot, who have tried to deal with violence, is grass root organizations.
How did you get involved with the Action for Neighbourhood Change project?
I got involved with another resident who was part of it, Celia, and she roped me into it. She’s like, you know, “Come on, you can volunteer”. I was hesitant for the first year and honestly, by the second year, I started to volunteer with them, and it was just supposed to be for a few days to help. There was a group from the states who were coming in to paint units for free and I was just supposed to be part of that project and then it just blossomed into something bigger than that. I got hooked and now I’m hooked into everything!
Thadsha was the manager of ANC when I got involved and then there was Heidi so those were the two managers during my time. If you want to talk about some of the work that we did – one of the biggest things that we did was a back to school event where we tried to give out over 200 back packs to the residents. We would have workshops and CPR courses. We tried to figure out what the community needed and then to cater to that. A lot of those things that were needed was certain training for jobs they were doing so you would always get people for those activities – financial literacy courses, March break workshops from Monday to Friday for that week at Brookview Middle School.
ANC used to work in other neighbourhoods (Yorkwoods, Firgrove, Driftwood, Gosford, Tobermory) but I got involved when it was just doing work in Driftwood. From what I was told, it was still supposed to serve all the communities. (Funding was reduced so ANC focused on one neighbourhood, instead of six). With Heidi, unfortunately, the dynamics changed a bit. At that time, we didn’t get to do as much work as we had hoped just because there, unfortunately there were internal upsets amongst us. Minimal work got done during that year.
One of the big things Heidi was able to help us with was the POL grant which was to change the ANC space to a Resident Resource Centre. ANC was moved out of there and moved into 2999 Jane Street. We knew that was due to the leakage and all the other stuff like the mold in the space. The space was shut down for quite a bit of time because there was a heavy leakage from the pipes up top. There was severe damage done to the computers and they needed to be thrown out and there was a heavy mold problem. So that was the reason why ANC had to be moved.
Just last year, November (2018) through a resident group that we formed but as I said, the work was put in when Heidi was there – that was one of the big things she did help us with - to get it into a rent/lend space. Now it’s a resource space so there’s computers down there now – I would say that almost $300,000 was put into the space and to develop it. Everything that you can think of is in that space now. We’re running our tutoring program, mental health, Taboo is hoping to come in soon to run a program with young Black men – a mentorship and tutoring program once a week. They also have another location at The Spot.
The residents decide who comes into the space or the residents finds programs and do them also. There is no other space like this in the community that we know of. Because of how the funding was given, it had to be resident led and had to be heavily resident involved. Toronto Housing can’t necessarily just come in a make a decision about who gets the space – it has to go through the resident group. That’s how the City gave the funding - based on that.
The transition of ANC definitely took an impact because we lost members once it moved to 2999 because the majority of the members lived close by the building, close to 415 Driftwood. So, definitely, after a few months, like a few people still come but overall, we probably lost about a good six members. We lost instantly, about six. That really affected the work that we were doing and how we were able to do it because unfortunately, the ones who had more of a leadership role were now carrying more of the burden.
We were part of the conversations with the United Way about what the new ANC should look like in scope, so I went to a few of the workshops, maybe at least four or five of those workshops with residents and their partners. It was called Our Strong Neighbourhood and its no longer called that now as we decided to change the name. After it was no longer ANC, we had to pick one issue with the two years of funding we were getting. We applied for three, but we only got two years and that had to be the mission for the two years based on the issue we picked. The transition started in the late 2017’s, but by 2018 a decision was already made for 2019 that ANC will no longer exist after March 2019.
Our topic right now is economy – finding employment opportunities for community residents. So, we’re working with York and working on the Finch West LRT with the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) around the initiatives they are doing with the LRT for employment. I also believe we should hop onto the Rexdale Casino as they have created a Community Benefits Framework that has really been working on hiring local and diverse people within the community or the surrounding communities that have a diverse background. That has been going exceptionally well but we should also realize that that work has been going on for ten years. Ten years, the residents have been working on the Casino, so it didn’t just happen yesterday. We’re definitely looking to also create a community benefit guideline framework for this community so that when developers come into the community, we have something to start with. We’re working in partnership with the TCBN, so they are at the table with us.
One of our next things was to create a round table of all people who were doing similar work to us and talk about how we can coordinate better so that we’re not doing the same overlap work. Part of the problem in the community – there’s always a few players doing the same work, and nobody is sharing among each other so that we are not replicating the work or going after the same funding or resources. We’re trying to see how we can really get those people at the table to have a serious conversation about working together.
For now, we’re at York creating a survey to find out what percentage of York staff is hired from the community. They can’t tell us based on how they hire people with their data or system. Its going to be a survey – I’m not guessing the way its going to be set up as we are in the process of working on it. We have two members from York that we meet with every month or every so often. We’re creating this survey – we have Carl James on it and other people helping us and making sure its ethical in the way we are proceeding with it. The overall goal of this survey is to find out how many people live in the community who are hired by York and even the possibility to find out their diverse backgrounds.
We call it the Black Creek Fair Economies because we do have to understand that it is representing all of Black Creek technically and not just Jane-Finch. The new boundaries are Steeles Avenue to Wilson Avenue and Weston Road to Keele Street.
Also, right now we’re working on figuring out how to bring information uniquely to the community rather than just flyering. Now we’re thinking about going to local businesses, churches or faith-based places and having those conversations about what’s happening in the community, especially right now around the Finch LRT and what that means for the community – the pros and the cons. We know the Finch West LRT will definitely happen but we’re talking to people about this as an opportunity to help local businesses to grow but also realizing that once the Finch LRT comes into the community there’s also now gentrification that happens and other developments that come. Sometimes the neighbourhood doesn’t look the way it looks after maybe ten years. If you think overall of how the neighbourhoods were developed – if you are supposed to go to Driftwood like the very far back row, they are basically cut off from civilization. Its just such a weird design and I don’t think much thought went into the planning of it – it was lets just stuff as much housing as we can get into the area.
What were the challenges to making ANC work and what were some of the accomplishments?
Some of the challenges were around engagement – definitely around community engagement. I think that’s where most organizations suffer from is engagement – how to truly engage people. Sometimes people see themselves just as an individual and don’t necessarily want to be a part of things or don’t want to worry about any additional things that they don’t need to. And its not even so much as to have them worry, but how can we collective work together for the betterment of our community? It was hard sometimes to draw people’s interest.
Its hard because if people are dealing with their own crisis and their own problems, its hard to engage them in a way where its not dealing with their problem. Its easier to have someone deal with something that’s affecting them but if its something that’s affecting the overall community, some people don’t necessarily care for that. So, I’ll give an example. I went to do outreach for a specific project and people didn’t want to hear about the project. They wanted to hear about how I can help them with their housing issue. So, I’m just saying that those are the things you face – that people are going through their stuff and they want to solve their stuff first before they take on anything else.
Through ANC, we were able to engage people, but I wouldn’t say that we were able to engage people for the long term. There were things that we did that interested people and they’ll show up for it but to capture their attention for a very long time was hard because there were times where we weren’t consistent at keeping up with the work. Funding didn’t, I think, change anything. When you think about the $100,000 that ANC gave the community to not just do programs, but it was to pay for everything else (rent, equipment, staff). When you really think about it, maybe $10,000 was really for programing for that year and how far can that funding truly go – not very far. If we didn’t have money to sustain certain things that we were doing, then you have to go back to reengage those people. So, if we engage them in February and we’re now doing something else in August, you have to go back to build a connection and a bridge with those people from February to get them to come to August and if you were doing something in January and next time you were doing another project, you realize that every time you have to go back to re-engage those people.
As a resident living in this community, what do you think needs to be done to make Jane-Finch a livable and healthy community?
Investments – I know when I say investment, what does investment mean? I’m going to use our community centre compared to other community centres. I’m going to be specific; I’ll use Driftwood Community Centre. In terms of programs or anything that is available – I’ve gone to Scarborough and they have four community centres. All of them are fully programed, fully run and we’re still going through staffing issues at our Community Centre.
Another thing is having organizations being able to network and to work together. I think that if we can definitely get that going, where we’re not duplicating funding and we’re all at each other for the same funding and can collectively work together, and get funding to do things at a much larger scale, I think that would be beneficial for the community. I also understand that individuals and groups have their own opinion and their own objectives of what they think Jane-Finch should be or what our community should be or look like.
Now, maybe because I’m in the Education Action Group of the Toronto Strong Neighbourhood Strategy as a co-chair, so also our schools. Right now, we’re dealing with the cuts. Before the cuts we were dealing with infrastructure issues which we’ll still deal with because of the cuts. We’re dealing with the lack of resources that we’re still going to be dealing with that because of the cuts. We were in a position where we were talking with the school board and the superintendents about some of the issues that were in the schools and how we can resolve them at a community level. Now we have the cuts and we’re already talking about schools that were already – what does that school look like now that the funding has been once again, cut.
So, for example, I had a conversation with Westview, and they closed twelve classrooms. They had three or four education assistants who helped kids who are having difficulty in how they learn – they had to let go two of those positions. They had to let go of caretakers so that meant they had to close twelve classrooms. Their classrooms are looking at over 40 – 45 students per class. They also had to cut the majority of their classes and had to let go of teachers because of the four mandatory classes that have to be done on-line. One of the things I brought up to them was how many computers do they have in their school that the kids in the school can use. The Yorkwoods Public Library is now closed for two years (kids used their computers) and also, how many kids at home even have computers or laptops or anything they can use for even the internet.
These were some of the questions I left with the school to be able to figure out and how as a community we were going to address these things because we know at the end of the day the school board, when it comes to us as a community, that we end up having to solve our own problems. That shouldn’t be so but it often time is. Due to bureaucracy, by the time everyone drags their foot, a whole year, two years, three years – all of those kids graduate, and nothing got done. I totally agree that it shouldn’t be the communities work to do but sometimes we have to advocate.
The education system has not worked well in this community. The education system is not reflective of this community. There nothing much there to stimulate the majority of the kids. For instance, like in high school and that should be a time when young people can get an idea of what they want to do after high school. This is where they should be able to go do an apprenticeship in mechanics or carpentry. This is where, maybe a grade 10 or 11, in their semester, they are doing these things. They have to find out what they are good at and our schools are not equipped to be able to do those things for young people.
I think what society fails to realize is that communities and everyone at different levels is that these are the same people – these are the same young people who are going to grow up and are one day going to be charged and we’re going to have to think about the level of care and how our society is run when we didn’t give the people the resources, the proper resources to be able to do it. We’re still going to need those people to have those minimal skills to be able to work in the factory and if they can’t do it or read or write at a certain level to even understand the basic level of information on your machine then its pretty scary. I would love to see – when I look at other communities or a few other communities that were really able to rally together, I don’t really think we should make it an extreme of something about to happen that’s really going to affect us for the community to learn to get together.
I’ll use Parkdale as an example, just about the work they have been doing around housing, making sure that people can afford to live in Parkdale that were there twenty or thirty years ago and who can continue to live there. I would stay that its one of the last standing affordable areas downtown. That’s crazy. Parkdale’s changing but the residents have mobilized in a way that the majority of communities aren’t doing until its really affecting them like today. They realize there is going to be an issue and already started mobilizing. They already created their own community benefit framework and any developers – they have to go through the benefit framework. They have already created certain things in their communities to make sure – they are even learning how to buy land as a community. They’re creating a community ownership together. They’ve raised about $25,000 on one project to buy a piece of land that they were farming on because the gentleman was the owner of the land, he says, “Hey, I will sell it to you for what I bought it for forty years ago which was $100,000”. So, they went to the community and said, he’s willing to sell it to us for this – lets try to raise some money. The community together raised $25,000 and then talked about applying to for some different grants to get the other $75,000. So, collectively as a community they collected $25,000, they needed $75,000 and were able to, through different grants, buy the land and develop that into something. I think the same can be done in this community. It may not look exactly like Parkdale, but I think if community understands the sense of ownership and that when you move from here, where else are you gong to go, if you don’t take a stance. I would love to see that.
What are you most proud of - for yourself and for the community?
I’m proud that I have a criminal justice degree. I always thought that when I grew up, I was going to be either in the army or I’m going to join the police – anything to do with some form of policing, I thought I was going to do. For some reason, in my first week of college, that idea….I still love the concept of policing and learning about the criminal justice system but I realized very quickly that I would never work for the system. I thought I was going to be a parole officer, but I never did that. I went to Centennial first and I did the Community and Justice Service program and then I did a bridging program for a bachelor program at Humber in Criminal Justice.
One other thing I think I’m proud of for myself and my community is that I didn’t let the negative things stop the work and that good people exist in all bad situations no matter what and I believe in paying it forward. When I go back to when I was nineteen years old and so many people would help me with so many systems. I had a really good housing worker; I had a good worker at the Shelter who encouraged me. When I told her, I wanted to be a police officer, she brought me down to the headquarters downtown on College to meet some detectives and do interviews with them. That meant so much to me because she had like forty other people that she needed to serve but I was only nineteen and this lady really went out of her way to help me. I always said, “Oh my gosh, I really need to pay this forward in anything I do”. I’m grateful for those experiences because those are the experiences that shaped me into being the person that I am today.