Barry Rieder is the Community Minister for the United Church of Canada with a specific focus in the neighbourhood of Firgrove area and a broader focus on the Jane Finch community. While Barry lives with his lovely wife and daughter in another neighbourhood in the City, he commutes every day to the Jane Finch community to do community development, community organizing, advocacy and pastoral care. Barry came into the community in 1995 and continues in his role as Community Ministry as of June 2018.
Can you please tell me how the United Church came into this community to do community ministry?
The United Church had an outreach ministry to the Caribbean community out of Beverley Hills United and they hired two workers in the late 1970’s. Both were from Jamaica and basically what they were doing was a little bit of an afterschool program as well as going around to the social housing communities and picking kids up and taking them to Sunday school at Beverley Hills. The program self-imploded. The reason being is that with the 2 workers, back in Jamaica, one was the supervisor and one was the worker and when they were hired here in Toronto, their roles were reversed and so they were at logger-heads and it self-imploded. So, the Presbytery did some discernment about looking at whether or not they should have a ministry, to continue it or not. Then they really didn’t feel comfortable doing the kind of ministry they were doing – just going around to take kids to Sunday school, just not what the United Church was about.
Doug Kingsbury came across the model of the Mennonite Community Ministry with Dalton Jantzi in which the Mennonite Church placed a minister in the community, not to build a congregation but to work in solidarity with the community. So that model was adopted, and Peggy Campbell was then hired in 1982. She worked until 1988, more from a program kind of base. It was interesting in that there were some youth that I came across in my ministry that had gone on trips with Peggy Campbell, to the Maritimes and had fond memories. She had built some really good and solid kind of relationships in the community. Then David Murata, he did his internship with Peggy and then when Peggy left, he continued on until 1994. With David’s ministry, he was more into…..I think there are two different ways of doing community development – community development within institutions, kind of top-down or community development kind of bubbling up and he chose more the kind of work with the institutions and more of his framework was trying to create some space in the community that different institutions like social services would come to the community and meet with the community. David was gifted in some ways but in some other ways, he was kind of a lone-wolf and I think he burnt a few community bridges and at the same point in time, he was not good with finances. One of the things that happened is that they had a youth employment program out of Beverly Hills and that was great, but they had failed to pay Revenue Canada and so there was an $80,000 bill that they had run up and the ministry was in a deficit and again, the Presbytery, when he left, were trying to determine whether or not they should continue, and they risked hiring me. And so, I started in 1995.
When you started your job, what was your approach to community ministry and how did you introduce yourself to the community?
Basically, I took a page off of Dalton Jantzi’s kind of book and looked at my role in doing community development, community organizing and pastoral care and advocacy through coalitions and networks so those 3 main kind of pillars. I divide community organizing and community development into two different camps – they are really different important kind of aspects. Community development is more of a long hull and community organizing is more kind of issue focused and there is a lot of times where there is a blending of those two that come together. That’s been kind of the cornerstone of the community ministry’s work.
Do you remember what was going on in the community, city or province at the time?
Mike Harris came into power when I started and two main things that he talked about were selling off public housing and cutting back social assistance. So, I got involved with a campaign, Community Housing Fights Back - I think it was called that. Social assistance rates were cut back by 22%. And then, in addition to that, it was cutting all sorts of other services. It was a traumatic time. One of the interesting things was that Harris was threatening community-based organizations that if they spoke up and did advocacy work against some of the policies that were happening at that point in time, that he would revoke their charitable status. First of all, he had no jurisdiction – it was the federal government that had jurisdiction around status, but it created an opportunity because the United Church, that the base funds for this has always been from the church and because of that there became a role for being able to advocate more, especially in coalitions. I could speak louder than some of the community-based organizations and for me, it was from the church standpoint, using the prophetic voice and calling out against injustice. That was a really important part of community ministry.
The other thing that happened – Ruth Morris, I had met Ruth Morris, before I came to Jane and Finch because I was working in Lawrence Heights. I was part of this coalition called Coalition Against Neighbourism and that coalition looked at the stigma the media has but also that which society has on culturally diverse, low-income communities. One of the things we found was that we were beating ourselves up because we were saying things like Lawrence Heights is not as bad as Regent Park or we’re not as bad as Jane and Finch and Jane Finch was saying, we’re not as bad as Parkdale and really what we had to do was to come together as a community and fight back against the negative stereotypes of these communities. I was involved with that coalition and knew Ruth and one of the first things that she did is that she pulled together this Neighbour to Neighbour hearings, interviewed people in the community about how the 22% cut affected them. That was a good process in itself but one of the things that happened is that I sat with Fred Hayes, from the Royal Bank and prior to that, Ruth had developed this Coalition of Bankers in the community. One of the things that had been happening is that people who were on social assistance, at that point in time, you had to get a cheque cashed and stuff like that. It wasn’t through the internet banking now but banks were refusing people on social assistance because the bank managers deemed it as too much of a risk. So, this coalition of bankers, plus the Mennonite Central Committee where Dalton had connections with, did some advocacy and they actually changed the banking charter. With the change of the banking charter, it became illegal to not allow somebody to have a bank account based on their income. We can thank Jane and Finch for changing that banking charter.
So, there were lots of stuff happening, I think more so the shake-down of the province. I can’t remember too much of what was happening within the City or the Federal government around that time, but it was the onset of neo-conservatism I think that eventually took over and we had the experience of Rob Ford around that as well as Steven Harper, but I think the first taste of it was with Mike Harris.
Your work took you beyond the boundaries of Firgrove. What were some of your early involvements?
I’ll start by naming a few of them but the main group was the Network of Community Based Organizations and it became a platform. In its earliest stage, it was more executive directors who were at the table and a way of communicating with each other and to cooperate effectively. The interesting thing around it is remembering around that time period, we didn’t have internet and there was no email communication back and forth, we had faxes that we could fax information to each other, but it really was an important vehicle for the organizations to coalesce together. With that, not only would the United Church community ministry be at the table, but Dalton Jantzi with the Mennonite Community Ministry and it was an effective kind of voice of lobbying but also in working together to do town hall meetings, advocacy with politicians, looking at gaps of services and working forward. So that was an important one.
One of the things I do remember around that period is trying to find space for the Youth Clinical Services. With the development of the Yorkgate Mall, there was section 36 agreement where community space was supposed to be granted to the community and Peter LiPreti had scooped that for some Italian senior’s space and we never did get that space. Through lobbying, we tried to get the mall committed to providing some community space for the Youth Clinic and it was going to not be a bad deal in the beginning, but the problem was that they were then going to look at market value rent later so that didn’t work.
In terms of early involvements, one of the things is that, I think it was through the Network of Community Based Organizations, that we applied for a Caring Community Award with the Trillium Foundation. One of the things we did was just kind of highlight some of the collective action that was happening in the community and the piece that happened out of Firgrove was increasing the voter turn-out. What we had done with the Tenant Association was that we did a knock and drop at every household in Firgrove and explained that voting mattered. We said, “We don’t care how you vote but what’s most important is vote because when politicians pay attention to the polls right after the election, they spend their time and their money in communities that vote.” We were actually able to increase the voter turn-out in Firgrove from 5% to 50%. So, there was a ten-fold increase around that. An interesting story was yesterday, when Kathleen Blair found me at the school and she was chair of the Tenants Association at that time and she took it upon herself to go back into Firgrove and knock on those doors and came out with the same letter (she had a copy of that letter from 1997) that she was taking to people, showing them that voting matters. I was just surprised that she had that interest, but I mean that sometimes we make an impact in the larger community, but I say it’s the impact we make with individuals in those communities that continue to make impact in their other communities or the community as a whole.
So, the Network kind of fell apart eventually. What started to happen was instead of managers or executive directors being at the table, it was more workers and while a workers table is important, it has no power and it lost some of its momentum. Some other things ended up replacing that later on.
In the earlier stages, also was the Basic Needs Action Network that I was part of and the Minister at Downsview United asked me to sit on that. She was a nurse with public health, prior to becoming a Minister, and that was really important at that table. The Red Cross was at the table, North York Harvest Food Bank was at the table, Public Health and some agencies but we mainly looked at how we could increase access to basic needs. Now, the interesting part about that is that the Reeser Farm, where a worker was working out of Tobermory with the Mennonite Church – Joann Reeser-McDowell, and they had a pick your own farm. One of the things they would do is they would take residents and kids to the farm to pick fresh vegetables and it was called gleaning. After the produce had been picked, there was still food in the fields and they allowed the community to come there and glean for free. I thought this was a great thing and I asked if the Reesers could connect me to another farm. They connected me to Southbrook, so we had this relationship with Southbrook and the Manager from housing would come and he would pick up produce leftover from the weekend with this farmers market. The leftovers would be perfectly fine, but the markets wanted to have the freshest vegetables as possible and they would just compost it, throw it in the fields and let it rot. Instead, we were getting that, but it was more produce than we could use so what happened is that I brought this to the Basic Needs Action Network.
We had a food day that I had inherited once a month, but we had produce once a week. So, we had this problem where we had too much food and decided, why don’t we share the wealth and why don’t we talk to all the other farms in the area and see if the Farmers Markets and Pick Your Own Farms would be willing to donate their produce as well. There was an agreement from that and what happened was that the Red Cross van would go around each week to pick up produce on the Monday, bring it to North York Harvest Food Bank and that got distributed through the Food Bank. And, we created a Making Connections project where we had many different communities go and pick for free and glean.
I think one of my earlier things I remember was that the Southbrook farm asked me if I wanted some pumpkins and of course said sure, we’ll take some pumpkins and they showed up with 350 pumpkins and it was again more than what the Firgrove community could use so I was going around selling them for a dollar, doing a little bit of fundraising and giving them away to community groups but for a while there, I was known and this was only my 2nd year in the community, I was known as the pumpkin man.
In addition to that and kind of grew out of Basic Needs Action Network, another coalition I was part of was the North York Heart Health. The City, through Public Health, had funding to do heart healthy exercises, healthy eating, proper nutrition so that was kind of the mantra around that. We came across a professor at York University by the name of Dennis Rafael and one of the things Dennis looked at was taking that focus of eating healthy, don’t smoke, and exercise is a real kind of middle-class perspective. It doesn’t completely cut it for poor communities that are relying on food banks and can’t get the proper kind of food for proper nutrition, can’t get a membership at the gym and in many cases relieve their stress by smoking. But what Dennis had found was that poverty is actually bad for your health. He started a whole study and released a report that was called “Inequality is Bad for Our Hearts – Why Low-Income and Social Exclusion are Major Causes of Health Disease. We helped shepherd that through and funded some of the research and the publication of that which I think was an important thing to be involved in.
The frustrating thing overshadowing our work, over the years, is that we haven’t’ made that much strides. We’ve had some small gains, I think in the community and I think that even when we have those gains not much changes – look for instance most recently with the Toronto Strong Neighbourhood Strategy and some of the work Farid has been doing with Jane Finch Action Against Poverty and some of the unions around increasing minimum wage and that’s great. We’ve increased it to $14 an hour and I think one of the things that with this agreement is at least there are some cost of living increases that are in place. I think that’s important. But it wasn’t our first living minimum wage campaign. I mean, we’ve always been looking at that and how we increase employment opportunities.
Dealing with some of the violence in the community, it’s kind of two steps forward and one step back. The violence in the community is a reflection of some of the other social issues that end up happening. Its racialized poverty – that’s the reason why Black youth end up killing themselves, or each other.
I’ve been there 23 years and when I first came, and Toronto Community Housing was Metro Toronto Housing Authority, they had a full-time recreation coordinator at the Recreation Centre. They had a children’s program, they had a youth program, they had a moms and tots program, the breakfast club was operating out of there, so it was a pretty happening kind of place. Housing goes in different phases – when they think they should be just a housing provider and not providing any social services or programs and due to cut-backs within the Housing Ministry, it began looking at pulling out of those programs. They said they were no longer going to be providing a children’s program and the coordinator had been let go. The moms and tots program ended, when the Early Years Centre opened up in the JF mall. It didn’t make sense to have that program. The breakfast program eventually moved to the schools so there was still a breakfast program in the community but, the Centre itself became not well used. The housing manager was a great manager, and he encouraged us to apply for a Toronto Community Housing grant to hire some youth as animators to go around and interview the community about what they would like there.
What we began doing was pulling together a broader base coalition of agencies that provide support in the community and institutions and residents in the community to develop an advisory group. What came out of the consultation is that the community wanted a learning centre and a learning centre that would be operated and controlled by residents. More from the standpoint of each one, teach one. Recognizing that people have different gifts and how do they utilize those gifts. So, for instance, in Firgrove, we have a person who is very dear to our hearts and her name is Auntie Joan who is now in her 90’s, but she taught sewing to people who were interested. She sews and still does today, sews costumes for Kiddy Caribana and started this sewing program.
We looked at various different sources of funding, in order to fund the programs and to fund a coordinator because TCH was no longer providing that. We looked at rental income coming from the centre to go towards that. That never materialized because the rental income went into a larger kind of pot. We had some funding from the United Church, some funding initially from housing and we were able to get a grant from the city to continue on, but the problem was that it never turned into core funding from the city because that funding envelope had never expanded so they couldn’t take on any new projects. It was a good program and we hired somebody from the community who had been a tenant rep. This turned into the Firgrove Learning and Innovation Community Centre.
I think one of the things that I tried to do in my ministry is to empower the people to be involved in their own work. Interestingly, a couple women I call the Mary and Martha of the community are Lorraine and Marya. They decided that they wanted to have a women’s retreat, so I stayed in the background in helping them kind of organize a women’s retreat and through their leadership skills, Lorraine kind of shone and when it came time to interview for the coordinator for the centre, she was the successful candidate. Maryan, a Somali woman and Lorraine of a Caribbean background, they worked very closely in the community and one of the nice aspects of that was it integrated the Caribbean and the Somali community together, so they became one instead of more segregated. They then used their kind of experience to shepherd in and support other communities, so they applied for a grant for a social enterprise in supporting the Burmese community. It was really nice to see two people from immigrant communities that have settled, helping newer immigrant communities settle into the community.
You have been involved with many initiatives over the years in your ministry. Can you please describe some of those initiatives where you felt there was an impact and some that were interesting with maybe less of an impact?
The development of the Black Creek Community Collaborative and prior to that was the Black Creek Community Capacity Project that had an earlier kind of beginnings. Downsview Ministerial that supported the community when there were tragedies that happened and back in 1999, a 3 ½ year old by the name Brianna Davies was killed by gun cross fire in the Yorkwoods community. What had happened was that somebody had a beef with her Dad and decided to take revenge and knew he was visiting his mother, Brianna’s grandmother. When he was putting her into the backseat of the car, he got shot and one bullet grazed the car, ricocheted and hit Brianna. It was a real tragedy for the community. Paulette Brown, from University Presbyterian took a lead role with the family around supporting that and I kind of stepped back and thinking that things were okay. Fred Craft was an individual volunteer in the community and he had taken some non-violent training out of York and so one of the things Fred would do when there was shootings, not just in Jane and Finch but in anywhere in the City, he would show up and he would start a kind of a vigil and also hang out at that spot and talk with the youth around “Why do you think this happened, what could have been prevented? ” Great on the street’s kind of stuff.
What got him involved with it was that he was trying to hustle and taking photographs and that’s what brought him to the scene to sell some of his photographs but more it was his heart that brought him to doing something more than that. On Thursday, Fred comes to my office and says he was planning a vigil for Brianna and can you come? I said, “Fred, I wish you had told me this earlier, like on Monday I worked a 12-hour day, on Tuesday, I worked a 12-hour day, on Wednesday, I worked a 12-hour day. I don’t know if I can do another 12-hour day!” After Fred left, I realized, you know what, I have to be there, I just have to be there so I went for something to eat and I had pulled out a seminary before taking the funeral course so I hadn’t much experience, but I took an alternative church manual with me just in case it was needed. So, I arrive and there is about 200 people there on the street, laying teddy bears and putting flowers down. I’m looking around and there’s no other clergy and Fred sees me, and he comes running up to me and I asked him, “Did you ask anyone to officiate this?” He said, “No, but would you?” So, I said, “Let’s go meet the family.”
The actual funeral was at the Revival Time Tabernacle and I cringe at what happened at that funeral because it was in some ways, a mockery. Even though Paulette Brown was involved by providing the support because that particular faith community didn’t recognize women, it was taken away from Paulette. And during the service they made a point of rebuking gays and lesbians. I don’t know what that had to do with burying this young girl. When the coffin was coming out, they were handing out business cards and it was terrible.
One of the good things about it was Maria Augimeri was there, the City councillor since 1997, so one of the things that she did was to have a town hall meeting in the community and at that town hall meeting, brought decision makers and some directors from different departments to the community to hear what some of the issues and concerns were. You and I were part of that and with the outcome three things were decided from that: one was to do a memorial for Brianna Davies and in that, do a public art display. That happened at Driftwood and you were quite involved with that and it was a wonderful piece and some of the community members from Firgrove were also involved. The second was to look at the infrastructure and redesign of one of the social housing communities and that study basically sat on a shelf after it was done, nothing materialized out of that. And the third was to look at doing a needs assessment. We bulked at that because the problem with needs assessments is that it looks at the glass being half-full, what are all the problems in the community instead of really looking at what are the strengths and skills and capacity of the community.
Through the earlier work with the Coalition Against Neighbourhoodism, we invited John McKnight, the community development guru to the community to do a media Conference and we also had been doing, with the University of Toronto, a community capacity research project with Shelley Cleverley in Tobermory and Firgrove. We were quite steeped around looking at doing a community capacity research project and we were able to get the city committed to that. There were different stages that the project went through, but it was really looking at building on the strengths, skills and assets of the community.
After a townhall process, one of the groups was an economic working group and I began chairing that. One of the things that came out of that was the micro lending program. Part of that was because of Murry McAdam who had been our Community Banker Apprentice. Murray had moved on to the Anglican Diocesan of Toronto with the Social Justice Portfolio.
When I first came to Jane and Finch there was a local banking project, headed up by Ruth Morris from Peach (Actually known at that time as Black Creek Focus), in which, six major banks were convinced to fund community workers to train bank employees to better meet the needs of low-income, culturally diverse communities. One of the highlights of this project is that national banking regulations were changed so that it is now illegal to refuse someone a bank account just because they have limited income or are on social assistance. Also one of the things that happened around that time is that Ruth Morris held hearings in the community about Harris’s 22% cut to social assistance. Ruth asked me and the Royal Bank manager, from the local banking project, to witness the deputations. It was with these hearings that I met Fred Hayes, the bank Manager from the Royal Bank.
When PEACH (Promoting Economic Action and Community Health) at their annual general meeting wanted to celebrate this big win that happened in Ottawa around getting the banking charter changed. And so, Fred Hayes, part of this banking coalition brought one the Vice Presidents’ of the Royal Bank to the dinner. Fred gravitated to me because I was the only person he knew and so I sat with the Vice President of the Royal Bank and he was asking me questions around, “so, what do you do.” I said, “I’m kind of a facilitator resource helping the community to build on their assets.” “How’s it funded?” “Well, it’s actually funded by surplus church property – kind of changing bricks and mortar into human resources”. Never thought much of it and we talked about some of the work but a couple weeks later, Ruth Morris says, “I don’t know what you did, but this guy is going around saying I met this Minister without portfolio and if the church can put a Minister in the community without a congregation, why can’t the bank put a bank Manager in the community without a bank.”
So, there was a property on Weston and Arrow Road, that became surplus. Initially they were just going to rent it out, but they decided to sell it and use the proceeds to create this community banking project not only in Jane and Finch but Regent Park and in Parkdale, Regina and Montreal. The whole idea was to second a bank Manager to work in the community and also to pay for a community banker apprentice to work alongside that Manager and to work on economic development. Murry McAdam was hired as the community bank apprentice. It was a short-lived project – it had a few gains. Fred Hayes eventually moved on to head office because part of what Ruth said , “We don’t just want your charity, what’s most important is how do we influence the systems themselves.” And so, Fred began working in the Royal Bank Head Office around what kind of policies and changes needed to change within the Royal Bank for low-income and diverse communities. Murry McAdam stayed for a while and then moved on eventually to the Anglican Diocese of Toronto where he had a social justice portfolio.
I was about to go on sabbatical when Murry McAdam approached me, and I brought it to the economic working group that the Anglican Church had a micro lending program and they had about $40,000 that was still left in the program and Murry was trying to position us that they would give the money to Jane Finch to start a micro-lending program. I came back from sabbatical and the bishops decided they could use the $40,000 elsewhere but Sunder Singh, with the Elspeth Heyworth Centre, she had worked in Riverdale with a micro lending program and said, “No problem, you have $1,000, you have $200, you have $2,000 – we’ll start our own micro-lending program.” So, what happened is that we started with the support of York University and someone doing research because we just thought we’d be able to start it and so through Sue Levesque( the ED of the York U TD Community Engagement Centre, connected us to Brenda Spotton-Visano, who is a Professor of Economics and she asked what kind of model we wanted. “There’s more than one model, we asked?” So, did all kinds of research and then also, we thought we were ready to start it and she asked, “Is the community ready for it?” We then did some market research including getting some graduate students working with some community members to research the community about what kinds of needs they seen and whether or not they were supportive of it.
I’m a big one on partnerships - I don’t believe, there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel and there’s no sense competing with each other so why don’t we work together. Riverdale Access, down in Riverdale, the economic micro-lending program down there, they were wanting to expand through the GTA area, so we said, “why don’t we become a chapter.” And so, we used their kind of infrastructure and raised money to put into the pot for a chapter but worked in conjunction with them and then eventually, they developed several chapters in Toronto.
Initially, with the micro-lending program, we thought that people were going to be banging down our door for these loans. One of things that we found out is that most of our work is not so much in giving out the money but is more helping people to determine whether or not they are ready or not to start a business. In many cases, a business may not be the best thing for them to get into. I would say that out of every 10 people that come to us, interested in starting a business, probably 3 move forward and one gets approved. But most important, is not to look at those who make it to the finish line but the people who we have helped along the way is more important because there’s no sense helping people get further in debt if they already have problems with debt or credit. The whole idea is to help them out of poverty versus helping them get into more poverty. This program started in 2010 and I would say that we’ve probably given out 4 or 5 loans per year, probably about 20 that we’ve helped. But we come into contact through phone and through the drop-in at the TD York CEC and through workshops that we do – we reach probably 100 people per year.
Also, with the micro lending program and with the economic kind of development that we did, we wanted to create an artisan market at the Pan Am games to bring some economic vitality back into the community
The Firgrove neighbourhood itself has faced many issues over the years. Can you please describe some of those issues and the role you played in supporting Firgrove?
There was another coalition that I started up in and got involved with and it was the Street Involved Youth Issue Coalition and the reason being is that somebody came to a door in Firgrove, shot 3 bullets through the door and it was the wrong door. Nobody got killed in that one. But I recognize there are a lot of issues around and I had come from the downtown core where there were a lot of resources for street outreach and youth outreach. Here in Jane and Finch, there was very, very little funding that was taking place around and so we started the Street Involved Youth Issues Coalition and we also did a forum on racism. Part of it was that youth experiences with the police for the most part has been negative or had been negative - I think that has been improved over the years. Eventually, that coalition morphed into the Neighbourhood Action Youth Employment Committee. So, we’ve got funding in order to do trainings within high schools. Right now, we’re doing five high schools and next year, we’ll be doing six. The trainings that we provide are first aid training, high five, food handing and customer service In addition to that, we do trainings with out of work, out of school. We did forklift training last year, and we were providing food handling and smart serve training.
There’s been a variety of youth violence, and it peeked around 2005, the year of the gun. That was where 50 young men, from across Toronto – Black men had lost their lives. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until a woman, on Boxing Day, downtown (a white woman), got caught in the cross fire that all kinds of resources started to focus on youth. I remember an article in the Globe and Mail at that point in time that said we’re not surprised that this kind of violence has end up happening because unemployment rates for youth is 17% but for Black male youth, it was double that. So, 34% unemployment rates for Black youth. So, out of every 3 Black men, one can’t get a job, not because of their ability or inability but it’s because of the colour of their skin. And, in many cases, it’s because of the neighbourhoods they come from. That’s one of the reasons why the Neighbourhood Action Youth Employment Committee got very involved in youth employment.
I think we’ve made some gains and then again, its two steps forward and one step back. In 2013, one of the things that happened was that there was 6 youth in the City of Toronto that lost their lives to gun violence. Four of them were from Jane and Finch, two of them were from Firgrove.
The first was St. Aubyn and St. Aubyn was such a lovable kid. He was actually killed by his best friend.
What had happened was that they were fooling around with a gun, and you could ask why they had a gun, but part of the reason was that its easier to get a gun than a job. But they were fooling around with the gun and they didn’t realize there was a bullet still left in the chamber, so St. Aubyn died. Later in that summer, Tahj, another 15-year-old was killed at the Yorkwoods Plaza, right across from Firgrove. They were actually gunning for his older brother but because Tahj was taller, they thought it was him. I was part of the crisis response team and I had taken a lead role with Tahj’s family and supporting them through that. On the day of the viewing at Tahj’s funeral, Kwame and O’she were killed.
Luckily, I had come back from sabbatical because not only was it with those deaths but there was more of a hush-up with a 5-year-old killed out in Oshawa, who was from the Jane and Finch community, and was actually beaten by an 8-year-old. That was probably the hardest one to deal with. Then, at the beginning of the school year, a young person going to school was run over by a dump truck. It was a lot of grief and a lot of pain that the community was experiencing but also the people providing support to the community. I found my role as not only being a pastor to the community but being a pastor to those I worked with and I think that’s been an important role. Tahj’s grandfather actually worked for Bombardier, and he approached the union which was the CAW around wanting to do a fundraiser in support of a tombstone for Tahj. The union said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll pay for the tombstone but why don’t we do a fundraiser anyway.”
Part of it was to develop some funding so that we could support the youth who were falling through the cracks and doing programing around that. During that time period, youth were doing tags on the buildings – at the rec centre, in tribute to Tahj and St. Aubyn like: “Rest in peace. Skinny and Tubby” – that’s what we called them in the community and then housing would come along a white wash over it and then they would spray paint again and then housing would white wash over it and they would spray paint it again and add some profanity like “leave this the fuck alone”. I approached the youth and asked ”Why don’t we look at doing a memorial for the youth that would be more fitting” So we decided to do a memorial but one of the conditions was that we not just focus on Tahj and St. Aubyn, knowing there had been some other youth in the community that had lost their lives. We decided to do a mural and focus on youth in the last 15 years that had lost their lives due to violence. Unbeknownst to me is we actually came up with 12 names and many, I knew, some I hadn’t but it really struck me that a community of 382 households, over a period of 15 years, 12 youth lost their lives to violence. Now if that happened in any other part of our country, outside of the 1st Nations community where youth are dying of suicide all the time, there would be complete outrage.
I read another article in the Toronto Star that talked about that in a 10-year period there was approximately 53 youth in Toronto Housing who had lost their lives to violence. During that same time period there was 55 Afghan soldiers that lost their lives – Canadian Afghan soldiers. So, there is another war that has ended up happening that we don’t talk about and that’s called poverty. We did the mural and it’s become a really healing thing – we put a graffiti coating on it, thinking it might get tagged but it hasn’t in all the time period it’s been up. One of the brothers of one of the youth that came, Skinner used to come by and he would kiss the dove. There are doves on the mural with names of all of those who have fallen and there’s a ribbon the dove is carrying, and the names are on it. The major piece is a basketball player doing a slam dunk towards the sun and the piece itself is called “Towards a Higher Journey”, using the acronym of Tahj’s name.
So, we had done the piece and about to finish the piece and another name came forward and it was a young woman who had died in the fire and it was initially ruled as an accidental death and through Facebook, it had come out that somebody was actually holding the door so that she couldn’t get out. So, it got seen as a murder. She left behind a son who was only 2 at that time but one day, I didn’t recognize him, but he was sitting on the steps of my door at my office, trying to open up a freezy with his teeth. I said, “Can I help you with that?” He said, “Oh no, somebody’s gone to the learning centre to get me some scissors – that’s okay.” So, I went to get some receipts out of my car just behind the mural and he stood up and he said, “That’s my mom’s name”. I went to the back of the parking lot and let out a good cry and came back and said, “So, what do you think about having your moms name on a mural?” He didn’t say anything, he was still chewing on the freezy, but he gave me a little thumbs up, like it was priceless. I think that in a lot of cases, there are so many deaths and tragedies in Jane and Finch that we become numb to it and that we forget. I think it was an important thing to do in Firgrove, to do that mural, so that we don’t forget these names. Many of them were innocent by-standers, some were involved in the hustle that caused the deaths, but regardless, they are youth - their lives were important. They have parents, they have sisters, they have brothers, they have friends and they should be remembered.
The other thing around Firgrove is that a few years back, the Mayor through the Mayor’s Housing Task Force allocated money for the re-development of Firgrove. They had 27 million dollars to fix up the exterior as well as the interior of the site in the Grassways and the townhouses and we went through a whole planning process with the community. By the time they took the architectural designs to the engineers, the engineers said that you can’t fix up this building any longer. They were at their end life and part of the reason why they were at their end life, even thought they were built in the 70’s, is because Mike Harris (then Premier of the Province), never passed on any maintenance money to upgrade the buildings. So, from water damage seeping through the roof basically rotted out the foundation of these buildings and the bricks. Even though we had 27 million dollars to fix up the buildings, they were beyond repair.
Then, very quickly, they decided that what they needed to do was declare the buildings were inhabitable for humans to live in ( even though residents had been complaining about mold all along and water leaking into their buildings) Deeming them as inhabitable, the residents were forced to relocate to other housing all across the City. It was a deplorable process because how people were prioritized is that their names were attached to a number on a ping pong ball in a bingo drum that was rolled around and whatever number popped up first, they got first pick of the available housing stock. They were quickly evicted and, in that process, was also the community ministry.
Even though the community Ministry had been in the community since 1982, and in 3 different locations and the last location was in the grassways in the townhomes, we were told that we had to move. There was no space for us in the community. Luckily, we were able to find some office space in the neighbouring school, Firgrove Public School, and even though we’re in close proximity to the community, it’s really different because we are now not in the community. The buildings are currently all boarded up and fenced off. For a while there, they said they didn’t even have money to demolish the buildings. Our concern was “what happened to the 27 million dollars that was supposed to be promised to the community” but somehow evaporated or changed or something like that. Just as recently as this spring (2018), they said they actually have money to rebuild Firgrove and they are now looking at demolishing the other half of the grassways and the community is going to be consulted around the designs and changes. It most likely won’t be social housing, it will be a mixed community and I mean there are some benefits around that. But the concern is around what kind of supports and services and community amenities would be there for the community. So, they are probably looking at increasing the density, around 4 or 5 times in order to have the same kind of rent geared to income units in the community but the concern right now is that there is a swimming pool, a basketball court, the Firgrove Learning Centre – will those things be there in the community? I’m hoping to continue to advocate and to work with residents to ensure that whatever is going to be built is going to be appropriate for those in the community. The people who have been relocated and the people who are going to be moved out of the community, they’ll have the first opportunity to move back. Its an interest to them that there be appropriate kinds of support. If you look at what happened in Regent Park, it could take a long time. What they are saying is that in the next year and a half plans will be developed and then a year to move people out and then the demolition then the rebuilding but that all depends on whether or not they’ve been able to, in that time period, excite somebody to actually come and develop it. So, it could stay vacant for quite some time.
You have been able to do pastoral work with gang-involved youth. Please tell me about that experience.
A young woman by the name of Andrea came to me and she was referred by Stephnie Payne (the school Trustee) and Stephnie said that maybe I Barry could help her out. This spoken word artist was interested in doing a BBQ in the community and she wrote poetry around ending gun violence. She wanted some donations from one of the local groceries, so I said, “Sure, I could write a donation letter for you.” So, I wrote this donation letter and she had this event and it was like a blocko (a street party where they block off the street so people can party in the street) in Firgove. She was looking at safety issues and she had engaged with the fire department and the fire department came with the truck and of course the gate was closed and how were they going to bring the truck in to show the kids? They brought out some bolt cutters and cut the chain and then of course, housing security comes along and said, “Who gave you permission to have this party?” She pulls out the funding letter that was written by the Community Minister, saying, “The minister did.”
She thought that was going to be the last event, but Iron was one of the young persons that was killed in our community and he was a youth that had connections to both Firgrove and Yorkwoods and he was involved as a dealer and trying to hustle and make money that way. Mwarigha, one of the Property Managers, had this project where the contractors had to hire youth as apprentices. There was a painting company that hired Iron as a painter apprentice and Iron looked at it as saying, “This is my ticket out of here because if I continue with this lifestyle, I’m going to be either dead or in prison”. Things were going really well. Iron painted the community ministry’s walls, nice colour, great job and he had gotten his contractor’s license, he just got engaged and he bought a condo. One night when he was having an argument with a friend of his, his friend stabbed him. His friend suffered from mental health issues and had been in and out of prison and of course, prison doesn’t help people with those issues. Iron’s friend actually shanked Iron in the chest and Iron drove himself to the hospital thinking it was just a little flesh wound and got stitched up there. The doctors wanted to keep him overnight and of course, Iron didn’t want to get his friend in trouble, so he left, and he bled out internally. Iron was really a lovely person.
At Iron’s funeral, I had seen Andrea, so I asked Andrea if she planned on doing the BBQ again, called Unity BBQ. Part of it was bringing Bloods and Cribs together. Andrea herself had lived a life of crime yes) and because of that had the street credibility that she could flow between north and south of Finch but she herself had gotten tired of going to funerals. She said she had probably gone to fifty funerals, two in one day, and had about five close friends in prison doing life. She looked, as far as doing the BBQ and although she just did this one, , by me asking her, spurred her on to continue to do it. Andrea now, is planning the 9th annual Unity BBQ and its incredible with about 900 people coming to it throughout the day and bringing Bloods and Crips together with the police participating in it is really unheard of. I think, from my relationship with Andrea, she engaged me with a whole other community that I probably would never have been engaged with. A lot of time we work with the community and think, ”Well there’s those bad people that are creating problems for the good people in this neighbourhood and we have to just lock up those bad people.” When you find out the stories, the history, the life and their experiences of these people, there just people trying to make ends meet, get caught up in some negative things but need support. They are wonderful people in their own way.
At one of the Unity BBQ’s, late at night when we were cleaning up and finishing at around 1:30, I couldn’t do anymore. So, I was sitting on the steps and somebody brought me some shish-Kabob to eat so I put my phone down and was eating that then somebody else brought me some jerk chicken and that was more food than I could eat so I ended up putting that in the office, did some stuff in the office and then thought, holy shit I left my phone outside. Came outside, phone’s gone. Anyway, this was around 1:30 in the morning. Skinner, one of gentlemen who had his brother on the mural comes up to me.Now Skinner likes to drink a little and he was a bit pissed. I’d paid Skinner a hospital visit because he had been stabbed a few months back, had just got out of prison and I told him not to retaliate but Skinner is Skinner and says, “You gotta do what you gotta do pastor.” But anyway, he stumbled around that night with a few drinks in him and he says to me, “Don’t worry pastor, I’ll get your phone back – I’ll get your fuckin phone back – I’ll even take a fuckin bullet for ya.” The next day, I get this call from one of the tenant reps from Yorkwoods who said, “There’s this little boy here and he’s got this black phone and I think it’s yours.” It was. So, word got out that basically whoever took Barry’s phone, the pastor’s phone, you better bring it back because otherwise you are going to have to deal with Skinner.
It’s been an interesting kind of relationship that I’ve been able to walk with. I think in the last six or seven years with a community that I don’t think I would ever have access to in this particular kind of way.
What did you find challenging?
I find it challenging with systemic problems that have not gone away and that’s the frustration. We can do some Band-Aids on that, we can do some surgery to that, but the actual disease has actually not been treated and that’s the problem. With that, I think also the challenge and frustration has been the cutting of services. With the Harris government coming in, it got into kind of quantitative kinds of programs versus qualitative programs. They want to know how many people you’ve seen. The amount of community development roles in the community have diminished also. The community ministries from the other faith communities have disappeared. The Mennonites may still have a Chaplain, but a Chaplain just comes and does Sunday service and that’s it. A lot of times the institutions themselves are so big that they play amongst themselves, so they don’t interact with the community agencies. They come to us when they want something versus being enablers and engaging. So it is with housing, I found that and the school board also.
The other challenge that I’ve had with this ministry is keeping it funded and keeping it going. Part of it is the shrinking resources within the church and even though the United Church is probably the most supportive of social justice issues, what’s happening is we’re closing congregations left, right and centre. In many of the congregations, the average age may be 75 and they are going to die anyways. There is this survival mentality and thinking that if they could just go back to the 50’s, everything would be fine. The resources that could be going into community ministry are being used to prop up dying churches.
What are you most proud of?
One of the things I haven’t talked about is the back to school back-pack program and the scholarships. That happened again out of resident organizing. Lorraine, being at the Economic Working Group, (of the Balck Creek Community Capacity Project) and meeting Sharon Simpson with the Labour Community Services, Lorraine said to her “Do you think there are any unions that could help out with some back-pack supplies for school?” Didn’t think anything was going to materialize out of that but then Lorraine comes to me and says, “Good news – one of the unions wants to provide some support for back-packs.” I said, “That’s great, but I’m going on holidays and there’s not much I can do.”
The union wanted to channel the money through a charitable organization so that’s why Lorraine had come to me. I said, “why don’t I write the Tenants Association a cheque and I’ll add another $400 to that.” So, I went off on my holidays and they knocked on a few other doors to increase that money to about $3,000 – doubled it. On their own, by bus and picking up back-packs at different stores, supplies, coming back in a taxi, they filled and distributed 164 back-packs filled with school supplies. So, I came back wanting to pat them on the shoulder and say great job and everything like that and said, “No, no – we don’t want to stop there.” Maryan, who at that point in time was on social assistance said, “I’ve always wanted to start a scholarship program- a scholarship program not for my son but for other people in the community. I’m willing to put in $20 a month of my social assistance into a bank account just to start this.” I suggested that we talk with this union because my understanding of this union “wasn’t wanting to do a one-off but wanted to journey with this community. So, we convinced them to provide us with enough resources to give out 500 pack-packs filled with school supplies and three $1,000 scholarships which actually turned into four and it was actually 700 pack-packs filled with school supplies and also money for the Women’s Group - $400 so they could have money to provide some childcare and refreshments.
The program has continued on and last year we gave out 1,100 pack-packs filled with school supplies and ten $1,000 scholarships. The program is run by the community, we have volunteers stuffing the pack-packs, anywhere from age 2 to 90 years old and the union itself actually does all of the fundraising. The Painters and Allied Trades Union hit up all their friends and they basically send out a donation letter requesting donations, the money gets channeled through the community ministry, we give out tax donations because we pay for the supplies,(or rather reimburse the union for the supplies that were bought), and claim the HST receivable on this. So in addition to hiring a summer student to actually coordinate this program we actually use the HST to cover some of the costs of the BBQ as well as to hire an adult in the community to work in conjunction with the summer student. Unfortunately, we heard that their planning on going in new directions but we’re trying to salvage that.
The other highlights were being awarded a Social Justice Award from the City and from the Labour Council and that came through being nominated by the community. Initially, when the nomination came forward, I said, “no, no, no, I shouldn’t be nominated.” The person said to me, “shut up, don’t disrespect the community, they want to put your name forward. So, it was a great honour that I received that. In 2009, I was actually granted an Honorary Doctorate degree from Huntington University in Thunder Bay and the nice aspect of it was they were able to organize so that I was able to have the degree conferred in the community. Somebody representing the Chancellor actually came to the Firgrove Learning Centre and presented the Honorary Doctor Degree. I’m proud of that.
What advice would you give other Ministers or Priests coming into this community?
I understand the pressures that they are coming from because that’s where as of late, a lot of people were saying that I should be more about discipleship and evangelism and how many people have you converted. That’s never been what this ministry has been about – basically, leave your religion at the door. Accept that it’s an interfaith and no faith community and your work speaks larger than your words. The other thinking, what I have done here is walk the walk, not just talk it. To be in community, I mean really be in community is important. We’re not here to bring God to these people, the old missionary kind of style, but if they opened up their eyes and hearts, they would see that God’s already there, and they would be the ones who would be blessed. I remember one day when I had a really rough week and Andrea texted something to me or told me something. Within the Black community, a fairly common saying is, “Bless up yourself.” For me, yes, we need to do that, you need to “Bless up yourself.” Many good ministers find that they are actually more blessed by working in the community than what they end up giving. You give it away and its given back to you.
I went on sabbatical one year and I got this phone call from Meryl, one of the people in Firgrove, on the Tenants Association and on my steering committee. I was driving to work on my last day when I got the call. I thought maybe it’s an emergency or something like that. So, I pulled over and she said, “I just wanted to pray for you – pray for your sabbatical. That God will Bless you will give you all the rest and care you need”. I have been so blessed working in this community. When my wife Marva was pregnant and the Firgrove Community had a baby shower for us and was given a bassinette that was handed down from community member to community member – a real blessing. To be able to take my daughter to work with me and have somebody in the community, Enedina Vargas and her family, raise my daughter. One of the things she said to me when I first dropped her off was, “Do you have any problems with us teaching her Spanish?” I said, “No.” She said, “Good because that’s the language we speak at home.” So, my daughter became fluent in Spanish at 4 ½ years old and could speak both languages.
During my hip recovery, time off, the community has been so good around telling me to just take care of myself and I keep getting messages around, “Don’t over work, you give so much” and stuff like that. It’s been wonderful to shoulder myself with community that gives so much. It’s such a rich, rich, rich community. Although they might not have money, there are other riches that they truly have.
Any other fond memories you wish to share?
Gregory was one of the first youth I got to know in the community. Rose was on the Tenants Association and Gregory was the youth I got to know that connected me to the other youth. Gregory was the kind of kid that one day, across at 2999 Jane Street, the police were laying the boots to another youth and Gregory stepped in and then he got arrested for obstructing justice and assaulting a police officer, so he went to jail, and the duty council just said to just plead guilty. And he said, “I know my rights, I took a law course at school and I don’t need to do that.” He took it to court and the judge immediately dismissed it. He (the judge) said, I know exactly what happened here. There was another youth on a bike and the police didn’t stop him – he was white. There was a white lady who tried to stop it, and the only reason why you ended up arresting this youth was because he was Black. This Black judge said, I’ve been there, I know what it’s like and he brought the gavel down and said, “Case dismissed.”
Gregory was one of the first youth I knew to get shot. He got shot right in Firgrove by the Firgrove Learning Centre. The sad part about it is that there are people that came forward and the police bungled the case so that those who did come forward, fled for their life because they knew the killer was still out on the street. They knew the killer - they had named him.
You could have heard a pin drop for days afterwards in the Firgrove community. One of the things we did was to have a healing circle to reclaim that space as community and cleansed it, offered prayers and blessings, not only for the death but to also reclaim it. We used a First nations tradition in the community using a talking stick. Instead of using a talking stick we used a black stone because of a dream I had and the stone I actually found. It was a powerful thing to provide healing opportunity for the community with that death.
Another thing that I think was interesting was Care for Caregivers. I had gone to a United Church retreat in which we had some First Nations teachings and came back to the Network of Community Based organizations and talked about this experience of an open space process of workshops and some of the teachings. So, we had a retreat out in Cedar Glen, which at that time was owned by the United Church and had workers out there and it was all about self-care. We had a First Nations teacher talk to us about the medicine wheel and learnings from that. It was an important way of learning from each other what helps us cope in the work we end up doing.
Another important thing that happened was Dusk Dances. We had them at Firgrove. The whole idea was of theatre and dance groups that used space in parks and so we had it in Firgrove – a wonderful, wonderful event. The Peace Carnival at Jane Finch Mall was another important thing that happened and that was after Jordan Manners was killed. Kevin Sutton who was working with the school, used to work at the Youth Clinic, came to the youth around what they wanted, and they said they wanted a Peace Carnival. So, we helped to work with them around developing this Peace Carnival and the interesting thing about it was that the banner that was created for that, the Unity Banner, I had actually taken a picture of it and used that as my Facebook page for the Jane Finch community ministry and low and behold, when I went to Firgrove Public School, up on the 2nd floor, that’s where the mural is. So, it was like a home coming for the community ministry to be there in Firgrove.
My involvement at times has not just been working in Firgrove but in the larger kind of community itself so got involved in the occupied movement. The occupy movement (2012), was about the 99% and the 1%, recognizing that 1% of the population owns all of the wealth and power and we are victims to that. One of the things I liked about the occupy movement was that it was coalescing all kinds of voices together, had some initial impact and it was a global movement. Initially, the first year, they occupied in the park beside St. James Cathedral and stayed there for 40 days before it was finally taken down.
Unfortunately, the church showed up a little late to the parade with the first occupation, so there was Coalition of Faith Leaders that became the Chaplin’s for the occupied movement and we decided if ever there was going to be another occupation in the next year or at any point in time, we would be more involved. In New York, they had actually set up tents and there was a Chapel there and stuff like that.
On May 1st, on the May Day, they had a march that went from City Hall to Scadding Court, where there was food, and then from Scadding Court, we marched to where we were going to occupy again. I had bought a bug tent, we didn’t want a tent that was closed, we wanted something that people could see through and be visible. We got down to a little park that was more of a cement park than anything else right across from the Convention Centre on Front Street and right beside CBC headquarters. We decided that that’s where we were going to occupy. This was a year later, in the spring and the reason they had chosen the occupation across from the Convention Centre was that Barrick Gold was having their Annual General Meeting there, so it was a way to protest. So, we consulted with the occupation organizers to see if they wanted us as Chaplin’s to see if we could test the limits and could put up a tent. We were told by their lawyer that what would happen would be that the police would tell us that we weren’t allowed and that if we continued to put up a tent that we would be charged with trespassing or told to stop and then if we continued, we’d be charged with trespassing and if we continued from that we’d be charged with the obstruction of justice.
So, we decided that we would do this. There were eight of us Chaplin’s down there and four of us were in the process setting up this tent and we had never set up this tent before – one of these ones with the poles so there was a little bit of cussing but before we started, the head police officer comes out and he tells what the script says: I just need to let you know what your rights are – that you’d be obstructing justice and we’ll tell you to stop and if you stay, you’ll be charged with trespassing. So, I asked if we put the tent together and just held it above the ground, would that still be considered an erected structure as that was what the law was - that we weren’t to erect a structure. He laughed and said, yes, he would still see that as an erected structure. So, we got to the stage where none of us wanted to have a criminal record for putting up a bug tent, so we stopped that process and then they rushed us.
In that process, my glasses got knocked off and then I’m rummaging around trying to get my glasses while an officer is trying to take me off to arrest me and then we’re taken around the corner and one officer is an arresting officer and the other officer is saying, “How old are you – are you on any medication” and then we get put in the paddy wagon. The paddy wagon they had was individual cells, not altogether. There was all this commotion and we don’t know what’s going on and all of a sudden what happened to the occupiers – they didn’t know where they were going to take us. They all circled the paddy wagon and wouldn’t let it leave for awhile and they finally let it leave, it takes off, drives around the corner, lets us out and writes us a trespassing ticket. The one officer who is doing the legal work, arresting with me and stuff like that, says, “So, what are you going to do now?” The concern was that if we go back there, they’ll have to arrest us for sure as we’re violating the no trespassing law. I said, “I’m going to go for a beer. Can you recommend a place?” One of the other ministers Lee McKenna said, “Oh, I’d love to go for a beer, but I left my wallet at home. So, I said “I’d take her for a beer and I’d even buy these officers a beer too if they weren’t in uniform.” I mean it was all done very well. What happened in that process is that in the occupier’s eyes, we were seen as putting ourselves out there and it really changed the relationship with the faith community and the occupy movement and so as we continued to work, there was just that much more respect.
What did the community teach you or what did you learn from working in the community?
Humility and respect. One of the things I think about is that I like to lead the parade from behind. When we had a candle vigil for Tahj, one of the Ministers organizing it wanted all the ministers up front. When we started to cross at the cross walk in order to go over to the plaza where Tahj used to hang out and was shot, I found myself waiting to allow everyone to cross the street safely and then somebody, can’t remember if they were on crutches, they couldn’t walk very fast. So, I ended up walking with them. We finally got to the final destination. I think that part of being a community organizer, our role is to help push others forward, give them support and to receive direction from them. The other aspect for me working in a culturally diverse community and predominately a Black community has also been a wonderful experience. I think one of the things that I realized is that even though in Firgrove I’m known so well and respected and stuff like that, one of the things is that when I went to a meeting in Tobermory earlier in my work career, I realized that I couldn’t take that privilege that I had in working in Firgrove and them knowing me, just because I was respected there, didn’t mean that I’m going to be respected in another community. And, I had to recognize that I still have that white privilege and understand what that means to have white privilege and that’s what I mean about humility. A favourite piece of scripture for me is Micah 6-8 which basically says “What is it the Lord requires of you? : To seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Now for me, God isn’t out there or up there. God is here. Got is there. God is within all of us. So, in what the Rastafarians talk about, that incarnational kind of God. I in I. One of the things for me that I look at is to treat everybody with as much respect and dignity because they are truly in essence, God among you. When I talk about walking humbly with God, what I’m talking about is walking humbly in my community.