Brian Whitehead moved into the new townhouses on Driftwood Avenue with his family as a young teenager on March 23rd, 1970 and lived there until February 1980. This was before Driftwood Community Centre was built. As of February, 2011, Brian is a lawyer for the Ministry of the Attorney General and is legal counsel for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.
What were the circumstances that led to your family moving to the Jane Finch community?
I would have been 13 and we lived in Parkdale where we had always lived in the west end of Toronto. I remember my parents telling me that they had applied for subsidized housing and they were waiting to hear from housing. They heard about the program and they thought it was a good idea because rent would be cheaper (we were renting an apartment at the time), and I think they were offered someplace in Scarborough and they were offered someplace in Regent Park and they were offered a place in Jane and Finch. So, they came up to see the place in Jane and Finch and of course it was brand new and we were the first people who had ever lived in that townhouse – 396 Driftwood, Unit 11. So that was the one they chose because who wouldn’t want to have a brand new home!
What was it like when you first moved to Jane and Finch?
Well, I would have been in grade 8 and back in the City, I would have gone to Parkdale Collegiate for grade 9 and here of course there was the Junior High system. Jane Junior High was here so I would have gone to grade 9 at Jane Junior High. Very different feel because from the City, I was living in a very old Victorian neighbourhood in Parkdale and I had gone to a Catholic school as a kid from Kindergarten to Grade 8 - Holy Family school. Old school, old church. I was raised in that whole environment so this was brand new. It was miles from anywhere. There were lots of open fields. There were lots of high-rise buildings. It was a totally different feel, but very futuristic. I remember being about to look out and see York University and the Ross Building and thinking this was something out of 2001, a Space Odyssey – that kind of thing. It had a very modern feel about it. It was all new. And so it was very different from anything that I had ever seen or lived in.
Can you describe what was on the land prior to Driftwood Community Centre being built?
There was a forest and we used to play in there – whatever games like hide and seek, that kind of thing; kick the can. The Driftwood Plaza was there and we used to hang around there as young teenagers and if I remember, 1970 - 1971, it was the start of the drug culture and the drug culture was already starting to filter down to younger teenagers. So, there was stuff going on in the community back then and we were all starting to experiment with things. It was all new. We didn’t know much about it. Our parents wouldn’t have known anything about it – it’s hard to know where that leads, there are so many different things I can talk about.
There was a group of university students from York and they were called the Monday Group and they ran a drop-in centre for kids. We were those kids. Out of 415 Driftwood, on the main floor and you’d go in there and there would be black lights and a poster and a Ping-Pong table and 50 kids sort of jammed in a room. They were long-haired granola crunching sort of Hippy folks who were maybe in their early 20’s, very nice. They would hand out information about birth control, talk a little bit about drugs, they weren’t too pushy, right? It was a drop-in centre; they wanted kids to come in so that was sort of my first exposure to that whole concept of a youth drop-in, having gone to them myself.
That drop-in went on for a couple of years. I’d say from 1971 to 1973 or ’74 at the most. But, what they did which was amazing was they ran a summer camp up on Franklin Island in Georgian Bay. It was an old abandoned camp and they got money from the government and hired local kids from that community. A lot who lived in public housing got to go up to this camp on Franklin Island to be cooks, to clean the garden, to fix up stuff, to be sort of camp counsellors. Now, this wasn’t a middle-class camp or an upper middle-class camp like you might think of kids going to camp at places like Camp Arowhon in Algonquin Park. All these kids; we had long hair, jeans, t-shirts with marijuana leaves on them because it was like people were very much into that culture – rock n roll. I didn’t get hired to work there but I did get to go there one year for part of the camp and I remember them charging $10.00 for 3 weeks of camp – everything included. The Monday Group ran the camp and they got a government grant. They got a school bus. They picked up all the kids on Driftwood. Through the drop-in, they got to be known by adults and others in the community and they must have had money from the Provincial Government. Way back then would have done things like Opportunities for Youth - money that would hire them - who then hired us – kids in the neighbourhood. So, that was a huge and incredible thing. One year, they went up to Quebec (to the Laurentians) and the year that I went (1973), they went to a camp on Franklin Island.
The leaders from the Monday Group lived in the community. A group of them lived together communally over at the Gosford townhouses, just beside 4400 Jane Street where the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre eventually located. We used to go there. They had these old typewriters and we had to go over there to type letters to companies to try to get donations for the camp or for the drop-in centre. They were trying to get us involved in that kind of stuff. They also had an office over at York University so we would sort of wonder over to York University and go through all the maze of the Ross Building and I have no idea of where that office was but it seems to be down in a dungeon somewhere in the basement of the Ross Building. We were fundraising and doing stuff for the camp and for the drop-in centre and so they got people involved. But once they graduated, I assumed they went onto other things and that whole thing kind of died until the York Youth Connection sort of revived things in about ’78.
What do you remember about the York Youth Connection?
Do you know Tyrone Bob or Greg Bob – from the Firgrove area? Greg’s brother Tyrone and I got hired because we were both doing other various things in the community as youth for a period of time and the York Youth Connection was trying to outreach into this community. I think it was somewhere around ’78 - I seem to remember. And so Tyrone used to do these incredible fashion shows and music extravaganzas at Jane Junior High School which is now Brookview Middle School and there’d be hundreds of kids there. The tickets would be 50 cents a ticket or something and I used to help out with those things and I think we ran a camp – we got a camp going on site over at York and we’d take groups of kids from this community over to York University. So, it was to build a bridge between York University and the community.
I got involved with activities outside of the school and I wasn’t a kid that got into trouble but I guess we were all in some ways “at risk” is the phrase they use because we were all young kids and there was a lot of things that could happen and did happen to some of the people that I knew. But, I remember getting a job at North York Parks and Recreation, a summer camp, a day camp. One year, it was at Roding Avenue Public School way down Keele Street somewhere and then another year, it was at Blacksmith Public School. I remember having to wear the Parks and Recreation uniform – the shorts and corny shirt, and getting $35.00 a week which was a huge sum of money and I was thrilled. And I was interviewed by Judy Cooper at the time who was the head of Parks and Recreation and I didn’t know anything about working with kids or anything like that but I guess they decided to give us a chance and it was a great opportunity. So, I started to get involved.
What was the diversity of the community when you first moved in?
The community was basically white and when I say white, I’m thinking of people who would either come from the city and move up here like ourselves, from Parkdale or the east end or west end; people from the Maritimes – Newfoundlanders for example and people from Nova Scotia. There were only a couple of black families who I knew in the neighbourhood and they were related and they were from Nova Scotia so they were African Nova Scotians. They weren’t people from the Caribbean or Africa or anywhere like that and so basically Canadian born I would think. Then the other huge parts of the community were the Italians. There were all the Italian kids that we went to Junior High with, whose families had immigrated, I don’t know when, maybe in the 50’s, maybe earlier. But, they were living in the houses, they weren’t living in public housing per se, they were tending to live in the houses. And so I’d say there were two large sorts of groups. There were very few newcomers that I remember until things started to change.
I think things started to change maybe around ’76 – ’78. I think that already by 1978, people were becoming much more aware of Jane and Finch being a major immigrant reception area. That’s what they were calling it at the time. People were coming from all over the world and they needed public housing or private rental housing or some people bought houses – this was still a relatively new area. The waiting lists were not as long as they are today and people could move in. So, I remember in particular, the Jamaican kids who were totally new and dressed like kids in the 1950’s – that was this sort of incredible style of dress and the music – very different, very old fashioned. They were just sort of arriving and finding their way and all of a sudden you could hear Jamaican music, you would see Jamaican food and you could see kids at the Community Centre who were different. So, things were starting to change.
I never remember it being segregated in a way that you couldn’t go over to someone’s house or go over to part of the neighbourhood or anything like that or go to an event. Initially, I think that people just stayed with their own group of friends. What brought people together were the dances – classic! You have a dance at the high school or have it at Jane Junior High and then you have a mix of rock n roll and reggae. There might be a little bit of a power struggle over music but it was pretty relaxed, pretty mellow. People like Tyrone Bob were great leaders, right? He was probably 21 at the time as was I and great sort of bridge builders because you got to let the newcomers know that this was their community too and let’s sort of do things together.
Tell me about your time in school.
Well, first of all, Jane Junior High – I went to for one year and it was an open concept school. There were no classroom walls. There were just huge areas with hundreds of kids. I had never seen anything like it in my life and they had, instead of teachers like a home-room teacher, you had a “Star-Master”, is what they called the teacher. Instead of a home-room, it was a “star cluster” (in other words, this was very Star-Trekky). Because I had come from this really strict Catholic School, regimented system and I had done relatively well as a student academically, they immediately made me what was called a “self-orbiter”. A “self-orbiter” was someone who just did whatever they wanted – going from class to class and I thought this was amazing! I didn’t even have to come to school if I didn’t want to. They would trust me to make decisions as to whether I should be at school to learn something that day or not. Needless to say, I had a very unproductive year!
That idea must have ended at some point because what was happening at the other end, at Westview, what we were hearing and what I heard as soon as I got there for grade 10 which would have been in 1971 – ’72 was that there was a real discrepancy. The kids from Jane Junior didn’t have any structure, they didn’t have a sense of how to organize themselves, write essays, study, do homework. It was too loose, too open and they were being streamed into general and basic courses. It was really working against them and the kids apparently from Oakdale Junior High were much more academically inclined. So, we were almost labelled and stigmatized for coming from Jane. But, I had only been there for a year so I only “played” for one year – basically, I had still learned enough to pick up the pieces in grade 10 and get back on track. Grade 10 of course, was the classic classroom with desks and a teacher at the front.
What was happening, I mean I was hanging around with middle-class kids whose families had homes and were doing better. I went up to grade 13 at Westview. A lot of the kids that I went to Westview with quit school by Christmas in grade 10. I think it was a combination of things. Maybe people were finding it too hard to do the work since they hadn’t really had an academic background if they had been at Jane for 3 years prior. Also in the early 70’s, there were jobs to be had. A 16 year old could get their license, they could drive a car, they could get factory jobs and there were just a lot of kids who just wanted to work because they wanted to leave home and they wanted to start their lives. So, very quickly, kids from the neighbourhood just weren’t going to school after Christmas of grade 10 so there were just a few that I went to school with from here.
The feeder schools were Jane Junior High and Oakdale Middle School. I don’t remember anybody specifically coming from Elia Middle School but there might have been – or they would have gone to C.W. Jeffery’s. C.W. Jeffery’s was a different feeder high school and it was also known as an arts high school and Westview had a really terrific music program and a lot of sports. One of the Toronto Argonauts, an ex-player of the Argonauts, Mr. Aldridge (played 1965-1973), I don’t remember his first name but he was our physical-education teacher. We had a great football team. We also had a great theatre program and a great music program.
Please tell me what you remember about Lenore Suddes and the Black Creek Venture Group.
Lenore was just one of those rare people in life that you meet who has time for everybody, likes people and wants to help people out and has a great heart and she was absolutely wonderful. We used to call her Ma. She was like a second mother to a lot of people and gave a lot of people their first start in terms of getting part-time jobs, doing recreation and things in the community or giving job references – all kinds of stuff. So she was just this incredible force, really strong woman who had five sons of her own, I recall and who with another group of mainly women in the community and a couple of men started Black Creek Venture Group – I think responding to the drug problems that they were seeing in the 70’s. She apparently was on the founding Board of Directors for the Youth Clinical Services over by the hospital (Humber River Regional Hospital – York Finch site) in response to the drug overdoses that were happening in the community - lots of LSD and various chemicals. There was a whole move from the Federal Government, you know the non-medical use of drugs trying to fund projects in cities to deal with stuff like this and so I think that was part of the impetus. Plus there were no programs in the community for kids – nothing for them to do.
Lenore got a Local Initiative Project grant and that’s of course where I met you (Wanda) back in 1975. They had a satellite office out of the Firgrove Recreation Centre in the Firgrove Housing Project where we had an office to start fanning out and doing different things in the community. Stefan Verstappen and I were the two youth workers. We were going to go out and do outreach and find out what kids wanted to do. As part of that whole process, I remember that Lenore got space at Driftwood Public School and they ran some after-school programs there. That was even before the community centre was built – the Driftwood Community Centre, so that would be pre 1977. That tended to be their little office, that little tiny cubicle where she had everything from the basketballs, the beanbags, the arts and craft stuff and a little desk and a filing cabinet. That’s where everybody would have their meetings. Once the Community centre was built, I think Lenore along with other groups was looking for space. They managed because I’m assuming they had built up a bit of a track record and people knew they could run programs out of Jane Junior High or at Driftwood School, Shoreham School - that they were able to get space - probably one of the first or the only community group that got an office in the Driftwood Community Centre. That’s what I recall of it.
All of a sudden things shifted over there and at one point the organization got a grant from the Provincial Government, the Ministry of Correctional Services, I believe it would have been called at the time, to do a community probation counselling support program for young adults between 16 and 24. That started about 1980. I had already left the community at that point and wasn’t involved in any particular activities but I continued on till the early 80’s and I received a call from Lenore one day when I was in Journalism school at Ryerson. I was in the middle of my second year and she called me up to tell me about this program that they were starting and she was wondering if I was looking for work and would I be interested in coming back to the community.
It was that phone call that really changed my life. I almost fell off my chair, partly because I was enjoying journalism but not necessarily sure that that was where I wanted to go and it also sounded like an offer that was too good to be true – back at the Driftwood Community Centre, helping them to put together what became known as the Black Creek Attendance Centre. So it would be counselling, linkages to programs, it would be supervision of people who were on probation, adult education, all kinds of ideas. The sky was the limit. We could do whatever we wanted to try to engage people who had been in trouble with the law and hopefully help them get on a more positive path. It just sounded like it was a real challenge for me. I never quite functioned at that level; in a sort of a community youth worker role and she wanted me partly because of my writing ability. She needed someone to help write a funding proposal and she knew that I was taking journalism at Ryerson and I had developed some skills in that area. So, I came up for an interview with the Board of Directors and the next thing I knew, I was back in the community.
I came back in March of ’82 and I was there till August of ’84, only there for about 2 ½ years. I had an office at Driftwood Community Centre. When I came there, Karen McCullah was there – she was later married and her name became Karen Vandervelde. She was the secretary. Her brother was a police officer at 31 Division. I got hired and it was just Karen and I. We got more funding so we were able to hire Faith Hewitt who was a new graduate of the Humber Community Worker program and she became a community probation worker as was I. Then we hired Vidoll Regisford. So, there was Karen, Faith, Vidoll and myself – the four young people, all in our 20’s. I think Vidoll was younger; he might have been 19 - who became the probation workers working with a caseload of clients who would be referred over from Black Creek Probation and Parole which had an office over at 2065 Finch Ave. West. Even to this day, they (the probation office at 2065 Finch Ave. West) are still there.
This experience influenced me to go to York to study law. I found out from George MacKenzie who was working for Children’s Aid Society at the time and who had an office also at the Driftwood Centre and he was on the Board of Black Creek – that they had a mature student program at York University at the Osgoode Law School where they would look at your background, your life experience and they set aside 30 spaces each year out of an incoming class of 300 for mature students. I wasn’t that mature, I was only 27 but I had different life experiences put together and I applied. I had to do the law school entrance exams the same like everybody else and went through all of those hoops. I also, because I was in a smaller pool of applicants, I think I had an advantage in terms of being able to get a personal interview with the university. I think with the community background and the work that I was doing and had done was a real plus and that was the kind of thing they were looking for. As a result, I got accepted at Osgoode Hall and went there starting in September 1984.
Can you tell me what you remember about the YAP (Youth Action Project) Initiative?
Barb Dorrie, John Parker, Irene Shapiro and Tom Hartman worked out of a trailer behind the Jane Finch Mall. They had a federal grant through the none-medical use of drugs, not sure which department that would have been – I don’t think it would have been the Department of Justice but it might have been the Department of Health – maybe a Corrections angle where they had programming for youth. They had a trailer and it was supposed to be a meeting place and they were doing street work – they were youth workers. I’m not even sure how but I remember wandering into the trailer myself and meeting them and we were doing things in the community and so were they.
We were sort of older youth (19), Stefan and I. We were sort of a Mutt and Jeff partnership, the two of us – we had been personal friends before that and we were both hired as youth workers and we linked up with them. John Parker was already doing street-work at the time, meeting with families and kids who had been identified I guess by the schools - who had been in trouble with the law and trying to work with them and trying to give them some positive direction - great, great program. They were probably there from I think about ’74 to ’78. I don’t think it lasted very long. Tom Hartman was one of the street workers and he was a musician when he wasn’t doing that and eventually, he taught guitar lessons at the Driftwood Community Centre. They bought a bunch of guitars for kids who couldn’t buy their own guitars and they would run music lessons.
From a youth perspective, what were the main issues back then?
People were getting in trouble with the law so there were people going to jail or going to training schools at the time – if they were under the age of 16. They were called juvenile delinquents back then, before the Young Offenders Act - that came in 1984. I think that people weren’t going to school and taking advantage of higher education and I think initially that was okay because there were jobs and people wanted to move out and get away from home. They were from large families and maybe wanted some privacy or maybe there were issues at home as well. I don’t know in the long term how that worked out for everybody. Initially, I think it was a plus for a lot of young people who were from working-class families and in public housing who were then working and renting their own apartments. And they were buying cars. They may not have been new cars but they were doing okay and doing the kinds of things that young people wanted to do.
What was the relationship between youth and the police in those days?
I never had any negative interaction with the police just because I just didn’t. Other people did and I guess it was the beginning of foot patrols and North York’s Mayors Committee, Mayor Mel Lastman’s Committee on Race Relations. We had a 31 Police Division group that would meet and Julian Fantino at the time was the Detachment Commander - and he is now the head of the Ontario Provincial Police. Irene Pengelly was in that group as you may know and Lenore Suddes used to go to that and John and Jean Campbell. All kinds of people went in and out – it was a good committee. I think they were trying to introduce community policing, getting the officers out to walk and met kids instead of just coming in to arrest kids. So, we used to have them over to the drop-in Centre (415 Driftwood Drop-in Centre) and they’d play Ping-Pong and they’d hang out and it was a good way for them to meet the young people and not be in a confrontational situation.
I remember one day when a young officer was playing ping-pong and at the end of the game he went to get his hat – he’d taken his hat off. Well, the hat was gone. One of the kids in the drop-in centre had taken the hat and of course this was just devastating to us because here we thought we were building links between the police and the kids and someone had taken the hat. For an officer to lose a hat at the time with their badge on it was not a good thing. We put the word out that the hat had better come back and within about ten minutes, kids went out into the street, went around the neighbourhood and that hat came back in one piece! No questions asked. I think that was sort of a bit of a testament to the fact that the kids actually wanted the Centre to stay there and didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. Maybe they thought the best of it. It was a bit of a prank at the time but we always thought that this was a really good thing – we got the hat back. The officer left happy and the relationships were okay and they still came back to play ping-pong. But, they held onto their hats!
Who were responding to the issues – government, residents, influential people, others?
It was the residents, for sure. The Parks and Recreation people I thought were useful, the people who worked for Parks and Recreation. Sometimes it seemed like there were bureaucrats as well and they had rules and regulations and there were issues in getting permits, space in schools and all those kinds of things. I thought they were pretty good overall and they really were helpful to all of us in getting into the schools. The Board of Education had some good people. We were in North York and North York had a lot of money back then in the early 70’s – a showcase community in many respects. Mel Lastman was the Mayor. But really, I think it was people in the community; people like Lenore, people like Pat O’Neil, people like yourself, John and Jean Campbell, Marg Ferrie who was also with the Black Creek Venture Group. I remember her. She thought we should get more services for kids and they learned how to do grant applications and they learned how to get incorporated.
There was an accountant, Bob Velthere who I remember, still the Chartered Accountant at the Jane/Finch Centre. It’s fabulous to have someone like that who is a professional who could help people with their books. I can’t remember who the lawyers were. There had to be some lawyers back then that helped people but I do remember the big Member of Parliament whose praises where always sung at the time – Bob Kaplan who eventually became the Minister of Justice in the Trudeau government. But, he of course was the Liberal Member of Parliament for York Centre and I think that Fred Young was a NDP Member of Provincial Parliament for York West. But Bob Kaplan was instrumental in getting Liberal money into this community in the ‘70s and really helping community people to actually have a budget.
What was challenging for you?
Those were good years – always had good times and overall good experiences in this community. The only thing that would have been challenging would have been being a young person and needing to get an education, needing to get some credentials, needing to get some experience and maybe wanting to be taken more seriously but still being too young to know how to do that….just developing in that way. Other than that, because I had been given some wonderful opportunities….I always had a bit of pocket money, I had a job, I had places to go, things to do and I liked doing the stuff and they were obviously willing to put up with me!
What are your fondest memories of living, working and volunteering in the community?
If I had to narrow it down to just two things, certainly the camping trips we used to do, with Jane Junior High. Some of the teachers that were there – Wayne McRoberts, Wendy Montreuil who were in the guidance department and they were real outdoors people and this was somewhere between ’76 and ’78. We used to go on some great field trips and camping trips to Mono Mills, Mono Centre with kids and Nellie Clyke who was a mother in the community, who had kids in the community. She was originally from Nova Scotia and also a teacher’s aide at Jane Junior High as was Ronnie Alomar who lived just down the street from me. They were great people at the time – good community leaders. The schools were hiring parents as the teacher’s aides, which was a good thing because kids could see people like themselves in the schools. You had responsible adults in the evening that you might see at school the next day. So, I think it was a really good thing. So, the camping trips were great fun and the other great joy for me was having met my wife, Debbie who also grew up in the area. Deb’s family lived in the same project that I did just down the street. So knowing that family and getting to know them and meet them through school and high-school and in the neighbourhood was great.
Any other comments or last thoughts?
One of the things I probably learned about life, thinking back on growing up here is just how fragile things can be and how easy it can be to lose what you have. Each new generation of young people needs to be nurtured and needs to be given opportunities to make some reasonable mistakes so that they can find their place. I think it’s really important that all the work that you are doing today is still marvellous and makes me feel like the work I did way, way back then has been sort of a continuum. I really feel it’s important to keep transferring the values and success stories and the how to practical knowledge for the newcomers and for the kids so that they can continue and take over and continue on. It’s very important – without people willing to put in the time and teach others - all that knowledge gets lost and everybody has to reinvent the wheel. So, I’m very happy and proud to have been a part of this. Thank you so much for asking me, Wanda!