Byron Gray worked for the Jane/Finch Centre for 14 years, starting in 2003 and in that time helped to establish and then manage the award-winning program called The Spot: A Place Where Youth Wanna Be. Byron lives with his lovely wife Shakarra along with their daughter, Mia in Etobicoke. As of October 2019, Byron continues to work in the Jane-Finch community as the Manager for York University's TD Community Engagement Centre in the Yorkgate Mall, just down the aisle from The Spot.
Please start by telling me a bit about yourself and how you came to work in the Jane-Finch community.
I've lived in the Jane-Finch community for the majority of my life since I was four. I've lived between Jane and Sheppard and Jane and Shoreham but mostly at Jane and Sheppard, on the northeast corner in a townhouse complex. We lived there for the majority of our time and then we moved to Woodbridge when I was about twenty-one. It's kind of a traditional story for a lot of young people in Jane-Finch – we go to school here locally but the only difference for me was that I was part of the French immersion program so I ended up having to go to school outside of the community for high school. I went to Newtonbrook Secondary and that was a whole different exposure, a different population, mostly Jewish, Persian, Russian, very few Filipino students and a hand full of students from the Jane-Finch community. Me, I'm Jamaican. It was a different exposure, absolutely and so when I come back to the community, I'd share what I knew but it gave me a different outlook and perspective on life in general.
For the majority of my upbringing with a single parent mom, very faith based as well, so she was Christian and grew us up in the church, so I had that as a bit of a moral compass to help me navigate social spaces. What got me involved in the community side of things – there wasn't much for us back then, we had a few community centres. I met Phil Edwards, one of the little tough's running around (Phil later worked for Parks and Recreation). There was very little happening for us in the community, so we spent a lot of time with the guys who were outside, on the corners and stuff like that. We got a little caught up in the drug trafficking ring of things and so going back and forth to Jamaica transporting, things like that.
It kind of went sideways at one point and we lost one of our friends and that was the spark factor that said that I had to do something different, that I had to change the way I'm living. When we lost him, that was the point that I said, I know better than this, I can do better than this, I'm better than this and I don't want anyone else to go through this to learn that kind of lesson. And, that is where the community side of things started to trigger.
So, I went to college - my mom kind of pushed me as well because I was off school. I graduated early, had my OAC's early so I had a semester off basically and it was in that time where I got a little bit more caught up. So, she's like, "No, you have to go back to school – I don't care what you take, just go back". Based on what happened, I decided to take Social Service work at the beginning to get more involved in community work.
Through that program, I ended up doing my placement at the Jane/Finch Centre and that was where I started to become more aware of my surroundings, what was available and the agencies that existed and some of the resources that existed for young people in the community. I started in the Child/Parent Component (later it was called Early Years, now Early ON), working with parents and preschool children. This was different for me as there wasn't a lot of male influences in those programs, so a lot of the parents gravitated to me. We had one or two volunteers – Robert was one of our volunteers and I enjoyed the work, but it wasn't fulfilling the purpose that I felt I had at the agency.
I started working there in 2004, working with the families and seeing a lot of the children growing up and then there was an opportunity to work with youth because the youth department was starting to dwindle out – Delia had left, Szimbah was about to leave and Jane-Milo was available. So, when the Jane-Milo opportunity came up, that's when I moved in that direction. I started part-time at Jane-Milo and that's where I found exactly what I wanted to do with young people, especially young Black boys where I could see the trajectory where they would be heading down if there wasn't some type of intervention to prevent them from getting caught up.
What issues were youth facing at that time?
I think the youth were feeling some of the trickle down from what the political climate was like. So, Bob Rae days were kind of a hard time for a lot of young people when it came to housing and where they were living. There was a huge shift in TCHC where people had to move from the south side of Jane-Finch into the north side of Jane and that's where a lot of the violent tensions started to come from. There was a huge influx of guns in our community at certain points as well.
I remember growing up - there was always this sense of belonging that needed to happen and I think with a lot of displacement of where people were living and having to form new alliances with new families and new friendships, it caused a bit of disruption to the way of life for many people. Then, smaller gangs were forming in the late 1980s and early '90s. We had the Vice Lords, Triph Kids, Loonie Toonz, M & M's, like they were all different, smaller gangs in small pockets. The Bloods and Crips came after that where it was more definitive of like if you are on this side of the street, you were a Blood and if you were on that side of the street, you were a Crip, right? That came later but a lot of that came from the economic situations most people were in, not being able to find employment, education being a bit more dismal at the time and just wanting to be part of a family. Parents were working two or three jobs, rarely home – you were being raised by your neighbours or by the kids on the street. There was a bit of a loss there – not a lot of infrastructure and support in the community to support the numbers that we had. If you look back, it was very vibrant and it's still vibrant now.
I think there was more foot traffic happening in the community back then, but we were using outdoor spaces to just sit and commune and talk. It wasn't like there were actual spaces created, we created them organically. I think a lot of that impacted some of the social and economic problems we had and that fell on to youth and them feeling like they had to come up with solutions to their problems, having bad relations with the police. It was popular culture shifting, hugely onto television into music, into several other factors. We saw it happening around us.
How did governments or influential people respond to the issues?
I think there was a huge lack of awareness. Now we have a lot more education and a lot more research has been done but back then, I think there was a lack of awareness and a lack of diversity within our political environment. It was very top down, authoritarian type of rule over communities like ourselves.
The City of Toronto didn't care very much about what was happening in communities like ours. It felt like if you weren't part of the downtown core, you were not a priority at all. The politicians we did have focused more on the priorities of their Italian constituents which were homeowners, their needs came first which put the large social housing community into issues and I guess controversies around what the real priorities were for them. I think, politically and for where the politicians were involved, I think there was a huge disconnect, a huge ignoring of culture and the importance of those things and ignoring diversity in a sense. We were visually diverse but that didn't reflect within our political realm.
Tell me about The Spot and how it came into being.
After working for the Jane/Finch Centre for two years and as things progressed, the youth team went down to just myself and that's when I started to accept volunteers to help with some of the work that was happening there, Clare Blythe was a great volunteer coordinator and recruiter. Sue Wilkinson (Executive Director) sat with me a said, "Okay, what do you want to do, how do we expand this?" We started talking about doing a partnership with the Griffin Centre to figure out how we evaluate what the current climate was for young people in our community given that we had lost the biggest youth program at that time – Youth Clinical Services. We tried to identify some of the gaps and that's when we partnered up with the Young Leaders and the Griffin Centre.
The Young Leaders - at the time, was a small formation of a group of youth at Westview. They formed themselves based on some of their interests and it was a good mix of students. Some were doing academically well and then others were just more interested in other things outside of school, but they still attended. On top of us doing a bit of outreach to build that group, the core of them were very diverse in their interest, skill set, and association but the one thing they all had in common was that they wanted their community to do better, be better and feel better for other people. When we got together, we started talking about what we wanted to do, what kind of impact we would want to have, and we had a hard time figuring that out in the beginning. And I was kind of at a loss because there was so much happening and there were so many ways, we could have taken it, so we decided to do a bit of an environmental scan to see what was available.
We did a lot of surveying, focus groups and different initiatives to give youth a voice and to be part of that process. We did about 350 surveys with young people in the Jane Finch community to figure out the gaps in youth programs and services. They ended up saying that the top issues that they saw were violence, housing, health, racial profiling from a policing perspective and then there were some other things around addiction, education and so on. What we ended up figuring out mostly was that young people needed space or a place where they could connect but also have access to resources and adult allies. Somewhere they could ask questions to find some guidance outside of their school, outside of their homes, a space where they could have ownership, in a sense.
At that time, we were sharing a lot of spaces with seniors or in children's spaces. The problem with that was if a senior's program wanted to do something or a children's program, they took priority. And so, we were bouncing from space to space or we were in the basement of 4400 which was fine but not the best place to be when you are trying to be creative and develop dreams or plans for the future of young people in our community. It also wasn't that inviting for kids who didn't live at 4400. In terms of access and territory, we felt that we needed a different space. I think that's where some of the ideas and sparks started to happen with The Spot. So, going back and forth with Sue around some of the findings we had throughout that process, she started to dig on her own and started to talk to people about the possibility of creating something.
Once we had done these surveys, we had built the capacity of the young people to analyze and synthesize the information and develop a report. We submitted that to the City of Toronto, and that's probably sitting on a shelf somewhere or you can find it on the internet as well but with that, Sue went out and started speaking to people and talking about the findings we had. The Young Leaders were doing presentations at different universities, York included, and through that, we received a lot of responses around creating a space. The United Way, IBM, Lexmark and the Ontario Trillium Foundation came together and said that they would help us create a space.
The youth summarized all the information they heard and said that if they had a space where they could create and have ownership over, then it would resolve a lot of the issues they were finding and that was a priority. That's when we started talking, one of our first questions was "What would we want the space to look like, what are the symbols or the visuals that we want to see, what are the programs we want to have in those spaces and what kind of people do we want supporting those spaces?" And so, they pretty much developed everything you can see when you go to The Spot at the Yorkgate Mall.
To make sure we were representing their vision, they were part of the visual process, the language, the types of programs that were going to happen there and they developed an amazing space. They came up with a slogan of Where You(th) Wanna Be, The Spot as a title, it was just cumulative thoughts of what is the one place that everyone wants to be at and would enjoy and feel ownership over. I think that's what started the culture in that space around no policing, no necessary adult policing, just adult support. I think that was a different concept that didn't exist in any youth spaces outside of downtown Toronto. We had minimal issues having to do with theft. We had minimal issues around bullying. Once there was a culture that was fostered amongst the staff, amongst the students, amongst the visitors in that space, it was kind of an understanding. They also wanted to create different ways of communicating the culture and they did by creating a graffiti art mural on the wall divider in the middle of The Spot. They did a lot of work to make sure that space felt warm, felt welcoming and inclusive to everybody.
How did you establish a safe environment at The Spot?
It was all new to all of us. We had done some research around what the youth space looked like in Toronto - what should we have for these spaces, what makes these spaces work well. There were administrative logistics around staffing and hours of operation and things like that, but we had a lot of trial and error phases looking at working from 9:00 to 9:00 at one point with four staff. Now we have to be cautious of burn-out, but also being available to youth and what does that look like, so do we increase our staff, do we change our hours? So, we ended up looking at our trends like when youth were accessing the space. They weren't coming first thing in the morning – okay so maybe we should shift our times to a little bit later and increasing our volunteers who commit time to be more like mentors in that space.
In terms of creating safe spaces, which is the backbone to The Spot itself, it started from youth who felt ownership of that space and that meant getting them involved in our Youth Council, getting them involved in capacity building programs, being connected to mentors and that's kind of the foundation of where The Spot started with the safe spaces. Helping people understand and intentionally having those conversations when youth are in that space about respect and differences and communication was important. We've had many stories where young people came to that space with their perception of what the space is or how they conduct themselves in other spaces. We just had to always restate with intentional repetition that we always had in terms of how we greet each other when we come into the space.
When we walk in the door and you see somebody at the front, you acknowledge their presence. We understood that youth in our community were often overlooked and misunderstood which made them feel invisible to people, so they felt people were invisible. We just really let them know that you're here, I'm here, we care, we hope you care so let's say good morning or good afternoon and, how are you? And it would start from there. That's how we built a lot of trust and rapport with a lot of the young people that we met over the years and that is what fosters lasting relationships. Having intentional relationships – this is stuff we were learning as we went along.
There weren't any models that we could follow that we saw would work for the space so as this happened, I wish we did more formal documentation of that process. I think that's what we are all going through in the sector – yes, we had some very strong work that was done but maybe it wasn't as documented as we'd like it to be replicated but this is where I think The Spot started to create impact in the city where the city knew of the work we were doing. We were able to use that model that we developed over the years and visited other spaces and informed them on how to create supportive and safe youth influenced spaces. We've done work in Scarborough, Rexdale and downtown. We partnered with the Arcade with St. Stephens a few times over to just talk about what creates an ideal space for young people and not from the perspective of the city, not from the perspective of adults but coming from the youth.
We were fortunate enough to talk with master’s students at York University to assist them in understanding youth in the Black Creek area. We were connected with Dr. Susan McGrath and so we were able to do a few talks with her students who were going to be out there in the field and working with young people similar to ours so being able to communicate and share our work, was a great opportunity for everyone. I think that is how we started to create those safe spaces. Not having camera's at the time was a huge advantage for young people because they felt that they were being under surveillance everywhere they went and so coming to The Spot, having a safe space and saying there weren't any camera's in the space, meant we have to be responsible for ourselves and our friends. The space was neutral – it was almost like Amsterdam in a sense, like there's a safe space where we don't have those conflicts. If you come from the north or the south – we were pretty much on neutral territory because we were at the intersection. but there were no restrictions for anybody living south of Finch to access that space.
The police and mall security – we had agreements with them to maintain a safe space. They had to let us know in advance if they were going to be coming in or if they do come to the door and they have to come in, they check in with one of the managers first and then we would give them the pass to come in. Mind you, we didn't have to oblige those requests, but I think that through continuous conversations, there was respect there as well. I know we had a hard time with security in the beginning. When we first moved in there was a hesitation to even have a youth centre, thinking it would increase the youth population in the mall and enhance a lot of the issues they were already having with loitering, thief and things like that. I think two years in, we had a sit down with the mall security in our space and with our youth to kind of heal from some of the past issues that youth had experienced there – to talk about some of the bands that they had already charged youth with and we also discussed behaviour and how we conduct ourselves in the mall as customers. Because of that open forum and conversations, we were able to establish an understanding that if youth were already banded, that they would have the ability to access our services directly and then be escorted by ourselves out of the mall. We had agreements that security would not come into our space without having a staff escort them in our space so they just couldn't go looking for kids.
It was the same thing for the police – they couldn't come in just to look for kids. We had agreements that if there was a fight outside of the mall with a young person, especially with a young person who participates in our program that we would have an ability to help advocate and create an understanding around the situations with security. So, there were a lot of times where they would come to us and say, we have this individual, they were caught stealing or they were caught in a fight. Do you know this young person? which allowed us to advocate or mediate the situation.
The mall sent us a letter stating that since we have arrived in the mall, loitering had gone down significantly and we said yes, of course. They have a place to go now – they don't need to loiter. They had never thought of it in that frame. Then there were incidents on a whole around thief – it had gone down as well. Incidences, where they had to call the police, had gone down because we were able to mediate between those situations. Having great staff who were dedicated and trained in working with youth had changed the whole dynamics at the mall.
In terms of replicating this kind of space in malls, it's not cheap – the rent is expensive. The Spot does not generate revenue so not an easy model to replicate. The needs are slightly different based on the community you are in. Some would benefit more from an art-specific space or recreation only for youth. Youth dedicated spaces are needed, for sure. Yorkdale has one but its downstairs and kind of out of the way – you don't see it. Dufferin Mall had a dedicated youth space, Malvern has The Spot in the Hub at the library. So, spaces were coming up and these are all spaces where we had conversations with organizations and influenced their development. Whenever people had questions, they called The Spot to navigate something. Youth Challenge Fund sat with us for a bit to figure out how we do the work that we do, Trillium also. We had international visitors – from the Netherlands looking at public spaces and how to make them more youth friendly and accessible.
Tell us about Freedom Fridayz.
Freedom Fridayz initially started with a conversation between Andrew Newsom who is no longer with us – he passed away a few years ago but it started with a conversation between him and Kofi Frempong from the Black Creek Community Health Centre (BCCHC). It was just from a thought - what kind of space could we create that doesn't have to exist, physically with walls and boundaries that would promote healthy vibes. Butterfly GoPaul, along with Kofi and Andrew got a few young people together to just display their talents. It started from a small space like that and I caught wind of it just in passing and said that we had a large population of young people, people who we thought would enjoy being a part of this. That's where The Spot and BCCHC started to partner on Freedom Fridayz.
It started with a small group of five and every week it was doubling to the point where we said we couldn't manage a weekly program like this, so it just became a monthly endeavour. We started having it at The Spot, we moved over to Black Creek to the point where we outgrew those spaces and then we started to use the mall space to the point where it was too loud for the mall. We moved it over to the Yorkwoods Library where we had a lot more Freedom Fridayz events happening there. But, throughout that process, we realized that it had grown beyond just sharing talent.
Initially, we had 5, doubled to 10, doubled to 20, then it went up to 40 and we outgrew space when it was 60. At our height, it was about 150 people. When it kind of started to die down, we were about 70 people which was a lot. The population kind of changed as well. In the beginning, it was heavily youth and when we moved to the library, it started to be 50/50 to include children and families with less youth participation in the audience. They were still the performers. We realized that and kind of changed how we did our outreach to folks through social media and then it kind of grew back to the youth population. Now, it's more just community with seniors – depending on where we are. It does look different now than it did before.
As we were growing, we realized that this would be a perfect opportunity to introduce a couple of new pieces to Freedom Fridayz so we started opening it up to entrepreneurs – young entrepreneurs who made soap or who may sell products like their own CD's or they may sell jewellery that they make and so forth. We'd give them a platform to showcase what they had. We would do runway fashion shows for people who made clothing or for people who sell jewellery, we came up with a segment where they talked about their pieces of jewellery. We had different themes like a women's only day where the DJ was a woman, where the performers were women, the organizers were women, just to focus on some of those aspects. We had a mental health focus, we focused on children, so we gave themes to a lot of those things and as we became a little bit larger, the City picked up on the work that we were doing.
They loved how it mobilized the community, how it encompassed community, how it had different arms around supporting entrepreneurs, supporting artists. It was a platform where if you weren't sure what you wanted to do with your artistic ability, that you could do it here judgement free. It would expose you to people, you would be able to have communication and feedback with those individuals and then you could go from there. We've had a lot of artists who have made art their careers. They started doing international work, they started group bands – made CD's and becoming profitable. Now they work for the City, they do City events and things like that. So, it grew a lot bigger than we had envisioned.
With that, there was a lot of support from the Jane/Finch Centre and the BCCHC when that brought on a slew of partners who would come in and out because they had their priority and mandates and needed some assistance and planning. Now we've become a bit of a broker when it comes to artists. We have a roster of artists that people might come to us and say they need a graphic artist, or I need somebody that can perform at an event or things like that. We're able to send out emails and give artists opportunities to make some money.
There was a lot of support from BCCHC and the Jane/Finch Centre for quite some time, but we found that over time, the agencies had less of an understanding of what was possible with Freedom Fridayz. I don't know if that was because of the way we described it – communication around what Freedom Fridayz was or could be or not understanding that and maybe on the part of the agencies, not much involvement outside of the individuals that were in it and planning the events.
It lost support from BCCHC where they said they wouldn't put any more funds towards it because they were changing their focus around what community engagement looked like for them and from a health perspective which left the burden on the Jane/Finch Centre which we couldn't manage long term. We were able to continue for another year in terms of programming dollars and so, not wanting it to disappear and knowing that we had residents calling every month to say, "are you guys having Freedom Fridayz– where is it, what's happening"? We decided to see what we could do on our own, outside of the agency.
The City of Toronto approached us and said, "We loved what you guys are doing, we want to help grow your capacity to maintain this, even though you may not have it as part of an agency program anymore and what are your thoughts?" And so, myself, Krystle, Kofi, Felix, Andrew at the time, took the City up on their offer and they helped us do some capacity building, looking at strategic planning, looking at risk-management, looking at our outreach strategies, our communication strategies – all those pieces. We were doing that on our own time, outside of our organizations. We were able to establish a bank account and through that, we were able to get on the Toronto Public Library vendors list and the TCHC vendors list. We were mentored by Urban Arts and they showed us their system, they showed us how they manage artists – they did a lot of work with us. Now we're able to support the city, whether it's the Toronto Public Library or the City of Toronto generally around events planning and running Freedom Friday throughout the City.
We have another event coming up on September 27th – Foodie Fest which happens in the Rexdale community. Its extremely difficult but because of how we have set ourselves up, we have a couple of volunteers that support planning – everybody has a role so we're a bit more organized. There are systems in place so that takes the burden off of a lot of the logistics and running around and things like that. We did a few things in Scarborough, at the Scarborough Town Centre. Its been great and we're looking at succession planning as well so we can pass it on and that's where Jane Street Speaks kind of formulates a little bit. I think if we had more time, as we all have so much going on, that we could have found a way to make it into a social enterprise. If we had done this earlier, we would have done that. Where we were at the time and now, there's way too much happening - we'll all busy.
Nathan Baya is the lead for Jane Street Speaks. A lot of the original founding members of Freedom Fridayz performed there. They supported Nathan so when we started to take a bit of a hiatus in the frequency of Freedom Fridayz, they were still looking for space to express their art, to mobilize youth from different communities. So, Nathan was looking for spaces and he ended up finding a space downtown, initially to do the first Jane Street Speaks, south of here. The gift that he has is to share his vision with the youth who don't just live in Jane-Finch. He had youth from Scarborough, youth from Rexdale and they would all come together to share and be in a safe space, positive space and just be creative. So, there is Spoken Word – similar to Freedom Fridayz. He continues with this, has done work in the Jane-Finch Mall and he wants to keep that going but again, eventually, the resources aren't there to support him, so it becomes a barrier. I think the way Freedom Fridayz has been able to sustain itself is that everybody with their skill set contributes and that reduces the cost by so much. Partnerships, collaborations – if you can't maintain those things, it just becomes difficult to sustain it.
What were some other highlights of The Spot?
We won quite a few awards in the beginning. We received a Bhayana Award from the United Way in innovation and Team excellence and we received The Community MVP award from the Toronto Raptors Foundation. Other highlights were CHILL and Project Canoe.
The CHILL Project was a snow-boarding program with all expenses paid including transportation, equipment, lift tickets and trainers and the young people experience something they probably never would have done because of the financial barriers that exist. We had a young man who ended up getting an invitation to British Columbia to compete in some snowboarding Olympic type of event because he picked it up so quickly. They were very impressed with his ability, so they brought him over there to compete. He lost but it was more about the fact that he was able to even do that at all. That was the first time that had ever happened through Burton (the snowboarding company) who sponsors a lot of these programs.
Project Canoe – that was one of the more impactful and life-changing trips that happened every year. We were fortunate enough to partner with them for over seven years looking at bringing young people from the Jane-Finch community up to Temagami to go to the different islands up there through canoeing. It was a completely different emersion and experience for them because there were no cell phone towers up there, no bathrooms. You were eating very minimally – whatever you carry is what you eat so we were all vegetarians for a week.
They offered three types of trips – the 3-day trip, a 5-day trip and a 20-day trip. The 3-day was for beginners, just to get you out there and to give you an experience. The 5-day was for returning campers who enjoyed it but wanted to experience it a little more and then the 20-day was for anyone who wanted to become a camp leader or build some capacity around leadership and bring that into their community. We had several young people who went through that whole phase but the one impactful piece for us that happened a lot of the time was when they came back. We always received calls from their parents, and this is something that rarely happens with any of the other programs that we did. Parents would call us, and they would say things like, "What did you do with our son" or "What did you do to our daughter?" We got very concerned because we didn't know. "Right now, they are in the kitchen, cleaning". And we're like, "What do you mean"? "They're washing the tub; they're doing things they never did before they left". I think that came from the fact that when we were out there.
The one thing that was said over and over was "you are a unit, you are a team – nothing happens without the other". So, we had to carry canoes together and if one person slacked, it made it harder for everybody. We had to portage across to the islands and if somebody didn't carry their weight, it put a strain on everybody. When you come back home to a family unit where it is just you and your mother or you have three siblings or it's a dual-parent household, the piece around what teamwork means is different.
It gave them a new perspective – it gave them a new appreciation for food, for the conveniences we experience, transportation – all of those things shifted their perspective. The fact that they could see stars – some didn't know we had so many stars. A shooting star was a fairy tale in a book, not something you saw three times in a night. A lot of those different exposures to say there is more to life than the four street walls you put up in your community made them want to travel which made them grow more intellectually about what existed outside of the community. Those types of exposure trips are what people should support until the end of time. Chill continues to happen at The Spot but no more Project Canoe. Its more on Project Canoe's side – they still exist as an organization but the neighbourhoods they support have changed.
There was one trip that stood out for me when I started around 2008. There was still some trickling off from "summer of the gun" stuff – we had a lot of the young people that were involved in some of that activity and it was right after Jordan Manners had passed and we said that we needed to get them out of the community and just heal. Phil Edwards and I were able to coordinate a trip. Sue helped us to get some funds to support the trip and we took them up to a Catholic site because there was no other space. So, we went to a Catholic camp and there was like Mary standing statues and everything everywhere – kind of scary up in the woods but regardless we had fun. We were able to get them up there which was a bit of a struggle because these guys are hard, and they don't want to go anywhere and whatever the case may be. But we convinced them to have a fellowship with their boys up north and they turned into mice! They were just young people, they were crying, they were opening up, they were talking about the hardships but the one thing that stood out for us was when they came back. Just hours before we came back, there was a shooting in Driftwood Court and many of them said they would have been there because they got the call as soon as they got back. They would have been there had we not taken them away. That was so impactful for us to know that we helped save some lives that weekend, just because we wanted to expose them to something different and to show them a different way. To this day, a lot of those young men are doing well, starting their own businesses. I think only one of them, from what we know of, ended up on the wrong side of the law. It was an actual benefit to those young people that summer.
Tell me about the diversity at The Spot.
Interestingly, if we're speaking about the Cambodian community, I think The Spot had a stronger Cambodian connection at the beginning with Sue. We had a couple of Cambodian peer workers, which always helped and that's how we noticed the importance of having diverse staff – different languages, different ethnicities because you attract what you have. When it comes to the visual diversity of The Spot, I think there were a lot of misconceptions that the space was mostly Black dominated sometimes or male-dominated, not that there would have been anything wrong with that, it was purely an optics perception.
If you walk by, you may see Black youth there as they sit at the front to play dominos or to use the computers. They congregate at the front, but it doesn't show you what's happening in the back and that's where the one-to-one services are happening with a lot of the newcomer population. That's where a lot of the women's programs are happening. In the beginning, we found that we had only women – young women in our space because we had a lot more programs happening on a scheduled basis. We found that we weren't reaching a lot of the men because they don't commit. They have a harder time committing to a program. They don't engage in programs that are conversation based – they needed things that were more social recreational. As we started to progress in our years, we found the balance to have the social recreational stuff and the program specific communication-based things. And so, for a long time, we'd get the feedback like, "it seems like a Black space only" and we never claimed to be that or ever thought to be that as much as there could be a need for it – it was never our intention.
We had a diverse staff and the Karen community was huge but again, how they access services were very different from youth who were born here or local to the community. In our staff alone, we had 10 different languages amongst us and again, with our staff, we had Spanish speaking, Karen, Urdu to French – whatever, we had a good mix of individuals. We also had our partnerships. That space was huge for the community in a sense that space has always been an issue to have programming happen and so we partnered with several organizations and grass-root groups who needed space to run their programs. We had them in our space as well as a huge resource for the community and for organizations that wanted to introduce themselves to the community but didn't have a gateway in. We facilitated some of that as well.
What issues are youth facing today and what can be done to respond to those issues?
That is a loaded question! There are just so many aspects to youth culture whether we're talking about the education side of things or other sides. In the education realm, I think bullying is such a huge thing happening to a lot of students. These are the students who are not as visible – they struggle internally, and I think that's where a lot of support is lacking for those individuals. It's not the extraverted acting out youth that we're seeing, it's the one's who are self-harming. So, whether it's cutting, whether its substance abuse – that's what they are struggling with. Then there is the aspect of just trying to fit in socially. A lot of students are struggling with those aspects. There's the challenge of life skills. Some of them are lacking what we would have considered very traditional manners or thought-processes, dealing with conflict, troubleshooting or solution-seeking - those things aren't as prevalent, or it's just not being taught to a lot of these young people.
There is also the area of violence that people are dealing with like participating in gang activity. There is some homelessness as well that is not as prevalent or visible in our communities. We see it more visibly downtown in different areas. On top of that and maybe even over-arching all of it is mental health. There have been a lot more cases of young people struggling with mental health issues in our community that are going untreated, some because they come from families where it is culturally taboo. Not to say there isn't access to information or access to services, but young people are finding it difficult to navigate our health care system to receive support or to get the support that is covered by OHIP versus private services. Left untreated, that manifests itself in poor academic achievement, poor engagement. These are some of the issues young people are dealing with, not to mention the employment challenges they are facing.
Unemployment is still high in our community and a lot of the time, it's not solely based on the lack of experience or lack of knowledge, rather it's a two-parter of discrimination and sometimes racism and the actual lack of skill sets in more of what we consider to be the soft skills. So, back to behaviours, understanding workplace culture and those pieces. It's not being taught or passed down. We expect them to know these things, but it just isn't there. It ranges, honestly, I think the problems are very similar to the past. I think the difference is that there is a lot more access to information now in the information age that we're in. But, it's more the application of that information that isn't being done or finding that information isn't being done appropriately either. We've given them tools but haven't fully taught them how to use them and so they are mishandling a lot of these tools. That becomes some of the issues we are seeing.
There have been huge shifts in the education system. So, when I was in school there was the home-economic or social studies part of the school. They taught you how to sew, they taught you how to cook, they taught you about family dynamics, they gave you those babies to take home and the eggs sometimes to take home to take care of and to have the experience of what it would be like and removing that put more of the onus on the parent to kind of teach those life skills.
I think the biggest shift that I've seen was removing the OAC (Ontario Academic Credit) from our curriculum and getting students at the age of 17 into post-secondary or the workforce, for that matter. That means that the level of maturity and time to develop mentally was shortened. And, they are going to be graduating at an even younger age. So, you're going to have therapists graduate and be 23 years old. How much life have they been able to live to use that as part of their experience and a part of their work or careers? I think that was a huge blow to the development of young people. It forced them to grow up a little faster than they should have. Its been a bit of a detriment to youth development on a whole, I think.
Given our current political climate with Doug Ford and the cuts, they're feeling it. There are larger class sizes, there's a lack of teacher support, some classrooms have closed down in schools to maintain budgets which give students less space to be in and to explore. With class limitations, you can't take a certain number of courses anymore they are eliminated so they can relocate teachers. Students are having a hard time graduating with the right classes they need, or they have to wait a full semester before that course is offered. It's become challenging for them.
On the other hand, it sparked a bit of civic engagement for a lot of young people – we saw huge walkouts by the students but on the other hand, they are suffering in the actual academic piece – of graduating, taking their courses, having to take night school which disrupts life because you're going to school in the morning or at night, having to do homework between that. If you had to have a job – its another challenge. There is a lot of burden on the students now.
Given the challenges now and in your opinion, what is the potential for increased gang involvement?
Statistically, in Toronto, 30% of the homicides that have happened this year have happened on the west side. That would include Rexdale, Jane-Finch, south Etobicoke – more along the west-end. I was talking to an officer from 31 Division and they were explaining the statistics. The face of it is changing and the players are changing, the territories are changing. Before we had the simple divide of north and south then there were a lot of shifts in Toronto Housing which then created smaller communities where gang activity would happen and now it's maintained that, but the age is getting younger.
Before we were seeing older teens or early 20's and now, we're seeing younger teens. On the street value of it, there isn't enough of the culture. Back in the day, there some codes within the gangs – codes that children were never to be harmed, churches were safe zones, parks were off-limits. Certain unspoken rules were understood. Now that there are younger populations involved those rules have gone out the window. A lot of that has been said because the older youth are in jail or arrested or off the street so there was nobody to teach the younger generation how some of those codes of conduct and ethics within the gang organization worked. It's chaotic - it's not as organized. There are not as many rules when it comes to how they operate. That's what has changed, majorly.
In terms of prevention and what we can do to help support that, those resources are lacking more than they were before. There are not as many social service agencies in the area – a lot have folded or collapsed and disappeared off the earth. That's where it becomes a bit more challenging. Our response to this now is to increase law enforcement, have more officers on the ground – it's the provincial or municipal response to these things as opposed to maybe dealing with some of the root issues whether its around our basic needs being met, employment, education – all those things are being cut. Enforcement is being increased – not dealing with the roots at all. We're going to see this increase over the next couple of months and hopefully, with a new Prime Minister or something changing in the next few months, we might see a re-investment in social services that will support these families in getting out of these situations.
My conversation with the police was more of one-on-one and I was asking about some of the work they are trying to do to respond to what's happening. So, they just hired 9 new officers at 31 Division and four of them would be community-based officers. They will be specific to certain locations that need a higher police presence. I believe the areas are Yorkwoods/Grandravine, Driftwood and University Heights. University Heights because there was an increase in sexual assaults. There's one other area so there are 4 officers dedicated to that piece and then 5 who would be responding to calls. When we're talking about the gun violence, I asked how they were tackling the guns because we don't manufacture them here so how do they prevent them from coming into our area – what were some of those initiatives? The officer talked about Chief Saunders doing a couple of talks about some of his strategies, but it didn't have a local strategy.
My conversation with him was one-sided, like "I can't wait for more police" and I'm thinking that nobody else wants that. They had a meeting last week or so where they spoke to a group of residents and maybe 7 youth spoke at that event as well and they got a lot of feedback. The feedback told them they wanted more police presence. I don't think they said they wanted more police – I don't think that was the conversation. They were saying that they just wanted more presence so vehicles driving by in the area to ward off any crime or potential crime but not to increase the number of officers that are at 31 Division. That's how they interpreted it. They were also asking a community at a time of crisis, what do you want and if the police are supposed to be there to serve and protect, of course, they are going to tell you, the police. They aren't thinking about root cause or dealing with the root issues. They're looking at the immediate response to protect their children.
To make a difference, there would have to be resources to increase the ability of exposure. So, we talked a little bit about exposure to camping and snowboarding and as much as we can pour resources into the community, money doesn't solve a lot of our issues. The majority of it is culture and years of oppression, years of poverty and the cycle where they become involved in the violence and so there have to be the resources necessary and a mindset shift from a poverty-scarcity mindset into one of a growth mindset of investing in ourselves, growing ourselves, healing ourselves.
That needs to happen in some ways but also access to employment – meaningful, valuable, decent paying, long-term employment. Looking at activities and spaces for children and youth to play and thrive in and be who they are – expression within arts spaces that give expression; a free or blank canvas to do that work; looking at support for parents, remembering that there is a lot of young people becoming parents at a younger age and don't necessarily have the skillset and knowledge to be a parent, support from our health sector and helping those who are struggling with mental health and that new supports and services in those areas with access.
Having FOCUS tables coming in soon will be great for Jane-Finch. (FOCUS tables bring together the most appropriate community agencies at a weekly situation table to provide a targeted, wrap-around approach to the most vulnerable individuals, families and places that are experiencing heightened levels of risk). We haven't had them, but other parts of the city have.
Some people have some reservations around that, and I get the strain that it puts on a lot of grassroots groups if they wanted to participate. It's a one-stop for access to hospitals, access to food banks and other essential services when people are in crisis. More resources would be beneficial along with capacity building opportunities, a training centre that's easy to access and affordable for people to be able to continue to grow in their skillsets. There is always that viability for themselves – if you have your skillset, you can utilize those skills and share them.
What are you most proud of and what has the community taught you?
As a physical legacy manifestation, I think The Spot is definitely that. The individuals who have come through that space worked in that space, benefited from the space, those are the proudest moments I have. To see children that we worked with in Jane Milo grow up to start their own families - I think that's an amazing manifestation in what a space and programs can do for the lives of young people who felt disenfranchised and felt there was no tomorrow for a lot of them. That becoming a second home to a lot of young people is one of my proudest moments.
The majority of my pride isn't about the work that we put in to make it all happen, you don't even remember that by the time you get to where you are, its just long days, and long nights. You don't remember the six o'clock in the morning police station visits to get a kid out for a false arrest, you don't remember as much of that as you do seeing them thrive or come back a decade later from when you met them, telling you how much one word, one action or a sentence you said influenced their life. Those situations that induce gratification.
In terms of what the communities have taught me – I think its the pride and the reliance that I see in so many of the residents who face barriers and challenges every day. They never lose gratitude for the people they have met, the things they have done or able to be a part of – I see so much vibrancy that I don't see when I go to other communities or even when I travel outside of Canada. I see similarities in other third world countries where there is gratitude for anything. When I travel to downtown Toronto, I feel like there are more complaints about things that we don't even bother with because it's not as important as maybe our children or our education system. We're fighting for bigger things, not like….we don't like the fixtures in our lobby. It's a different feel. I'll always take pride in the diversity that Jane-Finch has always had and how beautiful it can be – we have so much green space that never gets the recognition that it deserves, mostly because of the media. It's a beautiful place to be and I'm glad to be a Jane-Finch native.