Pat O’Neill

Pat O’Neill served as a City Councillor for three terms and lived in the Jane Finch community from 1964 to 1995. As of January, 2011, Pat is happily retired and living on Salt Spring Island, Vancouver.

How did you get involved with the community?

It was my involvement with the children. I had six children and it was Kim who wanted to join Brownies. We were living in the townhouses at Jane and Sheppard. The only thing you could use the school for at that time was for extracurricular activities like Brownies, Guides or Scouts. Otherwise, the schools were pretty well closed, depending I think on the principal but there wasn’t much other activity. Kim wanted to join the Brownies and they needed an extra leader so being me, I volunteered. I became a Tawny Owl, then a Brown Owl, a Guide Captain and then a Commissioner. When I ran for Alderman (City Councillor), my Brownies were all at a voting age and I also knew a lot of people in the community because of the work I had done. I think that it surprised everyone that I won because I took only three weeks holiday from work and used my $1,000 savings!

Also, at Jane and Sheppard, I started an ESL program for Italian women. We provided the childcare for the children so that the women could go to school during the day and learn English. Only a couple of times each week but the women weren’t allowed out in the evening and lot of them were really trapped because of their limited English. I discovered this through some of the children who were coming to Brownies. The mothers were really housebound and didn’t have language skills so we started that program at Spenvalley Public School. I guess it was about 1967. It proved so popular that the local Catholic school started evening classes the following year and because it was the Catholic school, they were allowed to go. It was really helpful to women in the community at that time. So, that was an interesting little phase but then with six children in a three bedroom house, we were a little cramped.

When Edgeley Village opened, we moved to a five bedroom house (Driftwood/Jane) which was really nice with a bit more space and it was a lovely community in the beginning. It was a very friendly, open and warm with neighbours helping neighbours. It was great. But, there were no activities for children and youth.

At the time Edgeley was built, it was supposed to be a mixed community of condo and public housing but the condos were built a little later so we were fairly well organized as a tenant group before the condos were built. Anyway, my sister, husband (Bob) and myself started some programs for the children at the junior high school. I guess we were just volunteers but we had the school open three to four nights a week for activities for the teenagers and we supervised. There was always one of us at home with the children and some were at the school. Bob started a Judo club and a couple of the children got into that and he was also working with a couple of men on a soccer club so there was soccer for the kids. We had quite a few activities going for the children. We also organized a Christmas party that first year. It was a double-barrel thing. For a dollar, you could join the Tenant Association and your children got a ticket for the Christmas party. The children needed something to do – there were hundreds of children there when we moved in. It was a brand new community and there were quite a few five bedroom houses.

We started the Tenants Association as a way for people to get involved and to get volunteers to help run the programs. Then there came a political issue in that when we all moved in, the provincial and federal government were in a dispute over money so the provincial government, who ran the housing, had a freeze on rents. We all moved in at a certain rate and then maybe a year or so after being there, the federal and provincial government solved their problem and suddenly there were rent hikes of 50% and 75%. Of course, people can’t absorb that immediately….you know you plan your budget according to what you’ve got and if your rent is a certain rate and you’ve got payments on things, that means an increase like that was incredible. You just couldn’t manage. It was still based on geared to income but because people had moved in at the fixed rate and then suddenly they were hit with this large increase. Some people moved in and were on unemployment insurance. When the economy improved, many got jobs and some of them were making good money so consequently their rent jumped an enormous amount. The tenants organized at that point and organized a rent strike themselves.

I’m not actually sure how many people participated but there were enough of us that it made noise. As far as I know, this was the first tenant association formed in Jane and Finch. There may have been one at Sheppard or Yorkwoods – I don’t know. Anyway we had more than 50% of the residents who were members of the association so it was fairly impressive. Mind you, I went door to door and talked to people, handed out flyers and talked to them about the Christmas party so there was a lot of involvement. Anyway, in the end, the Board of Metro Housing invited us to a meeting to discuss it. They decided they would stagger the increases so that it made it a little easier on people and it was a partial victory. We didn’t get the increased stopped but we did get incremental increases so it made a difference, it helped people. And, of course the Tenant Association got a bit stronger because of that and because we had done something useful. My husband was president of the association and I was the secretary.

How did you get involved with Downsview Weston Action Community (DWAC)?

I got involved through Katie Hayhurst. Katie was the Aderman (City Councillor) of the area. I’m not entirely sure how we met, but we did and we met with a number of workers from the community, a representative of Children’s Aid (Mary Lewis), the YMCA (Judy Levkoe), Catholic Social Services and Audrey McLaughan were the original members. Audrey also got into politics. That was really interesting. And, Judy from the YMCA and Lynn Eakin were involved. After a number of discussions, we thought we’d try and form a larger organization. I think probably one of the things that stirred Katie into action was the rate of development that was happening in the community and there was a plan; a twenty-five year plan developed in 1965 that anticipated the development of the community take place up until 1990. When we formed the organization (DWAC), some of the research Helen Ede did (she did most of it – she was phenomenal) showed that what happened was that 95% of the development had taken place within the first 10 years so, for example, there was a shortage of schools. Almost every school had portables, the hospital was vastly overcrowded, the library was overwhelmed too and there were no services for anyone. It was a time when there was a freeze on funding because of another downturn in the economy so there was no money to do anything and no services, nothing for seniors, nothing at all. There were a number of senior’s apartments too for social housing. Anyway, we formed DWAC because the whole area of the west end was suffering to some extent but Ward 3 (Sheppard to Steeles) at that time on both sides of Jane was most severely affected by the growth. So, we started to look at development issues and what we could do to maybe get the council to slow down approvals on apartments while we could catch up on services. One of the things we needed to do was to get information out to people in the community. One way was to get a newspaper and we struggled with that one for years. I think that at one time I was writing 90% of the articles because we couldn’t get the articles for the paper. Peggy Gemmel did a vast amount of work to sustain the paper. It wouldn’t have survived without her and Laura who lived in Driftwood, lovely women, they were terrific working on the newspaper. The Information Post got going in the Jane Finch mall. For a while we had a childcare space in the mall where children could be dropped while parents shopped. A couple of other people wanted to start services to seniors and they started developing Downsview Services to seniors (Inger Holmes). That one took off on its own and then there were lots of things happening that people were really excited about. It was a really exciting time – busy. I had never chaired a meeting before so I got lessons. I had always been the one taking notes so that was good. We used to have meetings at York University as I was working there full time then so we’d have meeting at lunch time at the University to plan the community meetings; what would the agenda be and the amount of time that would be devoted to issues. We had a core group of really, really good people who would take on other things and work on them whether it was the newspaper, information post, seniors and children services – Helen and Gary Ede were the driving force for the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. Helen wanted to get an early learning experience for children so it was wonderful and exciting. It was fair to say the Downsview Weston Information Post, Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, Downsview Services to seniors, all the resident lobbying to politicians, came from DWAC, initially.

Tell me about Edgeley and York University.

Before I started working at York, there were three professors who were interested in Edgely and its development and the only one whose name I can remember now is Ernest Lillienstein. His wife is Lois who is in Sharon, Lois and Bram. But Ernest was one of the team that was researching Edgeley. It was kind of a disappointment because we gave a lot of time to them at looking at Edgeley and its development and so on and we never, ever saw a report that came of that. It was over a year’s study, I mean they must have had some report but we never saw it. Then I started to work at the university and saw all the facilities they had. There was so much happening and of course my own children at that time, the boys were in day care, they were okay but the older children, they were in need of some kind of activity. It seemed to me that the University had the resources to be able to provide that so I started working with Denise Brown at the University and over a period of time, we developed a program called the York Youth Connection. YYC provided a summer day camp experience for children from the community as well as for University staff. Wayne Burnett (a youth living in Jane Finch) played an important part in York Youth Connection.

In the early days of Edgeley, we had a group of students from York called the Monday Group. You know who was part of that? The young man who ran for the Liberal leadership, Gerrard Kennedy was a nice young man. They were trying to develop some programs to help take kids out of the community to do other activities. For a lot of youth, it was the only time they left Jane Finch. It was quite fascinating. It really worked with the kids to try to get them out and do things. I think they took them on a couple of camping trips and so forth. They were a nice group of youngsters but when they graduated, it never continued. There were a couple of involvements at the University but the YYC was a good start. I’m so glad that is still going on. I dreamed of a Banff Fine Arts program for Jane Finch kids but it never got to that. But, it’s a good program. They got exposure to the arts and sports and the swimming pool. There wasn’t a pool at Jane Finch at that time. And then of course, we started working on trying to get a community centre. Originally, the plan for the community centre was to be where the gospel church (Christian Centre) went, between the seniors building and the Junior High. They imported most of their congregation. They would come in on buses from somewhere else and we did outreach to them but we very soon stopped. It was very much a “teaching of poor folks how to live” and worship so we didn’t spend much time with them.

Tell us about building Driftwood Community Centre.

Actually the building was finished after I was elected. We started working with Parks and Recreation to try and get some programs for younger children in the area. They ran the programs in the schools and playgrounds but we started working to get a community centre in there because it had been in the original plans. Then the whole section was still woods where the centre is now and one of our tenants used to freeze a skating pond there every winter for the kids to skate on but there was really nothing else there. There were two houses on either side of the archway where I lived and the children would congregate there. That was kind of fun, especially when I was trying to get my kids to bed at 7:00 at night! It wasn’t too bad until they started selling drugs there and then I must admit, I put a hose on my garden every night and I’ll let it sprinkle and sprinkle! I guess my children were in their early teens – Jan would have been 16 and Kim, 13. One of the little girls next door to me was selling so there would be a line up at her door in the 70’s. I was not impressed.

Even though the community centre was in the official plan, it still took us about four years to get it done (from 1972 to 1976).

What compelled you to run for office?

We discussed the election at DWAC because Katie was going to retire as she had had enough. We looked at who would be best able to do it. None of the men could afford to take the job because it was only $11,000 a year and most were earning a lot more. So, in the end, it was decided it would be best if I ran, so I did. I took my three weeks holidays from work and $1,000 that I had saved up in the bank. I used to put a little away each week on my pitiful earnings. When I started at York, it was $360 a month and you got paid once a month and I had six children on my own to raise at that time because Bob left. I started off in the Admission office in Atkinson, the adult education college and I had a couple of promotions. I got to run the admissions section and then I got another promotion to do the review of grades. I would organize the appeals and get their papers into the professors and charts and everything so I ran their office for the last period I was there. I have to say, I never typed!

I was elected in December 1976, again in 1978 and again in 1980 so it was six years on North York Council. Nobody else that was involved in the community that knew of anything that we were doing could take the job on. I think I ran against an Italian business man who had a travel agency and I think we were all shocked that I won. Mind you, I went out every day for the three weeks and knocked on one poll in the morning, usually seniors or social housing, one poll in the afternoon and I’d go around the single family houses (with the dogs) and then in the evening I’d canvas an apartment building so three polls a day for three weeks.

How did you get the Italian community to vote for you?

I probably didn’t get a lot of their votes but I did get some by knocking on the doors and talking to people and the fact that I had run the English program for people down at Sheppard and the fact that I had been a Brownie and Guide leader for years and I knew people all over the community. I knew people literally in every neighbourhood which helped and of course the children that were brownies back in the sixties were now voting so it really did make a difference and I guess I had established a fairly good reputation.

What were the issues?

Services - the fact that we didn’t have services. The high school was on the shift system. Half would go to school in the morning and half in the afternoon. They went to Westview and Westview was so crowded. I don’t think that many of our children went to Jefferies at that time and there wasn’t a Catholic High School in the neighbourhood. The shift went on at Westview for at least two years and then they expanded Westview. There were about 4,000 youth in the area then, I mean it was huge, absolutely huge. The hospital had overcrowding and it was a major issue. There was a day care in Edgeley and I think that was the only one at that time. The one near Sheppard was built later. Edgeley day care was a God send to me because it freed me to go to work. I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

Youth Clinical Services was the only youth service until the community centre was built. I think that Katie was instrumental in getting Youth Clinical Services up and she worked with Honey Kerr Went who was the Executive Director. Katie also worked closely with Lenore Suddes (a resident) on establishing Youth Clinical Services. Katie worked closely with all community groups in the neighbourhood. She was a real going concern out there and she was so friendly and happy. Everybody adored her, it was nice.

How did the community respond to issues?

Through DWAC, people with different interests came to DWAC and through individuals and agencies, managed to get help and support to begin their services, whether it was the information post with everybody helping out, or agencies volunteering some staff to give information to people. Downsview Services to Seniors got help from various groups as well as Northwood Neighbourhood Services and Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre with Mary Lewis. Mary was instrumental in helping with the Jane Finch Centre. There was agency support as well as community support to do things and of course, we were all volunteers in pretty well everything. It’s always the same. There was always the core group of people but it developed so that more and more people would get involved all the time. It was just such a good feeling.

How did the government respond to the issues?

I think to some extent, it took them by surprise. It was a twenty-five year plan from ’65 – ’90 and the fact that in ten years it was almost complete. I think that shocked them. That was because the federal and provincial government made funding available for social housing and of course, our community still had space to build it. So, we got quite a large influx of social housing without the services of course. Not that that always solves the problem as you can tell from some of the downtown projects but nevertheless, there weren’t services and then there was a huge wave of immigration and of course we were fairly close to the airport so again it was a natural reception place for people to come. So, I remember at Yorkwoods Elementary School, at one point, there were children from eighty different countries. They made a big celebration of it and there were pictures in the hall of the children from all the different places. There were a couple of schools that did really, really well in supporting multiculturalism. St. Frances de Salle’s had Jean Augustine as the principal and then Yorkwoods did a pretty good job of it to.

The public school in Edgeley was Shoreham and it was an open plan and in some ways it was absolutely lovely and the principal there (nice guy) welcomed the community in to involve them. It was sheer heaven after some of the schools that we’d been to and couldn’t get in the door. So, that was a really nice part of it but then with the flood of immigrants, there came the problem of culture clashes. It never failed to amaze me why the Italian and West Indians clashed so much. I guess because one is matriarchal and one is patriarchal. It was the only thing I could think of because they were both religious, family oriented, hardworking and it would seem to have been a natural fit that they would be really supportive of each other. But, the clash was intense, really intense. I clearly remember the Priest in one of the churches who had a nervous breakdown because he got this influx of West Indian women who sometimes had three or four children and all of them had different fathers and they often weren’t married and he couldn’t handle it. Italians came from a culture where you got married and had kids and very patriarchal and dominating society and the women never moved outside the house without a chaperone. I just stopped sending Jan to the park with the boys because the guys were making passes at her. She came home so distressed one day. You know, these older men had been making passes at her. She was very shy. It was just such a culture clash and yet there were so many similarities.

What was the diversity like at Edgeley?

There wasn’t very much diversity at the time; mostly white European and a very large component of east coast people and they were mostly the larger families in the five-bedroom houses. The Italians were mostly in the single family homes because they settled in the downtown west Toronto area in the 50’s and the men had bunked together with 10 to a house, enough to save money to move to the suburbs. They built Toronto! Us poor folks were in subsidized housing.

Tell me about “Long House to High Rise”.

We did this book because we wanted to capture the history and we thought it was really important to get some of the history down in a sequence. My son worked on the photos as some of the buildings wouldn’t be there for very long. Helen, Elspeth Heyworth and I met with representatives from the North York Board of Education for almost two years to get it done. The Board people seemed almost unable to make decisions.

What did you do when you lost the election?

After I lost the election, I had a hard time finding a job. First of all, I went back to waitressing. I went to Pioneer Village as Sherri (my daughter) had worked there before going to England and so based on the fact that she was a good worker, I got a job. I thoroughly enjoyed it as I loved the food business, always have done. That was my early training, food management so I worked as a waitress there and became unofficially assistant manager. I would take the night shift and run the banquets. It was like going to a party, especially at Christmas time. You’d go there - everyone was having a good time. Some of the kids I worked with were just amazing. They really had a problem being limited in their language and I remember one night, three of the dishwashers were waiting for a cab because it was 3:00 in the morning and they were outside complaining and swearing. I said “F…” is a verb, not an adjective. They stopped, they looked at me and they all started laughing but they didn’t swear as much after that, especially around me. When we were at Sheppard and Kim was quite young, children started swearing a lot so I thought I’ve got to stop this. You can’t nag…it doesn’t work so when I got annoyed or pretended to get annoyed, I’d say, that’s despicable! But, by the end of the summer, the kids were running around saying “that’s despicable!” It was delightful. Sometimes it just means that people need another way to express their frustration and that’s what I found when I got a job with Conflict Mediation Services of Downsview with the Conflict Management Program.

The Conflict Management program was with grades 4, 5 and 6. We took about 30 children and trained them in conflict management techniques in the playground…how to solve problems in the playground. You know, when someone was teasing or bullying and you had to have a couple of bullies in the program, otherwise they would have just messed it up anyway. So we had these 30 kids and at the end of the program we did an evaluation of what the kids had learned in the program. I never forget this one little boy from 15 Tobermory…Spanish background and he said to me, “I found this program really helpful because I learned how to deal with problems without punching someone out”. Success! And, this was one of the bullies. But, he also said to me that it helped him at home too because he was able to talk about problems instead of getting mad and yelling. The second year, I did the program in St. Charles Garner. It was quite different as I didn’t have the same support from teachers but I found a totally different atmosphere in the staff room. The staff room at Driftwood and one or two of the older teachers in particular, it was “those children. What can you expect, look at their parents and …” – down their nose attitude. The one teacher I was working with and the principle at the time were quite helpful. When I went to St. Charles, they were much stricter there but if you listened to them (the principle was the key one there), he’d come in a say, one of the kids seem to be having a problem today – just keep an eye on it and see if there’s anything I can do, let me know.” Wow…what a different attitude. I mean up to that point, I had very little use for Catholic Schools but I was so surprised by the difference in attitude and even in the classrooms, it showed with the teachers.

We started working with the Board of Education and did some workshops at high schools after there was a knifing at one of the schools. I think later, they hired some professor from Vancouver who was doing conflict mediation to do their program but we floated the idea. Evan Heise (staff at Conflict Mediation) and I did a couple of workshops with them. We did some with staff, with children, individuals and with their parents where there were cultural conflicts. We had volunteers who spoke Urdu, Punjabi, and Spanish so the program went well. I understand now it has expanded and is doing very well.

What were some of the challenges?

The big one that Katie was working on was the building of the high-rises apartments. There were six more apartments planned for the Yorkgate area and Katie started the opposition to that and I guess I carried that on to council. Council actually didn’t approve it by one vote but the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) did approve it. We went to the OMB and Brian Bucknall was the lawyer who represented us and I think he did it free of change for DWAC. But, because of the publicity it generated and because of the timing, we were into another recession and those apartments never got built. All we were asking for at that time was a five-year delay in more building because we figured it would be another 4 – 5,000 people. While we had started services, there still were not enough. So, we asked for that five-year delay before anymore could be approved. Boy did the developers hate me. Murphy Hall was the front man. He built the single family homes in the area and he was the front man for the Del Zotos – three brothers who wanted to build the high-rises. So, we fought them right the way through and in the end, it didn’t happen.

Now in the 80’s, challenges were still lack of services to some extent. I think my biggest victory came in that period and that was the group homes by-law. I was really proud of that one. Every city in the Metro area had a problem around group homes. There was a constant fight….not in my neighbourhood and so forth. So, with the agencies, Lyn Eakin and I were still involved with DWAC and North York Interagency Council. We organized a lobby for the Council meetings that dealt with the by-law for group homes. The agencies brought in people that needed group homes for developmentally handicapped children and that public meeting was wonderful. I know very well that the boys had been out to dinner and decided that they were going to vote against the by-law but there was one man who came in and opposed it and everybody else was for it. What I had proposed was that with one hundred and twenty neighbourhoods in North York, like the Yorkwoods, Edgeley, Firgrove neighbourhoods, that as a right, one group home per neighbourhood would be allowed and for emergency shelters like the women’s shelter or youth shelters, they would have to be put on major arterial roads for access so that it would cause little disruption in neighbourhoods. It sailed through. Two years ago (2007), I heard that they were revisiting the by-law. It had worked for twenty-five years. When you consider the fights in the other places over this, it wasn’t just our neighbourhood, it was right across North York – a North York by-law; it was a major success.

Six Community Workers were hired to work in Jane Finch. Tell us about that.

When I got to Metro, Mel Lastman had arranged for someone to go to Metro so Howard Moscoe, Mike Foster and I, we used to go over our agendas every weekend for council and we’d each take different issues because I could usually get things approved. When we couldn’t get things approved and we knew it, we just raised hell and got information to the public and lost the vote. Mel had a plan for someone else to go to Metro but in doing so, he offended a couple of people on Council. They were both on council but because Mel cut them out of going down to Metro, we worked out a deal with them for mutual support. We had a chance of winning and we did. I got down to Metro and Mel was furious. But it worked out really well. While I disagreed with Geoffrey’s politics, he never got personal and we respected each other. He had me go out to all kinds of special events and in particular, the social service events where I was meeting people. I was on the social services committee, and it had a huge budget. We put a proposal together to hire six workers, one for each of the neighbourhoods in Jane and Finch, and it got approved. That was a fair amount of money that went into that and it was good – but only a one-year project. There wasn’t enough time because a year, you’re just starting but it was good for what it did do. It was really good being down in Metro. On North York, I was mostly on the legislation committee which dealt with the fire department and I got the fire hall on Jane Street. We didn’t have a fire hall in the whole ward in spite of all the density of population.

In the 90’s, the issue was the youth violence. It was breaking my heart to see the youngsters killing each other but I raised the issue of guns in ‘82 and I believe it cost me the election. People didn’t want to know, which was sad, because a friend of my youngest daughter had been killed. It affected my family personally. It was really sad and he was nice kid too – really nice kid. So, I was really upset about that and wanted to do something about it but what was happening was that most of the violence was either West Indian youth or East Asian youth (Vietnamese). You can’t plunk a white lady in that situation to try to solve the problems. It had to be dealt with by those communities with support from all the community.

When I was working at Conflict Mediation, I came out of the office one day and there were two young men slashing at each other with switch blades. Prostitution had started to get bad too. Standing at the bus stops – you’d have guys driving up and trying to pick up some of the girls waiting at the bus stop. I started taking a pad of paper with me and a pen and if I saw any cars stopping and harassing the girls, I’d write down their license number. I never reported anyone but the minute the driver saw me writing down their number, they’d be off like a shot. We did have a youngster who was working the corner of Driftwood and Yorkwoods Gate…sad to see that happening.

What were you most proud of?

Aside from the structural contribution of Driftwood Community Centre and the fire station, I guess it was the number of individuals I was able to help. However, just before the end of my last term, there was a chap who needed work and the Commissioner of Personnel made it very clear that he did the hiring, not me. You try to recommend people that you know desperately needed work but the policy at the works department was flawed. They would hire people for five months and before they got any benefits at six months, they’d let them go and hire another group for five months. Some of these guys had twenty years of working in this cycle. Anyway, this one guy kept phoning and phoning and I did talk to the Commissioner but with no luck. On Boxing Day, he shot his wife. He got so depressed because he wasn’t working, he cracked. Work is so important for self-esteem. Sometimes there was work, sometimes there was just nothing. It seems that these recessions come every ten years. The system doesn’t work well. Capitalism doesn’t work well. I always figured it was a toss-up as to whether capitalism or Communism would fail first. They both had faults but which one would collapse first?

This last recession, I hope will result in some major changes. Basically, unless we can all decide that everybody needs a place to live and food to eat, health care and education, we’re never going to change society. We have to take care of these basic needs first for people and for men particularly – jobs – it’s their pride. They can’t handle not working especially for the young men. If they don’t find meaningful employment, they find other means to become important and when you look at the history of Toronto, doesn’t matter you are Irish or Italian, Jews, Jamaican or Asian, the group that can’t fit in, turn to crime and violence. Women can turn to anything. If you have to go scrub floors, you go scrub floors or if you have to wait on tables, you wait on tables to pay the rent and feed the children.

Can you speak about the clash between the West Indians and Italians in the 70’s?

The Catholic Church was quite slow to respond to their new parishioners. Most of the priests were still Italian, most of the principals in the schools were still Italian and of course, the wave of West Indian immigration was followed by a large wave of South American immigrants who had similar social patterns to the Italians in terms of being a patriarchal society and so the majority of their parishioners were traditional. In fact, they were more traditional than the Italians. They vehemently opposed birth control and abortion and it was a real moral struggle. I know Anthony Peruzza (past MPP) had to vote against that at Queen’s Park and it was really painful for him because he believed in equality but his religion was too strong for him to vote for abortions. I watched him go through that struggle so I know it was hard. I guess the Priests catered to the majority of the parishioners and the church hierarchy didn’t seem to respond in terms of putting leaders in the church that could related to the West Indian community. I mean, how many black priests were there? I don’t remember one and yet other religions either employed people from different cultures or several West Indians set up their own churches. That young man down on Eddystone, Audley Goldburn, he did the training for Conflict Mediation. He was so empathic; I mean the empathy was just so great. It was a good church, supportive and helpful and non-judgemental but the Catholic Church just didn’t move with the times. Italy approved birth control before Jane Finch did…the Italian community in Jane Finch anyway. It’s not unusual; you’ll find that Quebec French is old French. Italy changed as France changed. Italian immigrants stayed the same; the culture stayed the same…very traditional. France changed, Quebec didn’t. They hung on to the old values coming to a new country and it was the same for the Italians. They hung on to the old values. In addition, if you look at the demographics of where a lot of them came from, they came from southern Italy. Average education, even for men, was grade six. I knew some of the janitors in the community centre and places like that and they couldn’t read the directions on some of the equipment, couldn’t read English. I remember this guy down at Northwood Community Centre that wouldn’t let you in because you might walk on his clean floor! I raised hell about that!

Tell us about Northwood Community Centre.

Northwood used to be a golf and country club when I lived in the neighbourhood and of course, there were no facilities for the community what so ever. When the development plans came in, the developer asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted a recreation centre and a swimming pool. It wasn’t exactly what he was asking me but that’s what I told him. So, we got the recreation centre for $1.00 and then we built the swimming pool. There was this huge wonderful kosher kitchen, big stoves and two walk-in freezers, all the equipment and actually both Helen and I envisioned it as a food training centre. It would provide employment, food training for young people in the community and a facility for parks and recreation events or city events even. We could do that and still have room for recreation. We lost that battle. They sold all the equipment and tore out the big kitchen and put in a smaller kitchen. It wasn’t the training centre I envisioned but you don’t win them all.

There was a small gatehouse and we wanted to make it into community offices. I had seen the Ottawa model…they were so far ahead of us, they had sub groups of agencies working together where you’d have an income support worker, a children’s aid support worker and some workers dealing with violence against women. You’d have these workers cooperating so that if a woman went for help, everybody was there. Someone would help with housing, some to help with income, with counselling – all there in one spot. It was a brilliant idea because you know what it’s like if you had to trot around to different offices – here, there and everywhere. We always found difficulty finding office space for any group and that place would have been perfect space. There was a nice little roof there that could have had a patio garden for seniors. There was a senior’s apartment building down the road. It would have been really nice.

I lost the election and the new homeowners in the area probably didn’t like the plan, fought it and won but that was after I lost the election. The community was established – Mel tried to cut the funding for the pool, I don’t know how many times, but I eventually got funding for the pool. However, they knocked down the gatehouse as part of the plan for the pool. I wasn’t there when the pool was finished. I went back later and swam – the same as Driftwood with the opening of it…there was no mention of my involvement with it at all. But the satisfaction is seeing it there. Two community centres achieved during my terms in office.

What are your fondest memories?

I guess directly working with children. It’s so much nicer working with children. I loved my Brownie pack. We did some wonderful things with the Brownies – we used to put on shows and I used to dress up. I remember one Halloween I went as Tiny Tim and one year I went with a diaper with a bib as a baby, I used to have a ball. We put on shows and there were a few shy kids though and I got them to do decorations for the sets but most of the kids loved to perform including mine except Jeanne who would organize everyone. My kids were always putting on shows. I tried to get a few things going up at Driftwood. One of the community workers there, one from the Metro funding did try. I wanted to get a modeling program going but a modeling program with a difference. It was conflict management and how to deal with problems. It was building self-esteem, looking good, feeling good. It was to try to move them from just hanging around the boys while they were playing basketball. There was a group of girls that just did nothing else but wait for the basketball players. Anyway, Carol Downey got that group going and did quite well with that. They did have a fashion show in the end but it was more than about the make-up. It was the self-esteem building. I had wanted that for a long time as it was so important for some of those girls.

There was a family where there was abuse. Actually, there were ten kids and out of the ten, one girl and one boy managed to grow up to be okay and the rest – the boys became abusers and the girls were abused…a whole cycle just continued. That poor little woman; it was sad. I was able to help quite a few kids to get jobs and get opportunities to do things. I was on the advisory at the North York Board of Education for special needs schools so I was able to get quite a lot of stuff in the schools that helped with special needs for immigrant families and for handicapped children and so on. I was on the North York Committee for the Handicapped so I managed to get a lot of buildings with accessible entrances. I was able to get a lot of transportation issues dealt with. I never managed to get the Jane Finch intersection improved. The commissioner there was an SOB but I did get some small improvements to the lanes, I got the Driftwood bus and managed to get the Jane bus route stop so that the seniors didn’t have to cross Shoreham Road. I got major improvements on the Jane bus, Finch bus and Sheppard bus. I remember when I first moved there and the bus came every hour and that was the only bus. There were no grocery stores at the time in walking distance; you had to go to Keele to shop so if you didn’t have a car you were really out of luck. Anyway, working with young people was the best and working with people, generally.

One of the things I have to say, it really bothers me to this day, is how people look at politicians because I found that by working on council, with a few exceptions, they were decent people who were representing their community and their community interests. Now obviously, the interests of Forest Hill were different than those of Jane Finch. I think Alan Heisey may have received maybe three calls a week, possibly four if it snowed. My messages were huge – just answering the messages alone was a couple of hours work. So, yes, there were some less than honest people but then I find there are doctors I wouldn’t trust, there are certainly lawyers I wouldn’t trust, there are some people on social assistance I wouldn’t trust. 2-3% of the population cheat but the rest are decent people. I got along quite well with Godfrey. I did vote for him for chairman. There was a small clique that was not supporting him and I voted for him and they were quite surprised. The other person running for chairman was really right wing. Now if Gordon Cressy had been running for chair, it wouldn’t have been difficult to vote for him but he didn’t run. I never got into personal arguments with Godfrey; some did…attack him personally. He wanted to get some improvements for Jane Finch – he was quite supportive.

I think people partially lump all politicians together. The media contributes to the problem. When I look at some of the ways they distort stories so badly, they make politicians out to be villains. I guess it makes for a more interesting story. There are some lousy politicians but you have someone like Joe Clark or Stephane Dion; good decent, honest men who really wanted to do something about the environment. Even their own party didn’t back them let alone the electorate.

Do you think politicians can do more for the community or should the community be pushing politicians?

I think a little of both. I think there is more the politicians could have done but it takes a community to say…okay that’s enough and we have to do something about this problem. It would take the Black community to do something about youth in the community and the Asian community to do something about youth in their community. The number of men that kill and abuse their wives in some cultures is terrible. Communities are beginning to take hold of that issue and say it is no longer acceptable.

Anne Johnson, Gail and I used to attend the AMO (Association of the Municipalities of Ontario) conferences. A lot of people just went there to drink but we actually did some work and while we could never get elected, we got appointed because they needed to have someone from Toronto. I was lucky as I got to chair the Social Services and Housing Committee and we worked on a program with the provincial government to re-structure the whole funding of social services…how the provincial government provided the City with funding for social services. It was a very unfair system at that time. That was some really important work and we got to the point where we actually presented the proposal to the ministry. But, there was an election and a change of government and two year’s worth of work went down the drain. The other work that I did was on was the legislative committee and I was able to do quite a bit around that in terms of the fire equipment and for the fireman. They needed improved equipment in order to go into places where there was toxic plastic and chemicals burning. I was on the legislative committee in North York for years and there was a review of the fire department after that bad fire in Don Mills where people in the high-rise were injured. The review of the fire department came back with 83 recommendations. I read the report and was prepared to make motions on the 83. Some members had not read the report so I got everything I wanted approved. It was fun sometimes as some people didn’t read their agenda and I always read the agenda from cover to cover but in the first year, I had a hard time getting anything approved except specific Jane Finch items. After that, it was easier because I always had a seconder in Mike Foster or Howard Moscoe. I could play a less critical role and worked on things that really, really needed to be done like the group home policy. But, there was so much waste and stupidity on things, it really offended me.

The City did a review of the District covering the Yonge Street area as Mel wanted a new City Hall. They bought land for it from the Board of Education and negotiated with the Board of Education for parking space. The ten acre site of the old city hall they sold to the province would have been enough to build a new city hall. They could have built it at the back instead of the front, they could have had their own parking underground, and they could have had the arts centre on one side and the hotel on the other side of the site. Everything could have been done on the ten acre site they owned. Instead they sold it to the province and then bought it back to build the Mel Lastman Centre so it cost an arm and a leg. Then they wanted a new subway stop there whereas for the old City hall site, everything was already roughed in and part of it had already been built from the Sheppard subway – for a walkway underneath to the City Centre. That’s what they did in downtown Toronto with all the shops underground. That would have been a money-making proposition instead of a losing one. Then after that, looking at the surrounding area where already at Finch developers were buying up properties along Finch and Yonge and renting them out and places were being run down. The place looked a mess and so people who had been there a long time were moving out. Same thing started to happen at the back of City Hall. I was on the planning board and tried to get a ring road put in so that traffic could go around and so that the streets adjacent to city hall were closed off to protect the neighbourhood behind the road and to have access to city hall that was viable because Yonge Street was becoming a highway for people from Richmond Hill, Aurora – the volume of traffic was getting ridiculous. It could have been done at that point. I got the planning board to agree that it was a sensible idea. Mel must have heard about it because when we were on a coffee break, he just blew his lid and said it was a stupid idea and blah, blah, blah. In the end, it was just the chairman, Bruce Brown and I who supported the proposal. It went to council and some of the neighbours came out and opposed it. Afterwards, they came back, months later and said it was a great idea and they didn’t understand at the time that it would protect their neighbourhoods. But, you win some and you lose some.

Tell me about your time at Metro Hall.

I think some of the work on the social services committee was very good and I did quite a bit of research into senior’s services as well as the coordinated approach to family services. That was the Ottawa experience and how I got to learn about the Ottawa program was as chair of the Social Services, Health and Children’s Committee of the Association of the Municipalities of Ontario. I also researched my old home town in England. It was built in the 1930’s and populated by families. By the 1970’s, the majority of the people were seniors. The council provided several senior centres where there were morning and afternoon programs and a hot lunch time meal. They also had another program where stay at home mothers could be paid to provide a few hours a week of help to seniors such as shopping or cleaning. They found that the caregivers formed bonds with their seniors and often gave twice as much help as they were paid for such as having seniors to dinner on holidays or extra help if they were sick. In a town where 80% of the population were seniors, only one nursing home was needed. It was an idea I would have liked to pursue.