Peggy Edwards was the first Community Development Coordinator hired by the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre in 1978 and Peggy worked at the Centre for thirteen years. As of July, 2011, Peggy lives in Pickering, Ontario and works with non-profit, voluntary organizations as a consultant in management, policy and program development, and diversity issues.
How did you come to be involved in the Jane Finch community?
I first came into the community as a student on field placement in 1977. I was doing my Master’s Degree in Social Work at the time at Wilfred Laurier University. I had expressed a desire to be connected to an organization where I could do work and benefit from the experience in such a way that the skills and experience was transferable back in my country of origin which is Guyana. My faculty advisor said that what I was looking for, I would not find in the Kitchener- Waterloo area. I needed to be in an environment where there would be immigrants with diversity and people trying to settle into a new environment. Toronto was known as an immigrant reception area. Community development work was my interest and Toronto was the place to be.
My faculty advisor knew the late Dr. Wilson Head, whom I believe may have been connected to Atkinson College which is the social work part of York University. So my faculty advisor sent me to talk to Wilson Head and we had a very interesting conversation. Wilson Head understood where I was coming from because I was on a leadership scholarship at the time. I was supposed to go back to Guyana. I wasn’t going to be staying permanently in Canada. That was the plan.
After I met with Wilson Head, he said, “I know the person whom you should talk to – you should talk to Marvyn Novick.” He sent me to speak with Marvyn Novick and when I met with him, he was intrigued with what my interests were and he said, “I know where you should go.” He told me about this project he was involved in developing in the Jane Finch area – the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. So, Marvyn sent me to the Centre. From there, I met with Mary Lewis. When I came to the meeting, I think Helen Ede who was the President of Jane/Finch Centre at the time may also have been involved. After my meeting at the Centre, I immediately decided that and Jane/Finch Centre and the Jane-Finch area was the place that I would like to do my student placement.
Now, the interesting thing about that was the Master’s program required that you be supervised by someone with a Master’s Degree and Jane/Finch Centre didn’t have staff with those qualifications. This was a new situation for the University and we had to figure out a way to make this happen and with the support of my faculty advisor we did. The program was very tight – I learned during my studies at McMaster that with the combined BA/BSW degree that you could do the Master’s program in one year in a condensed program. It meant that as soon as we were done in April, you went straight into a spring inter-session with no break and all the work that you would have normally done in your first year of the two-year Master’s program, you would have had to do it from April to August, then start the program year in September. I was on student placement for that school year and I had to put in a certain number of hours. My placement would have started in the fall of 1977 and finished in April 1978. The agreement was when Helen Ede said that there was someone with an MSW degree who was working with the Centre and that was Mary Lewis. (Mary Lewis was an employee of the Children’s Aid Society doing Community Development work). The Centre at the time was in its early developmental phase. It had only been incorporated earlier that year or the year before. So, it was early days for the Jane/Finch Centre.
Mary was seconded for four days a week, or something like that, and she was at the point of transition in reducing her time to be two days or less, in keeping with whatever the arrangement was with the Children’s Aid Society. So, I essentially started to fill the void that would be left by Mary. The University agreed that it was okay that Mary would be my field supervisor, in terms of the contract. The faculty advisor would come down to Toronto periodically to check with me and to talk to Mary and so on.
Interestingly with that, the forms, the documentation for the field placement had to be modified because a lot of the questions that were being asked were not applicable to the Centre; for example, questions for, and references to the position of Executive Director when the Centre had no position like that in those days. Every time we went through a question, it just didn’t make any sense at all.
And so Hubert Camfens, my faculty advisor was very good and sensitive also to my interests. Wilfred Laurier had an international social work program so the faculty advisors were very responsive to various needs and issues. Right away he said, let’s not worry about the form as it was, let’s just talk about your goals, the learning goals and the evaluation would be based on achievements of those goals, particularly given that Jane/Finch Centre did not have the layers of management and structure like a Family Services or a Children’s Aid, or the usual agencies they would have sent students to. As such, it was an intriguing placement in itself.
When you started your placement, do you remember what was going on in the community, in the city and the province at that time?
I remember it was the time of the Suburbs in Transition study. Helen Ede was very involved in that process with the Toronto Social Planning Council. It was the time when there was a federal job creation program that resulted and I’m thinking it was called LIP (Local Initiative Project). There were transit issues and advocacy and lobbying going on for better social/community services in the Jane-Finch area. Social Workers were not looked very favourably upon; residents were somewhat reserved, suspicious, perhaps not trusting of them enough. Many families at the time were single-led, predominately female-led, and their lives were an ‘open book’ because maybe there was a welfare worker coming in. In those days, the notion was that they were coming to see if there was maybe a male presence – perhaps a shoe in the closet and such things – and this was affecting their work relations.
There was Public Health staff that was connected to some families. I discovered later on when I started actually working as a staff person at Jane/Finch Centre, in my role as Community Development Coordinator, that the role of the Public Health Department had diminished over the years, whether because of its funding or whatever else. They didn’t have as high a profile as they did in those days. Some may have had a Children’s Aid Worker connected to the family. So, many families had a lot of workers connected to the family because of their social situation and child protection issues. I was very sensitive to that coming in as a social worker because people had briefed and prepped me about that. I distinctly remember going into 15 Tobermory where you Wanda had a group there, a women’s group and they were doing macramé. It was a popular thing at the time and I went in and I just did a lot of observing because that was part of my personality as well….not to go in and try to take over, being a newcomer, so to speak. And I was a newcomer in many ways.
Canada was not my country of origin. I was new to Canada, only being here a few years. I had not lived in Toronto and I didn’t know Toronto. I came to Toronto because of my studies. So, there was a lot to learn. I didn‘t have much knowledge about the society, apart from the things we learned in the classroom, and what I did in my field placement for my bachelor’s degree, which was not community development work. I did my field placement in a group home in Oakville and that was an experience in itself. But, this was my Master’s Degree and my major was Community Development and Social Planning. This was a whole new arena for me. Based on the discussions that happened prior to the agreement around the field placement, I decided for myself that the Jane-Finch area and the people connected with the Jane/Finch Centre would be like my new university in the field. I was coming into it with an open mind.
I was also coming into the environment with some international exposure because prior to coming to Canada I had been involved with the World Council of Churches for four years and had an opportunity to travel to places in the world. I’d seen stark poverty and so I was intrigued with the whole thing - well if this was supposed to be a low income, poor neighbourhood and in my head I’m thinking…it didn’t look anything like what I’d seen in Africa or elsewhere. That was the mindset that I came in and I believe that that was what gave me the level of acceptance that I got as a social worker because social work was seen like a bad work kind of thing. I wasn’t going there to tell people what they were doing was right or wrong – that wasn’t what my role was about. I was there to work with them and to learn from them and I learned, even from you, Wanda. That was my attitude and that carried me through the years that I worked in the community and at the Centre, because I was always one to listen, to observe, to give input, share what I knew and, in turn, benefit from what people knew. I wasn’t that street-smart. It was a different society and so there was a lot to learn actually about life, since from my early twenties, my growing up didn’t happen in Guyana, it happened in Canada. I was hearing about the kinds of life experiences residents like yourself had (being one of the Centre staff), the stories of women in the groups, in Tiny Tots and so on, and processing all that in my own head.
When I finished the placement, and I believe I had to finish my placement at the end of the calendar year because in the new-year, 1978, I had courses to finish, exams and then I was done. The Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre hired me after graduation in 1978. The Centre applied and got a work permit for me to continue on as staff.
When you first started your work, how did you introduce yourself to the community? What things did you get involved with?
Initially, it would be introducing myself as a placement student with the Jane/Finch Centre doing my Masters and invariably what would happen is that we would talk about me; that’s where the engagement begun. Remember now, I was a foreign visa student. I would talk about my home country and how it was I ended up in Canada. That became something that gave me a connection with people because I was new, I was different, my experience and background were different and the placement spilled over into the work. The placement would have defined the activities I would be involved in so that I could learn, develop and enhance certain skills. With the women’s groups, it would have been suggested, whether it was you (Wanda) or Mary or whoever decided about the group at 15 Tobermory, that I provide some support because they were a new emerging group and then, in the Grassways, I was connected to the program being run by Faye Cole and I think there was the Tiny Tots and something else that was there; and then, with the Catholic School, I was connected to an after-school program at St. Francis de Sales. Most of the children who were in that after-school program were from the Caribbean. Both staff people, the social worker, Dianne Hyles and Violet (I forget her last name), who was the guidance counsellor were of that background and I was there providing added support to the youth in the program. The other part of my work involved some of the things that Mary (Lewis) was doing - financial, funding, community liaison, NYIAC (the Inter-Agency Council) and many kinds of community inter-face. I picked up on all of those roles. Certainly, at some of the meetings I would go to in the community, I would be very engaged in those conversations that had to do with urban planning in Jane-Finch - how Jane-Finch was organized, its physical development in the first place and what I perceived to have been a lack of foresight around social planning when the community was developed.
The other thing that was going on in the community was all the stuff that was surrounding DWAC, (Downsview Weston Action Community) because Pat O’Neill, the Alderman (City Councillor) at the time was trying to get the public transit. That was something that stuck out clearly in my mind. Those days, you had to walk out to the intersection of Jane and Finch, there weren’t many bus routes, there was no Downsview 108 bus and all these links for families, particularly those with young children, and these were the people who were coming to the Child/Parent Drop-in at Jane/Finch Centre. I used to silently observe parents with a kid in the stroller, a kid in the hand and they’ve got a shopping bag and had to walk to the Jane/Finch intersection in order to catch the Finch bus and even that didn’t run as often in those days.
Community Development was a fascinating part of the work both in placement and when I transitioned to being on staff, helping groups get funding from the City of North York and getting United Way funding. Jane/Finch Centre was getting ready to apply to the United Way for membership, eventually getting that funding which funded my position as the first Community Development Coordinator. I remember going down to Dixon Hall (a United Way agency) and I think that Terry Lee was the Executive Director there, to meet with the person who did their funding applications to get an idea of how to put together those kinds of funding proposals. I had meetings with community Boards, and now, things are getting a little blurred in terms of what were placement activities and what became essentially my work for the years that I was at the Centre.
Delta Childcare Network (now call Delta Family Resource Centre) was a place where I did essentially Board development, coaching I would call it. At Northwood Neighbourhood Services, I would talk with the executive director; I would go to the board meetings and I would speak with the Chair of the Board and maybe review the agenda prior to the meeting, talk with them about the process, give tips and hints in doing proper minutes or about records that needed to be kept and maintained. It was essentially the same for Information Downsview (no longer exists). Much of my work started with the funding and the whole issue of organizational development – strengthening the Boards, Board roles and responsibilities, fiduciary responsibilities as Board members, accountability for public funding and getting tax payers dollars no matter how small the amount. Another role was when the Centre acted as funding trustee for groups like Tobermory Community Activities because they were not an incorporated body – just facilitating that funding and doing both formal and informal types of workshops for staff and Boards of those organizations in terms of strengthening their capacity to deliver services and to increase their staff capacity for service delivery.
In that context, culture, race, ethnicity were important issues in the environment at the time. There was a whole wave of action around multiculturalism because the Federal government under Pierre Trudeau or prior had established the Multiculturalism Policy. , The late 70’s going into the 80’s was an era where the provinces were all being asked to have multiculturalism policies and these eventually led to anti-racism policies. Institutions like Parks and Recreation that was playing a role by providing space for the community, the library boards, the schools boards, and every institution was creating multicultural positions.
That was a critical period, that late 70’s and up to the mid 80’s of this whole movement around multicultural policies - how to manage that, how to make programs and services culturally sensitive, where to go for funding, how to communicate that so that organizations were mindful that the people sitting on the Boards making the decisions were engaging the consumers of the services as part of the decision making and that they were reflected in the management and staff of the organizations. So, both in placement time and in the early years of working in the community, I found myself becoming a sort of focal point where people might gather information, exchange information or enter into a dialogue about what that’s all about, because on staff at Jane/Finch Centre – apart from when Faye Cole was involved (and she wasn’t on staff then), I had been the visible minority.
Later on, there was Yasmin Khan who came on as a childcare worker at the Centre. However, when I would go to meetings, in some ways, I would stand out because in those days, if you recall Wanda, there weren’t a whole lot of people of my background in social work with my level of education in the field – even in the Children’s Aid. There was one person whose name would come up a lot from time to time, another Black social worker who worked at the Family Services Association. I believe her name was Juliet, I’m not sure. She was a family counsellor there and I believe at the time, and I stand to be corrected, she was probably the one and only.
Those years were very interesting years in terms of the evolution of organizations and services like Jane Finch services and the community coming of age. What is interesting is that the Jane/Finch Centre’s role became so pivotal that you can’t talk about the Jane/ Finch community without focusing and talking about the role of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. First, the Community Office was set up to be like a place where fledging organizations or individual residents or small groups of residents could come and talk about needs or get support around self-help initiatives that they had in mind or they wanted to undertake. When my position came into being, that whole infrastructure of support between the Community Office and the Community Development Component is what enabled the emergence of the groups and services that led to what we have today.
Jane/Finch Centre led the way. It became the guiding light, so to speak, because long before, government at various levels and (I’m going to use the term ‘mainstream‘) mainstream agencies and their staff began to grasp what multiculturalism was and later, when that evolved, what diversity was all about. The Jane/Finch Centre, because of its basic philosophy was truly grassroots, engaged people in the community and had already started dealing with issues of diversity. For the Centre, diversity was beyond race and ethnicity because you also had in Jane/Finch some buildings - I’m thinking of the buildings around Arletta and Sheppard, Tobermory - where there were Canadian seniors and Canadians who had come from other provinces like Alberta (something was going on in Alberta, I recall, regarding the oil industry). So, in addition to the external immigration into Canada with people coming to settle in Jane-Finch (where the last wave of public housing was built and there was subsidized housing), you had an internal migration of people who had been coming into Toronto to live and they too were trying to work through the growing pains of integration and acceptance. This internal group included blacks - remember Rouvean Edwards from Nova Scotia who was a Board President of the Centre? Jane/Finch Centre allowed me to do some sessions with staff and Board around culture and race.
The Board supported my interest in diversity. Remember in 1982, I went off to do a ten-day residential course with the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture – Training Trainers in Inter-Cultural Communication. I came back with a Canadian perspective on things and to share that with the broader community. That led to our Meet Your Neighbour Workshops and other programs that came later on. But, the late 70’s to mid-80 was really a critical period in terms of socio-political issues, physical growth, civic engagement, participation and recognition of grassroots movement in Jane Finch. Helen and I and eventually, Peggy Birnberg, when she came on staff as the Child/Parent Coordinator were going after prevention dollars, United Way funding, Metro funding, and Federal job creation projects that we were able to get. We, with the help of York, University were challenging the funding system as to why the Jane-Finch area that reflected similar socio-cultural phenomena when compared to areas like Regent Park downtown or elsewhere, was not getting the same per capita funding and was not being funded in an equitable way.
All those issues and needs came together in the Suburbs in Transition study and that process created the foundation from which new funding and other services appeared. I think there was growing external community recognition of the strengths of the Jane-Finch community and that residents of the community were not (as some perceived) the dregs of society, and all a bunch of non-contributors. Residents knew their needs, they knew what they wanted, they had the solutions, they were capable of managing organizations, they were capable of managing and being accountable for public dollars and I think this shift happened in that time frame around ’79 to ’84.
My work with the establishment of the North York Women’s Shelter was significant. It was a major community development undertaking by the Centre. That evolved from a meeting in the community – we had these inter-agency meetings and it seemed that both from people working in the field and from even your work, Wanda, with women in the groups, that we talked a lot about domestic violence and women who were going through abuse and the challenge trying to find shelters for them. The shelters were all in the downtown area and the women, even though they were referred, didn’t end up going because it meant leaving the community and going downtown for shelter.
I recall going to a meeting and I believe it was a meeting of an umbrella group we had in the early days – the Jane Corridor Immigrant Services, led by COSTI - and I was sitting next to a public health nurse in the community (can’t remember her name) and I remember saying to her that I was tired of us talking and talking about the need for a shelter so let’s do something. I asked her…”will you do it with me?” And she said, “Are you serious?” I said, “Yes, let’s do something.” So, she said that if I did something, she would support me. It was that conversation that led to that whole four years of work for the development of the North York Women’s Shelter. I, at the time, was sitting on the Cross-Cultural Coordinating Committee of the North York Inter-agency Council and part of the Council was a Women’s Needs and Resources Committee, but their meetings were very unproductive at the time and it was inactive since they didn’t seem to have anything to latch onto and fire them up for action. In talking to Michael Aiken who was at that time the Mental Health Coordinator at the North York Inter-Agency Council, I asked him if this was something that might help to revive the Women’s Needs and Resources Committee. He said, “I would think so. Why don’t we convene a meeting of the people who used to be on that committee and tell them about what you have in mind?” That’s what I did. Michael came and supported me though that wasn’t his particular role. The rest is history.
The Committee latched onto the idea of the shelter and that became their project. I became the ‘legs’ of the project because the other people had full-time jobs and so the development of the Shelter became almost my full-time work for the next few years as the Community Development Coordinator of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. Since, geographically and physically, we had no housing in this area in North York comparable to the kind of old single detached homes they had in downtown Toronto, it became clear very early that we would have to build. We had to find a place, we had to go through all the zoning, we had to get funding from government and that was a tremendous learning experience. This was a marvellous community development initiative in that women from the community, remember Reta Duenish? She was the first chairperson of the incorporated shelter board. Women without a lot of planning experience or academic qualifications and work experience took on leadership roles in the steering committee for the development of the shelter. They spoke to the media, they spoke to Rotary Clubs and other groups and did things that they didn’t do before. That is where some of the roles that I played with the local organizations in terms of their development. I was also able to plan with that steering committee and Board in helping them grow. I was coaching on how you chair a meeting, understanding Robert’s Rules, taking minutes and communications. I played the role doing the research where you’d get funding and planning support, talking to people in the Co-ops. We had help from other Councils and Co-ops. They helped us put our package together to go to Canada Mortgage and Housing with our proposal and so on. I was involved in finding and working with an architect, visiting the existing shelters like Nellies’ in Toronto and Women’s Habitat in Etobicoke and others to look at models and how we might create ‘from scratch’. I was finding out about by-laws, zoning changes, re-zoning process. This was all very significant work. The first Coordinator for the North York Women’s Shelter was Isobel Meltz and she had an office at the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre while the shelter was being built – about two-years.
The Community faces many issues today, what were some of the issues back then? How did the community and/or government/influential people respond?
I think that the response of government changed and that had to do with two movements. There was a big prevention movement going on in Ontario at the time; some of the early funding for the Child/Parent Centre came from prevention dollars so that was one thing. The second was the work of the Social Planning Council in Toronto (Social Planning Toronto) in drawing attention to the inner city issues emerging in the suburbs and that the suburbs might not be what people think, that further east of Toronto or further north, there were inner city issues in the suburbs. Another issue was the whole movement of the school boards around community schools and community use of school space. I think that those were three big movements that had a real impact on what was going on in Jane-Finch. There was a focus on self-help and volunteerism - getting people out and involved. Groups were emerging in response to needs that residents themselves identified, either through their frustration, their anger or whatever was their motivating factor. These residents were the ones who came forward to establish organizations and so that was like the birth of social development in Jane/Finch.
With the emergence of people taking some control of their own destiny and because of the work these new groups were doing with Information Downsview giving access to resources where you can go for things and the community newspaper, the Jane Echo. There was Downsview Weston Action Community (DWAC) and it was struggling along, not as strong and powerful as it was maybe a year or two prior to my coming into the community, but it had there was a good couple of years of meetings and activity leading up to the incorporation of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre with the help of the Alderman and others at the time. But, once the Centre was there, then what was next for DWAC?
So, I think those other grassroots movements contributed to that growth in community empowerment, to use a word that is overused. It was a really empowering period, empowering the residents of the community with the residents understanding that they don’t have to accept lesser standards. They could fight for having services within their community, and it did happen with Toronto Public Health and the Children’s Aid Society having a service presence right within the community as well as on Yonge Street. You may recall, at times we allowed workers to come on site and use space at Jane/Finch Centre. It happened in other areas. There was a service behind the Centre on Gosford in the school and I remember there were some other services offered there for a while. Workers started to come into the community whether it was a day a week, or whatever, using a desk or something else in an established space within the community and eventually there was a service presence. I believe it was on Oakdale where the Youth Clinical Services used to be. So you had that shift of having that presence of social services and that was very empowering; politically, socially in that the community was able to pull that off and to get that acknowledgement. Some of that shift was caused by the whole national/political movement around multiculturalism when United Way began playing a role with organizations responding to emerging needs and giving money to non-mainstream agencies and mainstream agencies getting concerned that these ethno-cultural programs were going to get the money that should be ear-marked for them because they were not responding to the needs of an increasingly immigrant/refugee, diverse Jane Finch community. United Way was allocating campaign dollars that supported community groups like the Asian Community Centre (no longer exists) and the Latin American Community Centre (no longer exists) and all those organizations were then emerging. That was very powerful and political. These were all grass-roots organizations with the community itself stepping up and taking action.
What do you remember as being challenging in your work?
I don’t know, depends on how you’re using the word ‘challenging‘. I never found my work in Jane-Finch challenging, in a negative way. If anything was challenging for me, it was trying to get people who were not working in the community to understand why I was working in Jane-Finch. Remember, I came into the community and working for the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre with a Master’s Degree when little funding was available for anything and I could have chosen to go and work in other social service agencies or find a government job but I chose to work for a real grass-roots organization with a community board.
That was the challenging part because even on the home front, my husband didn’t understand that choice either. For me, the choice was a sense of mission so that was the big challenge. The other one had to do with getting support for the Centre. I think of Helen Ede and how she used to tell the Centre story and was brought to tears, getting very angry with some people we met with, for not understanding, not respecting and not affirming her and what we were really trying to do here in the community. That used to annoy me and upset me. The flip side of that was that it almost became like fuel for me in my work because whenever I went out there I always, even up to now, when I talk about Jane/Finch, I talk about its sophistication in community development. I talk about the Board of Directors of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre from the 80’s, their foresight, the level and degree of trust that they placed in me, their openness, the openness to learning, to trying and testing ideas and going in certain directions, the leadership strength at a governance level and Helen Ede and Pat O’Neill (they had a lot to do with that) and lastly the Faye Coles’ and other people like that in the community. What powerful women, what vision - seeing beyond the immediate so that I could go out there, whether it was at NYIACC or before Mel Lastman (then North York Mayor) or at the United Way and speak passionately and challenge people about this work and about the importance of support for leadership development and investing essentially in people and in communities. That was ‘challenging’ in a positive sense, it was motivating and so I got up every morning excited about my work. I never came to work, not excited about my work because it was work where I was making a difference. And, when I would go before Mel Lastman, he would say…“you again!” I wasn’t put off by that; I would say, “yes…you have to hear from me again but I’m wearing a different hat today, last week it was Jane/Finch Centre, today it’s about Information Downsview:. I was there with the groups to make the pitch for funds in a way that maybe they were not able to make it because I had the benefit of being conceptual and giving the theoretical context by virtue of my education. This was not to put them down but to say that I had that going for me. And I want to say this: that I not only valued the respect that the Board and staff gave me for that but in terms of my own growth, I never took that respect for granted. It was an enriching and humbling experience to know that the Board was ready and willing to sit and listen and have a dialogue based on things I had learned in school or had experienced or that I’d figured out having sat in a meeting out there in the community and they were ready to go along with my ideas. They were ready to adjust, to look at policy, how we do our work that was just fascinating for me. In turn, I was learning, learning from them.
What were you most proud of?
The work with the women’s shelter – oh, that’s the highlight! That was such a big achievement because it took a span of time and involved so many fields of work, even in areas where I had no familiarity , what did I know about construction in Canada, what did I know? When I grew up in Guyana, my parents didn’t own a house! So, that was such a learning experience and also, working with the people involved – people like Reta. I used to look at her and smile to myself seeing how she would go and talk to media people because I was by nature shy and reserved I didn’t like dealing with the press and reporters and television. My country didn’t even have TV when I left. I didn’t know anything about T.V. so I didn’t want that role. I just loved sitting down and strategizing, planning and doing research, and that was such a great thing personally and professionally.
What did the community of Jane Finch teach you?
Everyone matters! I still talk today about that ‘philosophy of service’. That’s how I described the Centre to staff of Skills for Change years later - that I came from an organization that had, and was guided by a ‘philosophy of service’. “We start from where people are at”. That’s for me maybe the biggest principle, a very simple thing. Then, if one or two people show up for a meeting, they are just as important as if five or six are at the meeting. Don’t get frustrated in terms of community development. If you show up and there are two people, don’t get all worked up or get your nose out of joint about it. Start where they are at, work with the two. That was the biggest learning.
The community is very different today. What advice would you give workers today doing community development?
I think the same philosophy still applies. I compare it to what you say as you interact with people when we’re talking about justice and equality for all: “Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.” I was taught that from very small and I think that it’s a principle that applies in this work – wherever and whatever people are. Everyone has something to offer, no matter what it is. If you deal with people as if they matter, then they would respond back in kind and they will participate. Just start with the view that people matter and that regardless of qualifications, race and whatever else; we’re all entitled to that opportunity to access whatever society has to offer. Those are basic principles no matter what field of study you go into because at the end of the day, it comes down to what is the connection that you make with people. I continue to feel humble. I think of the other day when someone called me and they said I’ve got to do this and your name was highly recommended because the person felt that whether its conflict mediation or being able to manage a process in an objective way, and listening and hearing – you’d be the person to help with that. That was a very humbling thing to hear because it’s not a gift or a skill or something that I acknowledge. I’ve heard people say it but you know people say things and you just accept it. Even humbling was being a facilitator for the school board’s community meetings (last year) where things were very controversial, that senior people would trust that I would put my best foot forward and that I would be fair with the two sides, three sides with their competing interests, that I would make every effort to manage things in a fair way and to respect people and respect the process. I would also say that functioning, doing my work and conducting myself with integrity, and always striving for excellence, for me, is number one.
Our community had some diversity in the past. What challenges did the community or you have in engaging people in the diverse community?
There were challenges in the sense of the questioning either about people’s right to be or whether they are able to do. I don’t know that the community in the beginning fully embraced the Asian Community Centre, the Latin American Community Centre or the Jane Finch Concerned Citizens Organization. I think those were the things that we constantly had to work through because groups like the Concerned Citizens, in a way had to prove themselves. They dealt with issues and responded to things in ways different to what some of us would have been accustomed to, or thought would have been the right way because we had evolved, grown and had become quite knowledgeable and so there was sometimes that silent questioning of them and their identities and so on. Then you’d hear that things weren’t going right for them – at the end of the day, as you and I know, there were some major problems because of internal fighting and tensions and certain groups disappeared off the scene. Yet, I don’t know that the community, in any concerted effort, stepped forward in any way to help them or support them and that’s why I come back to – you cannot talk about the Jane-Finch community in a social development/community development context without talking about the influential role of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. It was through the community development component function and this was the word that I was looking for, ‘legitimacy’ to some degree, that those groups got legitimized and got the support that they needed to help them to respond to the needs of their particular ethno-cultural community. They provided services in a way that other community-based organizations were not serving because of cultural, language and other kinds of barriers.
I remember issues around a new Somali group that wanted to develop some programs. The way their leader/contact person went about doing business wasn’t what people were comfortable with. It was an example of just how different ways of speaking, different ways of exercising authority rubbed people the wrong way. Those were all things we had to work through in building relations. It wasn’t a perfect situation but there was sufficient good-will and commitment that made it work. It was this commitment that guided the Centre’s work. I remember when the Centre was invited and presented to the Ortho-Psychiatric Conference and they said (about the Centre) “This should not work, the literature doesn’t support this, the ways you are working, the way your organization is structured, the shared management of three Coordinators. This doesn’t fit what the textbooks say.” So, I think that evaluation in terms of diversity and the Centre was important, was crucial, and was the saving grace.
I think that in the Jane-Finch community of today, when you ask the question of what you’d say to people who have come in now to work, something that new leaders have to be mindful of is that grass-roots can also become mainstream. As you evolve and get bigger, don’t forget where you come from because the same things that we challenged, that we got upset about twenty, thirty years ago apply for the new emerging groups. Let’s see that they are another piece of the fabric and look at how we might work together. I think of organizations like Elspeth Heyworth Centre for Women. I don’t know their directions now and their level of support needed but the issue is how do you engage and work with those groups, even though you may have concerns about this and concerns about that. How do you, at some level keep those connections going because they represent different faces of the community? You and I have had discussions about San Romanoway in the broader Jane-Finch context – these are all different faces of the community, with every right and reason to be there and to be doing what they are doing. I would say to leaders, let’s make sure that if you are doing something over there, that you are doing it in a way that does justice to the community, that moves it along and helps people. With the different groups, its different ways of working, it’s different ways of responding. It’s a quilt and that’s diversity at its best. We can agree to disagree and work around the different ways and the different levels of experience.
I can remember the differences in some community board meetings. You had those board members who knew a lot (maybe they had gone to some workshops and had gone perhaps to some United Way events) and then you had the new board members who were trying to get strong on their feet and, in discussions, you could get impatient with them. People would say that they don’t understand, they don’t this, they don’t that. You had to work through that with the people who were really strong, to get broad participation. We had some strong leaders in the early days of this community who recognized that it was their time to step back and let others carry the torch. I hope that the community can keep that in mind. We bring people along and we step back, not step away. When you are around the table, allow all expressions to come to the fore because then you’re building the capacity for the future of the community. Then there’s the involvement of young people in the community. They look around the table and see “old” people like us and they are wondering if we are going to listen, are we going to be accepting, understanding, tolerant? They are going to be coming with their ideas that you might think are crazy and maybe you are thinking this is not how we did it back then, or that’s not how we did it five years ago. It’s a whole different way of working; it’s a whole new environment. And that today, I think is a big challenge because youth is a whole different culture within cultures, the diversity of cultures.
What is your fondest memory of working in this community?
The people and the friends made – oh my goodness, they are my extended family. That’s the fondest memory. People like yourself, like Faye, we mightn’t see people all the time, but that bond is there, whether near or far, frequent or infrequent and I’m sure there would be other people who would say that too. That’s my fondest memory, the people I’ve met. Some of them have passed on, like Donna Wilson. I think about them. If I happen to come across an old picture, I sit and I watch it and it’s very nostalgic. It may seem strange to say this but you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from. I first came to Canada as a visa student; I have no family members in Canada. I was embraced by a community, a community of strong women, powerful women. Jane/Finch Community and Jane/Finch Centre always has a place in my heart. When we put that in the broader context of settlement, adaptation, integration of immigrants and newcomers, it’s how you get received, how you get treated, how you are dealt with that matters. You know in the community, I never got concerned about being Black. When I would talk to my husband about work relations at the Centre and about what I heard from workshop participants (when I did external cross-cultural and anti-racism training) about office politics and racism in their workplace, I’d say that I don’t have that experience at the Centre, and he used to say, “you’re not functioning in the real world of work. You’re not in an environment of back-stabbing or where you are always proving yourself as a Black person.” Thinking now about this, even if it was there, I never felt it.
You (Wanda) and I have had these discussions but I never felt anything that actually affected my psyche and made me question who I am and what I am. I don’t believe that when the Board with Helen and Mary, if you remember, tried to get my second working permit, that they saw me as a “token Black”. I wasn’t there to be a show-piece for the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, to be your “token” reflection of multiculturalism or anti-racism. I never felt that. When I went to Tobermory and sat around the table with women who were all the same European background, being Black was never an issue. So, when I think about my work in the community, that’s what I remember – the people and personal relationships. As a young recent graduate that didn’t know much about Canada, embracing and acceptance of the work, I think was a two-way thing – how the community and you folks were, and what I brought to it. I’ll always remember that.
Do you have any other comments or thoughts?
My comments and thoughts have to do with my involvement in the past couple of months with the school board process around potential school closures and also when I sat on the school safety panel. (Peggy sat on the School Community Safety Panel for the Jordan Manners Inquiry). When I think about the issues and concerns in the community about the schools and possible closures I feel that the community is likely to find itself in sort of a time-warp, going back to the early 70’s, prior to the development of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre because change is on the horizon. There is another urban planning change for this area that’s going to emerge with the subway coming through York University.
In a way, the train has left the station so to speak, the subway will happen. There will be physical development in that whole area around Shoreham. I had an opportunity to speak to some residents, some who are part of the parent councils. I understand their emotions and suspicions. I asked them which organizations will take on that leadership, play the kind of catalyst role that the Centre played in the 70’s with regard to the issue because there’s going to be need for that - to help residents understand what issues are at stake outside of the school board context, since that process was too emotional and close to home. Everybody’s thinking, I don’t want my little corner gone, I don’t want this and I don‘t want that. You and I know reality is when the decision-makers sit down they’re going to go ahead and make their decisions. I talked with some leaders and I said that you want to be positioned in a way to say what you want, what’s your vision, and to say yes, that‘s going to happen. I asked them where that conversation is going to happen because if you don’t do it, and just keep saying no, they’re going to do it for you and without you. We all know that we vote, but governments come in and they make their decisions and developers get together and they eventually are going to do what they plan to do. So, at the end of the day, a school might close or not, but what do your kids need?
What do the youth of Jane-Finch deserve compared with the resources that are in some of the schools. I went to school meetings where they were telling me, for example, about leaks, and that the gym was too small for the school population. The community needs schools where there are resources, where there are computer labs and other things that would give our young people opportunities. You could bash the school board all you want but if you don’t have a community plan, you’re going to be left behind. Maybe the board won’t close any schools, but perhaps, in the pecking order for improvement, if you don’t have a voice, you’re going to remain the same impoverished community. It’s not like when you (Wanda) or I went to school – it’s a different age, it’s the 21st Century. We need to have our young people exposed to something different than some of those old and non-motivating school environments around here. How is it going to happen?
Who is going to help the community to start getting out of the box, to look at the bigger picture for the future of the children and the youth of Jane-Finch? Will they always have to leave the community to get something that they want that is motivating, that excites them when they walk into the school door every day? Are the adults, leaders and the parents of Jane-Finch going to take action and say, “Okay, I don’t like your plan here but what about this plan”? How can we work together? If you don’t have money for this, here’s the minimum and here’s where it needs to happen and we’re going to be political around it. How residents were political in getting the TTC and other services in the community, that same kind of socio-political movement of the 70’s is needed now. So, that’s what I want to put out to the community. It’s up to you!