Community workers combat social ills and stereotypes in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community.
By KEVIN SPURGAITIS
It was a weekday morning in June when residents of Toronto’s Jane-Finch community — familiar with the sounds of “pop, pop, pop” and police sirens — were rudely awakened by barking dogs and heavily armed officers from the Toronto Police Services’ Emergency Task Force. During the pre-dawn raid in the Driftwood Crescent public housing units — in suspected crack cocaine dispensaries — police seized 30 kilograms of cocaine, nine kilograms of hash oil, several kilograms of marijuana and a number of weapons, including sawed off shotguns, .357-Magnum pistols, .22-calibre revolvers, .38-calibre revolvers, a pellet gun with a blue bandana tied to the handle and 40 rounds of ammunition. Project Kryptic, as it was called, targeted the street gang known as the Driftwood Crips and led to more than 700 charges against 98 adults and seven youths. In the end, the gang that represented the greatest threat to the greatest number of people in Toronto put their hands up and said, “Pay attention to us, we’re a group that needs to be dismantled,” the Toronto Police Services boasted.
The operation followed a spate of gun-related crimes in the Jane-Finch area this past year, including the high school shooting death of 15-year-old student Jordan Manners. It went down shortly before the death of 11-year-old Ephraim Brown. The city’s 43rd homicide victim of the year, Brown was shot in the neck while attending his cousin’s birthday party at the Yatescastle public housing project in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood.
But while this rash of violence evokes images of east L.A.-style mayhem, the true heart of the neighbourhood is not gang members but regular citizens: teachers, parents, police, youth — and United Church congregations and community workers — who are trying against tough odds to build a strong and vibrant community. Theirs is an uphill battle, fought on two fronts: the power of gangs and the fear that violence breeds; and the pervasive social stigma that assumes nothing good can come from a place called Jane and Finch.
Centered around the intersection of two arterial roads (Jane Street and Finch Avenue) in north-west Toronto, the area is often dubbed the most ethnically diverse parts of the city. Here, there are 120 nationalities and ethnic populations and more than 100 languages spoken. There are disproportionately high numbers of refugees and immigrants, sole-supported families, low-income earners and public housing tenants. The United Way’s 2004 Poverty by Postal Code report explained that one in five families in the Jane-Finch region today live in poverty.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Originally developed as a model suburb by the Ontario Housing Corporation (OHC) in the 1960s, the community was planned to accommodate a dense population. However, little thought was given to the social infrastructure needed to sustain a healthy community life. As rapidly as it was erected, Jane-Finch experienced massive growth from 1961 and 1971. Between 1981 and 2001, the total population of northern Toronto communities grew by another eight percent — in poor economic families by more than 80 percent, according to the United Way. And by 2001, a paradigm shift saw immigrants ‘without a sou’ accounting for 62 per cent of all family populations.
“Yes, these are the people that we hold in our hearts as we work, on behalf of the church, to bring about justice,” says Barry Rieder, who for more than 10 years has headed the Jane-Finch Community Ministry, with the United Church of Canada’s Toronto West Presbytery. It is one of more than 30 grassroots associations, including social and health service organizations, addressing a wide range of economic, social and recreational needs in Jane-Finch. The so-called “energy from the edges,” Rieder’s ministry has long worked to make better the area’s spiritual, physical wellbeing, offering it pastoral care and advocacy through coalitions and networks.
Rieder seems right at home in the Firgrove Toronto Community Housing high-rise, where his office is located. On most days, he sports sandals, baggy jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with appropriate signage: “Jane and Finch’s finest. One love, one heart, one community.” He says: “Historically, many of these public housing communities are ghettoized from the rest of Toronto. They are wonderfully rich in culture, but they continue to struggle with these issues of poverty, isolation and systemic violence. It’s that simple.”
Community volunteer Merle Cowie has lived in Firgrove for more than 30 years. Says Cowie: “I wish the violence wouldn’t come here anymore. We don’t do the killing ourselves. We just do the grieving.” Another Firgrove resident and volunteer, Ann-Marie Chow, attended the barbecue where young Ephraim Brown was shot. Chow says: “We are human beings, living normal lives. We have the right to live in this universe, in this space and enjoy ourselves and our families. Unfortunately, the devil has a hold of many young people and they can’t be pulled back.”
Firgrove is relatively safer than most neighborhoods, sources say. Still, it’s badly in need of a facelift. Eyesores include sun-baked lawns, shoddy streetlights, gated public pools and poorly maintained basketball courts. Its high-rises and townhouses are either painted in drab tones or defaced with gangland graffiti. Hip-hop tags or “throwups” can also be found on the walls of recreational facilities, newspaper and mailboxes, park benches, utility boxes, as well as bridges and overpasses.
Today, Jane-Finch is home to Canada’s largest concentration of gangs. The Crips, distinguished by the blue do-rags in their pockets, lay claim to the North Side or Up Top above Finch Avenue, while the Bloodz set apart by red colours have the South Side or Down Bottom. Both groups are sworn enemies, although the Toronto Police Service says there is growing co-operation between the two. Some gang members even switch their affiliations along with their do-rags.
They have given public housing complexes at Jane-Finch more savoury street monikers: Connection, The Grassways housing complex at Firgrove Crescent and Jane Street; The Lane, the housing at Driftwood Avenue and Grandravine Road; Shore Shot, the Shoreham Court; V-Block, the Yorkwoods Village at Yorkwoods Gate and Driftwood Avenue; Y-Block on Yellowstone Street; D-Block, The Woods, the row of housing on Driftwood Avenue and Driftwood Court; and G-Side on Gosford Boulevard; as well the monolithic Palisades, the three adjoining buildings on San Romanoway that have long typified Jane-Finch.
Sporting gang-specific tattoos and gold-plated teeth coverings, crews make money trafficking in marijuana and crack cocaine; invading rivals’ homes, stealing cars, procuring prostitutes and operating ‘booze cans’ inside public housing complexes. According to the Toronto Police Service, hard-core gang members are culturally and criminally enmeshed in criminal activity — sometimes for life. Then there are associates, fringe members and young “wannabes” who drift in and out of neighbourhood crews.
However, the Crips and Bloodz are not entirely stag. Females, too, made up about a third of the arrests from Project Kryptic in the summer. They are girlfriends, middle-age moms and teenage mothers who willfully took part in criminal activity or were got caught up in the events surrounding their partners, brothers and sons. Some, like the Driftwood Crotchers, offer refuge for males, their households “stash houses” for weapons and drugs.
Getting out of gangs isn’t easy, sources say. In some cases, members are close friends, hang out at the same places and maybe attend the same school. Sometimes gangs make leaving dangerous; they may even ask you to kill someone. Young men and women longing for an exodus usually have to leave their neighbourhood or city altogether.
Some say the Jane-Finch community is living in “quiet agony.” However, Rev. Vicki Obedkoff of Downsview United Church, argues that the extreme violence is happening in a small geographical area, only a minority of people are actively involved in crime and violence. “I don’t feel like by walking around down here, somehow I’ll be hit by a random bullet. That’s just not how it is. When you live up here, you learn to weave your way around (the gun violence).”
Of her small, 120-member church, she says: ”I believe we’re on the cusp of an amazing intercultural ministry. We’re sitting in ecological paradise. There’s lots of healing potential, lots of healthy ecological and human resources. … It’s a struggle and a great act of faith, but people choose to stay and remain active in this community.”
Lynette Hamid, a Downsview United Church member, lives with her husband and three daughters in a middle-class bungalow off of Driftwood Avenue. “I live in a bubble because until only two years ago, I wasn’t aware that this was a very unsafe neighbourhood,” admits Hamid, who volunteers about 33 hours a week at Downsview United and other community organizations. “I have always felt pretty safe here. I know my neighbours and they keep an eye on my property.
“However, the threat is now very real … People always ask me why I don’t move to a bigger house north of the city. But I just say, ‘a bigger house for what, that’s more rooms to clean.’ We’re quite comfortable where we are, and I believe things will improve if everybody works together getting the guns off the streets.”
Her effervescent daughter Leah, 10, says: “Nothing really happens here, from what I can tell. But we have heard gunshots (at the Driftwood Community Centre) behind our house before. . . . I don’t want to start worrying or anything, but I know to come inside immediately after dark.”
According to Barry Reider, a diverse, lower-income population like Jane-Finch lends itself to all kinds of double standards and racial stereotypes. More attention, Rieder argues, is paid to white victims of violence than black victims. And so-called black crime is played up in the media while white criminals (i.e. Russian mafia, European gangs and right-wing biker gangs) get little or no coverage. As well, there is a litany of abuse, harassment and discrimination claims made by black youth and their families, in particular. Youth are routinely stopped by police or confronted by security guards in their housing complexes, he says. There’s overt monitoring by storekeepers too. Some youth are reportedly evicted from stores in strip malls despite doing nothing wrong. It makes residents here less willing to work with law enforcement whenever there’s real trouble.
This “No Snitching” street code is a real problem for police, according to Staff Sergeant Ian Lamond, with 31 Division’s Community Response Unit, which patrols Jane-Finch. However, Lamond says that after Project Cryptic, there was short-term improvement in the Driftwood community in particular. “People who were sick and tired of the gun violence began opening up to us in order to come out to enjoy their own neighbourhood,” he says. “They realized that their kids should be able to go out and play without someone shooting around them. And without their cooperation, we can’t do anything about that.”
Lamond continues: “We don’t have the resources or money to sustain that kind of initiative to sustain (Projecct Kryptic) over and over again. We can increase patrols only so much. So it’s also important that we get through to youth and adolescents when they are more responsive to us, when they realize that we are members of the community, ourselves, and that we are involved.”
The Toronto Police Service’s Community Mobilization Unit serves as one bridge between the public and the police. It includes the Empowered Student Partnerships program, the Public Education and Crime Eradication (PEACE) Project, the Newcomer Outreach Program and Family Services. There is also ProAction Cops and Kids, where police officers and at-risk youth interact under better circumstances: painting, drumming and fishing, as well as sports.
Sgt. Steve Hicks, also with 31 Division’s Community Response Unit, also wanted to make a difference in the lives Jane-Finch youth. So in 2002, he founded For Kicks Soccer, a series of sports clinics for youth. They receive lunch, a jersey, a soccer ball and an opportunity to discuss anti-bullying, leadership and other youth issues. Today, For Kicks has grown to include nine police divisions with officers with 15 divisions and units across the Toronto Police Service.
“We want to get the guns and violence out of here as well as end the cycle of ‘po-po’ (police) haters,” says Hick, who grew up in a crime-ridden neighbourhood in Toronto’s East End himself. “I’m straight with these kids when I tell them, ‘Stand up and be a leader in your community because it’s not the leaders who get shot dead, it’s the followers’ . . . I don’t believe that by the time these kids are 14, they are lost causes — no way.”
To their parents, Jane-Finch youths are diamonds treated like worthless stones —dropouts on the corner depicted as fools. As such, youth’s existence continues to be a grinding effort, guided by a need to divert attention away from their cheerless surroundings to outside felicities. Losing oneself to this gut-religion or gluttony, as journalist John Howard Griffin once wrote, is a hasty exit from squalor.
Still, Rieder remains cautiously optimistic. What should come to people’s minds when they think Jane-Finch, he says, is a place where you can get any food in the world and witness any cultural happenings, rather than drugs, guns and violence.
“I think that the future for community ministries in Toronto West Presbytery can be great if we continue to provide a United Church presence of walking with oppressed communities who have been pushed to the edge. We are already on an exciting path of assisting congregations in Toronto West with their own transformation of moving from charity to justice. . . . But there is a limit to what we can do on our own.”
Originally published in the United Church Observer, September 2007
