Regent Park: Misunderstood

By Lianna Shen

I’ve been a Torontonian now for over a year, and I am ashamed to say until today, I had not ventured by foot to the Regent Park area, despite its close proximity to my Victoria Street apartment.

Laugh as you may, but the main reason behind my avoidance is that I’ve always had a sketchy feeling towards the area. Most likely I’ve been influenced by experienced Torontonians who call it “the white ghetto”.

Fortunately, my Yoga studio is located on Shuter Street just west of Regent Park, so on one of the last sunny Tuesday evenings left of September, I decided to take a nice stroll after class to take in the sights. With my mat strapped to my back, cell phone in hand and wallet tucked deep in the bottom of my bag, I was ready. I started on the South side of the street.

On my way, between Victoria and Jarvis Streets, there were a lot of cars. It was after 7 pm, so traffic hour was long gone. But it seemed, the more east I went, the fewer cars there were.

It was almost eerily peaceful as I neared Regent Park. There was a couple dressed in matching red sweat suits on a jog; a man who couldn’t walk a straight line due to either a disability or intoxication slowly creeped his way across the street. The buildings were getting ugly, I thought. All grey, with sad looking curtains. Fences needed paint.

I passed by some green space right before Sherbourne Street. Trees! I had been looking for a tree to read a book under last week and had completely failed. Little did I know there were about a fifty to be found only a few blocks East of my sheltered urban sprawl!

Suddenly, an unreal symphony of chirping attacked the quiet night air. It sounded like a scene from the movie Jurassic Park. It wasn’t singsong chirping, but the chirping of too many birds on too few branches. Never before had I heard sounds like this in the city before. I looked up, and sure enough, all I could see were leaves and birds.

It seems that Toronto’s entire bird population had decided to convene in this little park on the border of Regent Park. And it suddenly struck me that perhaps this was not a choice the birds were making but rather, a matter of default. There really aren’t a lot of trees in downtown Toronto. Maybe they just had nowhere else to go.

The sidewalk was covered in little splotches of what looked like whiteout. Because I am a woman of reason, I figured out it was bird excrement. Good thing I wore my bad flip-flops.

As I passed the Dollarama and Salvation Army, I started getting a bounce in my step. This place isn’t scary! Sure, there were men sitting on benches looking a bit hungry, but they had cute dogs with them. I passed a mother pushing her kid in a stroller, who told me she’s there every evening. I could hear children’s voices. Maybe this is a rare occurrence, but for my first time in the Regent Park area, it didn’t seem as threatening as I’d made it out to be in my head,

When I decided I had explored enough, I crossed the road to the North side of Shuter, and made my way home. And this is what was running through my head:

If there are trees, birds and children in Regent Park, how bad can this area really be? I realized that during the entirety of my walk I had seen no random crimes, and heard no sirens or even a swear word uttered. What I had been warned against had not materialized.

And as I made my way back to the “good side" of Parliament, I looked up into the Toronto skyline and noticed another thing.

All the buildings ahead of me were also grey. And they were all ugly as well.

My stroll has left me with some further questions I'd like to look into:

I would really like to find out the history of Regent Park. Who were the first settlers, and how did it get it’s bad reputation? What were the first businesses that opened up there? What kind of maintenance does the area’s green space receive? Are there any programs in place, to improve the appearance of Regent Park, to make it more people-friendly?