"Wicked" Neighbourhood of the East

By: Martha Jack

When I moved to Toronto over three years ago as a fresh-faced import from rural Ontario, my floor of first-year university students were told by our residence advisor that Toronto was a relatively safe city, as long as we didn’t venture “east.” We were told of the horrors that awaited us if we chose to turn right on to Gerrard Street at the end of our block – drugs, prostitution, guns and gangs. I didn’t listen to a whole lot my RA told me that year, but his advice never to go east stuck with me.

With my final year of school looming before me and an overwhelming urge to experience all that Toronto has to offer before I pack up my life and move on to new adventures, it’s time to go and explore one of the most talked-about and analyzed areas of the city – Regent Park.

Before I really explored Regent Park, my mental image of the area was a combination of the stylized urban environments from old movie musical such as West Side Story and the digital world of the video game Grand Theft Auto. Neither of these ideas was correct, but there was some truth in both of them.

Going east on Gerrard Street, I felt a little like I had gone back in time. While there was no street gang dance-off in the middle of the street, there was an aged and behind the times feeling to the place. Some of the old and faded signs on the front of businesses and dirty windows gave me this feeling. Something around here felt tired – whether it was the hunched posture of the men I passed on the street or the ads I haven’t seen in stores for years.

The Grand Theft Auto part of my experience wasn’t so much anything I saw – but what I felt. It had been drilled into me, by the media, my friends and that RA all those years ago, that Regent Park was a dangerous place to be, so I felt hyper-aware of what was going on around me in case I found myself in the middle of a gang fight. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced anywhere else in the city, and there was absolutely no concrete reason for my heightened sensitivity.

When I came to the housing of Regent Park, I made a surprising observation. Regent Park actually reminds me more of home than the asphalt, billboards and neon lights of downtown. Around the low-rise brown buildings, there were children chasing each other. I hadn’t seen a kid running around Yonge Street in ages. There were aloe plants and faded, ugly curtains in the windows. That was definitely a familiar sight from back home.

Walking back to my Jarvis Street apartment, I felt bad that I had written off an entire neighbourhood based on hype. Yes, there are high poverty and crime rates in this area, but it is also just a group of people trying to make a home. I also felt bad about how little I knew about the neighbourhood. I know that there is a plan for revitalizing the area, but have no idea what it entails, or how I can help this neighbourhood right next to where I live and work.

The experience showed me that I have a lot to learn about the inhabitants of Regent Park, but the idea of it being a“wicked” neighbourhood of the east is merely a myth.