A sense of community

From areas outside Regent Park, this section of Toronto appears to be the ghetto. All that people know about it, even some Toronto locals, is that there are shootings, drug deals, prostitution and poverty in that part of the city. When I first went to Regent Park, these were the things that I saw. I felt that I had come to an unsafe area, one I was unfamiliar with and one that I didn't know how to get out of if there was trouble. I didn't know where the dangerous spots to go were, so I stuck to the main streets. That first walk through Regent Park was probably one of the scariest of my life. I went there expecting to see lots of people walking the streets, scared that I might be mugged for the Spring Rolls take out I was carrying. When I got there, it was completely the opposite and the streets were so eerily desolate that I wished to see even one other person on the sidewalk. The only people I did see, from a distance, seemed to be scurrying quickly to where they needed to be.

As time went on, and I returned to the area on several occasions, it seemed that Regent Park slowly opened up to me. The next time I went, I realized the shocking sense of community that Regent Park has by looking at the murals painted on the sides of buildings and homes in the area. All the murals are of bright, happy things, the opposite of the profane graffiti one might expect to find instead.

My most recent trip to Regent Park was the only time since the first visit that I have been in the area after sundown. This time, however, I felt much safer than I did the first time. My purpose this visit was to go to the Toronto Kiwanis Boys and Girls Club located at the corner of Sumach and Spruce Streets. Although I was a little confused when my cab let me off at what looked like the middle of a nice street in old Cabbagetown, I soon found the old church that the club is located in.

Inside the building, it smelled of home baking and happy children's voices (and playful shrieks) filled the air. The walls were painted in bright, uplifting colours and covered in murals, similar to those on the outsides of some buildings. In one room, a group of young girls, probably no older than ten, stand in lines, dancing around and singing the lyrics to a Souljaboy song. The dance teacher, Stacey Williams of Toronto dance group, T.K.O, has gone out of the room for a moment, and the girls continue practicing, making their own music.

Seeing these girls dance, and seeing how happy they looked doing it made me realize that children in Regent Park are not necessarily unhappy children. Although some of them may come from less than ideal living situations at home, at the Boys and Girls Club they can play and dance and have fun like any other child anywhere else. While statistics show that over 50% of the people living in Regent Park are those under the age of 18, it was nice to see that the community is making an effort to protect them.