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RPTV News interviews Miguel Avilla-Vellarde a Regent Park resident, and community activist, who has been involved in ensuring community safety through improvement of CCTV surveillance cameras at 220 Oak Street a Toronto Community Housing (TCH) apartment building located in Regent Park, in the area of River and Oak Streets. Motivated by the history of violence at 220 Oak, a total of six incidents of violence leading to death since 2011, Miguel along with other residents have campaigned the City of Toronto and TCH to install security cameras. The TCH has rejected these efforts on the grounds that the cameras violate certain aspects of privacy legislation. This argument however has met with resistance from residents who cite that neighbouring TCH buildings do have security cameras. And while the immediate safety of residents at 220 Oak Street is a concern for all vested parties, the path to resolving the matter has been mired in the bureaucracies of both the TCH and the City of T...

In Toronto there are around 3,000 laneways running throughout the city. Despite this only about 10% of these lanes are named. There are many reasons why naming of lanes can have many positive impacts on the surrounding neighbourhoods. As the Laneway Project highlighted, providing a name for a laneway can help emergency services reach the scene of emergency, preserve the history of an area, create a sense of place and identity, and bring the community together through the naming process. On June 20th 2019, Ismathara Ratna was struck by an impaired driver in the Regent Park community. The mother of three, was beloved by friends and family members in the community and many residents were devastated to hear the news of her passing. It was shortly after 1pm on a Thursday when Ratna, on her way to visit a friend after dropping her kids off at school, was struck by the impaired driver who lost control of his vehicle and mounted the sidewalk where Ratna was standing. This tragic death has left...

Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley sang; “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” Music has always played a very important role in the lives of Africans. As we are in June, Black Music Month it is time to remember that the popular music we hear today owes much to Africans. June has been recognized as “Black Music Month” since 1979 when President Jimmy Carter designated June as Black Music Month after being persuaded by Black Music Association founders Kenneth Gamble and Ed Wright. Music (singing, drumming, dancing) was an important part of African culture and was probably one of the few joys in the lives of enslaved Africans. Enslaved Africans were forbidden the joy of playing drums but expressed their creativity by singing and dancing. Music served to lift their spirits as they toiled in the fields, sometimes waist deep in mud, doing the backbreaking work that enriched the white families that held them in captivity. There has been much written about the role the spirituals...

Recently, the Ford government announced that schools would remain closed until September. While we agree that the safety of our children must be paramount, the impacts of school closures are not borne equally by all families. Indeed, for immigrant families who were already suffering under the Ford government’s cuts prior to the pandemic, any return to “business-as-usual” would only increase suffering. Immigrant families have already been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and public health measures. In fact, a recent study in Toronto shows how racialized, low income and recent immigrant neighbourhoods had the highest cases of COVID-19, suggesting that the pandemic is intensifying pre-existing inequalities faced by marginalized groups. Recent research has shown that immigrant parents are at elevated risk of emotional problems compared with other immigrants who are not parents. Inequities in language instruction are one of the systemic issues that immigrant parents must cope with. I...

In the world of comics, keeping alive the past is just as important as making way for the new. The Canada Comics Open Library (CCOL), located in Regent Park in the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), at the Daniels Spectrum building, is a novel undertaking combining both traditional and innovative approaches to comics, their presentation, preservation, and promotion. In the world of comics, keeping alive the past is just as important as making way for the new. While the past may have been characterised by male dominated worldview, the present and the future are anything but that. In what is commonly known as the Golden Age of comics (the 1930s and 1940s in the US), a pantheon of superheroes Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman, is conjured up to save the lot of mankind, from say, the devastation of the Great Depression. Parallel to this, and no less important, in Europe and in Japan for instance, comics are also flourishing, TinTin, Asterix, Manga and Anime em...

Regent Park has long been recognized as one of the lower-income neighbourhoods in the downtown Toronto area. There is a higher representation of visible minorities, refugees, immigrants and Aboriginal people in the neighbourhood compared to neighboring areas. The average income for Regent Park residents is approximately half the average for other Torontonians. However, the residents of Regent Park are not alone. There is currently close to two million Canadians in Ontario are facing poverty and/or are categorized as low income. In fact, Ontario has one of the worst poverty rates in Canada, which causes a lot of hardship for children and families in this country. One proposed solution for addressing this problem is the idea of a basic income. But what exactly is a basic income? According to the Basic Income Earth Network, basic income is defined as an unconditional periodic cash payment made to individuals. In March 2016, Ontario Budget, Kathleen Wynne’s provincial government commi...

A Community responds to the need for information in the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered our world, everything from how we socialist, to how we shop, and to what and how we negotiated our most basic movements - is now sifted through the mesh of the pandemic protocols. We are, to put it bluntly, inundated by news, both local and global of the pandemic, including information about Covid testing and various government income and employment supports available to individuals and their families. Keeping up with the latest developments has become a daily ritual.  For culturally diverse residents of Regent Park, many of whom are newcomers with basic English skills, this information can be overwhelming to digest and respond to. In an effort to help residents navigate the various supports that may be available to them, the Regent Park community organized a virtual town hall through the on-line platform of Zoom.  The townhall was held in ...

On, January 20, 2020, Regent Park Community Partners made their voices heard loud and clear to City Council in support of social development in Regent Park!  Regent Park is going through a massive transformation from Canada oldest and largest public housing community, to a mixed use and mixed income neighbourhood. Unlike many redevelopment projects around the city, the Revitalization of Regent Park has always involved a two-track approach – a Physical Development Plan, approved by the City in 2006, and a Social Development Plan, endorsed by Toronto City Council in 2007. The Physical Development Plan calls for new streets, parks and facilities, along with new residential buildings and townhouses. The Social Development Plan (SDP)consists of activities and strategies focused around communication/safety/community building/employment and economic areas that residents and community members have identified are important for the creation of an inclusive and cohesive neighbourhood. While t...

Regent Park is comprised of multiple populations from countries outside of Canada, such as Bangladesh, Somalia, China, and Vietnam. But in Regent Park, there is a small community that is often left off people’s radar: the French African community, which includes newcomers from Cameroon, Chad, Mali, and the Cote d'Ivoire. About 2% of the Regent Park population speaks French as their first and primary language (City of Toronto statistics, 2014), which equates to 240 unique persons. Maybe that doesn't seem large, but for a neighborhood in Toronto, which is Canada’s most populous urban city, it’s larger than the city average of 0.1 (Social Planning Toronto, 2018)! To support the social, cultural and economic inclusion of the smaller French-speaking population, there are some local organizations that exist, including the Centre Communautaire des Africains Francophone. This small community group was founded by a local Regent Park resident, Mr. Christian “George” Yombo, in 200...

Have you ever wanted to grow a vegetable or a fruit, but didn’t know where to start or what to get? Ever wanted to be in a team of gardeners? Ever wanted to own a patch of fertile soil for freshly grown food? Now you can with the CRC Gardens in Regent Park. In the 1980s, social workers began realizing that many people in Regent Park were not accessing fresh fruits and vegetables. This was because residents of Toronto Community Housing (TCHC) apartment buildings did not have access to their own land to grow food, and fruits and vegetables simply cost too much. Aware that people were choosing to sacrifice basic healthy foods to pay for other necessities, community groups began to petition Toronto Community Housing for communal land to establish community gardens. One of the first community gardens was set up behind a TCHC building located in North Regent at 600 Dundas Street East, now the site of the entrance to the Big Park. Today, managed mainly by the Christian Resource Cen...