Catch da Flava On-Line

A new parkette is coming to the River street area. The parkette is expected to open in 2024 as part of a residential development project at 1 Defries Street, located just east of River Street and Shuter Street, between Marks Street and Labatt Avenue. The new parkette at 1 Defries Street will be about the size of a basketball court. A portion of the parkette will be located on the existing Labatt Avenue and will be part of a residential development. The parkette will be accessible and include various amenities and seating areas. A dogs off-leash area will not be included in the design due to the parkette’s limited size. The parkette’s design will evolve through consultation with nearby schools, area residents and the general public in order to design a space that meets the needs of the growing community. If you have ideas for this new, take the online survey to share your thoughts. The design team will use the community feedback to help develop design options for the new parkette. T

In Regent Park, a community that is in the process of a massive transformation, from Canada's largest social housing complex to a mixed income/mixed use neighbourhood, the outcome of elections, be they Municipal, Provincial, or Federal is of profound interest to area residents. The Community Civic Engagement Collaborative (CCEC) is a grassroots collective of agencies and residents in Regent Park, Moss Park, St. James Town and Corktown neighbourhoods, working to increase civic engagement in elections and beyond, through non-partisan community organizing. On Wednesday May 18, 2022, the CCEC organized and hosted an all-candidates meeting (held at the Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St E, Toronto) and invited candidates to share their respective party's platforms regarding the key issues facing the Toronto Centre riding, which includes Moss Park, Regent Park, Cabbage Town, Church Wellesley Village, and St. Jamestown.  The meeting was moderated by Ina Labuschgne and Walied Khogali.

At last weekend Juno Awards 2022, Regent Park community singer-songwriter Mustafa de Poet won the award for alternative album of the year. Mustafa’s 2021 debut album When Smoke Rises is a meditation on the grief he experienced after losing several friends to gun violence.   At the event, Mustafa said backstage. “I am because of Regent Park. I am nothing without my community,” he told media backstage after accepting the award on opening night. “Every experience, every death, every building that was buried, every argument. It shaped me and it shaped the way that I write, and it’s the reason that I write.” At Sunday’s Juno Awards broadcast, he went a step further to bring visibility to Regent Park, pulling up to the red carpet with an entourage of friends from his area, including rapper Lil Berete. Later that evening, for his live rendition of “Stay Alive,” those close confidantes joined Mustafa on stage to sing the final chorus of the song with him, smiling and slinging their arms ar

A spotlight on the Regent Park Revitalization, celebrating the successes locally and globally. The arrival on Thursday, April 21st, 2022, of the United Nations World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, locates the Regent Park Revitalization on a global stage. More than twenty-five years in the making, the transformation from an area known only for being Canada's largest social housing complex, to listing as of “Toronto's Top Neighbourhoods,” (Macleans Magazine) is still another tens from being completed. Nonetheless, the bold experiment of combining social housing with market value housing has for the-most-part paid off. But it is not only this mix of public and private-sector funding that has worked, but it is also the input from residents groups that has had an equally significant impact. In recognition of these successes, the United Nations Habitat and UrbanEconomy Forum have partnered with Daniels Corporation (one of the development partners of Regent Park) and Canada M

Regent Park Police Officers Mustafa Popalzai and Farzad Ghotbi from 51 Division started Project Hope, an initiative to collect household items, clothing, school supplies and hygiene products to help the new generation of Afghan refugees coming to the GTA as a response to the Canadian government commitment to resettling 40,000 afghan nationals after the Taliban regained control of most of the country with thousands of people desperate to leave Afghanistan back in August 2021. The Neighborhood Community Officers Popalzai and Ghotbi, came to Canada as refugees from Afghanistan and Iran, both know by their personal experiences the challenges that refugees face in their journey of resettling in a big city like Toronto. They started Project Hope last year by attending the hotels where these Afghan refugees were landing in, they approached them to know their needs and make sure they feel welcomed after they suffered tremendous difficult times when they arrived in military planes with

OASIS Food Hub is working in St. James Town to address food insecurity When you walk a bit further behind food basics in the space between the little park and 200 Wellesley, you will see the old empty swimming pool. The pool is owned by Toronto Community Housing and was closed in 2010, when it was discovered that black tar was leaking into the pool from a newly installed deck. TCHC assessed that the maintenance required to maintain the old pool would be too much. Once a vibrant social hub in the summer, the fenced in pool has stayed forgotten and waiting to be demolished. That is until now. OASIS Food Hub is a program of the St. James Town Community Co-op, a resident owned and operated organization. OASIS stands for Organic Agro-ecological Sustainable Integrated System. Co-op members and residents developed the OASIS Food Hub model to address food security in St. James Town. Their idea, why not transform the empty pool into an urban organic food farm as a way of addressing food

The Regent Park Community Meets to Hear About the Regent Park Redevelopment and the Social Development Plan. On March 23, 2022, the Regent Park Community came together to celebrate the Regent Park Social Development Plan and hear about its activities. The event was held in the Daniels Spectrum Arts Centre located at 585 Dundas Street East. The first part of the event, taking place from noon to 5 pm, featured a market place of community vendors as well as the official launch of the Community Living room hosted by Centre for Social Innovation (CSI). Located on the first floor of Daniels, the Community Living Room is a partnership between CSI, Daniels and Artscape. The space, consisting of tables, lounge chairs, books, children’s toys, a café and a TV, was designed as a public living room for residents and community members to informally gather and use as they see fit. The launch of the space featured a variety of vendors and speeches by Denise Soueidan-O’Leary and Tonya Surman

In this video RPTV interviews the leadership of the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association about their involvement in the association. The Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) was formed in early 2015, with an aim of having an equal proportion of TCHC and Market residents involved in its membership. RPNA represents residents of Regent Park and provides a broad range of advocacy, services and events. RPNA vision is to foster an inclusive, diverse and healthy neighbourhood in which all residents can feel at home. Recently, in a public announcement made to the community in February 2022, it was announced by members of the leadership team that RPNA had incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and will soon establish an office on the third floor of the Daniels Spectrum Arts Centre. As a not-for-profit organization, RPNA feels that this will give them more access to resources to support membership initiatives and activities. More importantly RPNA feels that resident involvemen

Regent Park Community groups work make the “Access to Space” project a working reality for area residents. The Regent Park Revitalization has substantially altered the landscape of Regent park with new buildings and amenities, among them the Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre, Daniels Spectrum, the Regent Park Athletic Grounds and the Regent Park Community Centre. The Regent Park Community Centre located at 402 Shuter Street, which is operated by the City of Toronto, is a multi-faceted recreational centre with an employment centre, child care centre, athletic field and connects to Nelson Mandela Park Public School. Additionally, it has an extensive array of arts programs, camps, fitness facilities, sports programs, and the centre has some youth-specific programming. At a recent community meeting held on March 11, 2022, facilitated by representatives from The City of Toronto Recreational Services and members from the Social Development Plan(SDP) working groups, residents a

Community Organizations and Local City Councillor Call for Action to Acquire Vacant Sherbourne-Dundas Property for Real Affordable Housing. On Monday March 7th, members of local agencies and organizations along with local city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam gathered outside at 214-230 Sherbourne St. vacant property (just south of Dundas St. East) to intensify their call on the city to acquire the seven-lot parcel, which has sat vacant for more than a decade. They also want the provincial and federal governments to support the City of Toronto by providing funds to purchase this prime development site as well as address Toronto’s housing and homelessness crisis. “Losing this property to developers would be such a huge blow to the community and it would create further gentrification,” said social worker Sheryl Lindsay of Regent Park Community Health Centre’s advocacy committee, which organized Monday’s news conference/rally and has long advocated for the city to expropriate or purchase the