Regent Park, Toronto, Canada, the projects as we called them.  The last time I had visited the area was a year ago after being away for over 25 years.  I was stunned, in my youth there was low-rise brown block buildings on the north and to the south townhouses and tall apartment now nothing but rubble and shattered brick.  It looked like a bomb had just blasted all of south Regent away.  A war zone, in the middle of Toronto.  I vaguely remember hearing on TV or the radio that Regent Park was going to be up for redevelopment but must admit I was not prepared for what I saw.

As I drove around to Park School where I spent my elementary years there was only the facade with the name “Park Public School” held up by boards, All the rest of it gone just rubble in the wind.  My life just wiped out as if it had never existed.  I experienced a sadness even though I grew up hating the place.

Built in 1949 Regent Park was a redevelopment for the slums of Cabbagetown.  It was Canada’s first public housing project and in the 1950’s and included the area south of Gerrard Street, later know as Regent Park South. That’s where I grew up.

In 1960 my family was one of the first families with kids of colour  (my mother was Irish and my father a black Canadian).  We moved into the apartment called Whiteside Place.  I was eight the eldest of six.   Most other residents were made up of the poor and working-class people of British and Irish descent, with a few European Jewish and Balkan immigrants.  So you see with being half Irish we fit right in.  No not really, I must admit it took awhile with lots of scrapping, name calling  and bloody noses.  My play yard after school was climbing in and out of the old chemical tankers on Shutter across from the school.

What I remember most was the violence, the drinking and the sexual abuse.  As females growing up in that type of environment without any community support it was like living in a third world country with no rights.  It was all about male dominance and power and control.  Out of the few girlfriends I had each and everyone of them had been sexually abused and there was no one there to help us.  Our mothers were either victims themselves or drunks even the police were in on it.  My God they use to come over and sit and drink with my abusive father, who they knew beat my mother on a regular basis.  So, when I read Regent Park was originally designed to alleviate the area’s substandard housing, crime, and social problems, I laughed.  The city threw all their unwanted into that cesspool “out of sight out of mind” and it was a fight for survival for every man woman and child.  With every weekend a brawl and women screaming late into the night.

I left when I was sixteen came back a few times through the years to try and have a relationship with my parents and siblings, but in the end I drifted away only to return to see a blasted out whole that was once my life.  Hopefully, with redevelopment and the attempt to make the community mixed use and with proper community support what lays beneath the old Regent Park in the dark place under the new  stays in the rubble and the shinny glass and metal I see going up brings some light.