A cool, wet fall night in Parkdale. There's a soft hum from the fan of the computer, a more electrical hum rising from the fridge, and the occasional wet slide of a car going north on Dowling Avenue.
Hey, c'mon in, grab a chair. Coffee's right over there, be with you as soon as I finish what I was writing when you dropped by.Okay, think I got it now. Can I run this by you? Let me know what you think, this is just a first draft.
Parkdale feels calm. My second story window looks out onto Dowling, and there haven't been many people out walking in the last hour. Not even many cars, which is more unusual.
Dowling leads north from the Gardiner Expressway and Lakeshore Drive. You can walk south to the beach at Lake Ontario in less than ten minutes, or walk north onto the jungle of a late night on Queen Street West in less than three.
I've lived in this room for almost two years. There's a fridge and a hot plate, an old toaster oven permanently jammed on low, a small full bath, three tall bay windows, a leaded glass window, and an old fireplace that doesn't work. The room was painted white when I moved in but could use another coat, my cigarettes have turned it the colour of old ivory. The carpet is an indestructible and tolerable mix of blues and grays. It's a quiet old house, built to last, in a neighbourhood where it was fashionable to have a Toronto summer residence about a century ago.
Now: many of the fine old homes of Parkdale have been broken up into rooming houses. Government-supported housing has moved in, and the ghosts of old residents must be shaking their heads at all that goes on in the streets and alleyways of their old town.
Many here in the neighbourhood straggle on from month to month, waiting for their GWA (General Welfare Act) or FBA (Family Benefits Act) cheques. Given an average rent cost of about $400.00, a $649.00 welfare cheque doesn't go very far.
Especially if you have a drug habit, like cigarettes or coffee or alcohol or crack cocaine. The local economy rides on a boom-bust cycle from the first week of one month to the first week of the next. You can read the day of the month in the length of the lineups at the St. Francis Table, or the food banks, or the medical and legal clinics. Or in the jingle of cash registers at the supermarkets, dollar stores, liquor and beer stores. Or in the real need behind the fake sexuality of the girls working the street.
Most of all, you can see it in people's eyes. Eyes can tell you a bank balance or a hope balance. Around here, a lot of people closed up both accounts years ago.
Parkdale probably has the highest density of ex-psychiatric patients of
any urban area in the world. The closure of Lakeshore Hospital, and the
dumping of long-term patients from Queen Street Mental Health Centre
(Toronto's largest mental health hospital, a mile west of here) that
started in the 1970s and continues today, have created what's normally
called a psychiatric ghetto.
But Parkdale is too diverse already to be just a psychiatric ghetto. It has a hugely varied ethnic population, a mix of all colours and nationalities. There are people from the Caribbean, Asians, South Americans, Africans, eastern and western Europeans, people from every continent and every country.
In the last few years, artists have shifted from the old Queen Street West areas (further east of here) into local warehouses with lower rents. And the yuppie white-painters have discovered Parkdale, and many of them are busy renovating and "restoring" the neighbourhood. It's a constant melting pot and no group is in charge. Some would say nobody is even in control. This area makes some cops nervous.
Parkdale has a sex trade, and a drug trade, and a trade in almost anything outside the law. This is where the carnies stay when they come to town; this is very near the railway tracks, and very clearly on the wrong side. This is a place of many kinds of madness.
There is a dark side to Parkdale. Some say it's here because this was Canadian Indian land, and we took it from them, and now the circle has turned back. Some talk about demographics and mobility and structured patterns of poverty. I don't know. I know there are many people here who suffer, day to day, month to month, year after year.
But there is brilliance and light and love here, and creative fires that
flare bright, hidden from the dull steady light of the day. That's what
draws me back. I want to warm my hands and my heart, and maybe bring
and carry away some light. For myself, and for others.
I moved back here in October of 1992. I had decided I wanted to work at Parkdale Activity - Recreation Centre (PARC) and wanted to live nearby. I started volunteering at PARC immediately, and became a contracted employee within a year. That contract has now ended, but I'm still part of the PARC community, and I still live here.
So; if your coffee's done, let's stroll up Dowling to Queen, and stop in at the PARC Building. It's a very different place, in an old neighbourhood that makes most people pretty nervous. But don't feel scared; you're with me.
I live here.
3:20am
walk up Dowling to the PARC Building on Queen Street