Firsthand
Kempton Howard was a talented and popular youth worker from this patch who worked at the Eastview community centre. He was senselessly murdered in 2003 after a heated argument in the hallway of his Blake Street apartment. He was 24. At his trial, the 27-year-old that killed him told his victim’s mother, “Your son would never have been killed if I didn’t have a gun. I thought before that having a gun would make me safe. Now I realize no one is safe when someone has a gun.” In 2007, Eastview Park was renamed Kempton Howard Park in honour of the slain young man.¹

The Landscape
Toronto Community Housing buildings in this patch are located at 10 and 20 Boultbee Ave., and 30, 40, 70 and 80 Blake St. Approximately 3,500 people live in the Blake Street patch.

The patch is part of the Blake-Jones neighbourhood, named for two of the streets running through it. The area to the east of Jones Avenue is known as “The Pocket.”² The Blake-Jones area is served by Blake Street Junior Public School on Boultbee, Pape Avenue Junior Public School on Pape Avenue and Earl Grey Senior Public School on Strathcona Avenue. Blake Street Public School also houses the East Alternative School of Toronto which is a school for nearly 70 students in Grades 7 and 8 that integrates the arts throughout its enriched curriculum.³

The Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre offers a wide variety of programs to meet the needs of residents including food access programs (a food bank, community gardens, kids cooking classes), services for newcomers (orientation and skills development classes) and seniors (social and recreational), sports, youth leadership training, after-school programs and more.⁴

The People
In the wider Blake-Jones neighbourhood that this patch belongs to:⁵

• 29% of families are led by one parent; 91% of these families are led by women
• 40% of residents are immigrants; 61% of them came to Canada before 1991
• 64% of residents lived at the same address five years ago, indicating that this neighbourhood is not highly transient
• Only 47% of residents over age 15 have a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree
• 2006 unemployment rate was 7.7 % as compared with 6.7% in the rest of Toronto
• 38% of residents are considered to have low before-tax incomes as compared with 18% in the rest of Toronto
• 48% of residents are visible minorities; the largest group is Chinese, followed by black

The Blake Street Junior public school serves 250 kids from junior kindergarten to Grade 6 who belong to roughly 40 different language groups including English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Urdu, Somali, Hindi, Pashtu and Farsi. Students with a first language other than English make up 63% of its population.⁶

The “Black Street Massive” is a drug-dealing street gang that operates out of the Blake Street neighbourhood and used to have a bitter rivalry with gangs from the Moss Park area of downtown Toronto.² Residents living in the community housing buildings in this patch complain about poor living conditions including infestations of bedbugs and rodents as well as drug dealing.⁷

The History
The Blake Street patch is located on the east edge of the larger Riverdale neighbourhood, which was a small rural community until the Grand Trunk Railway extended through the community in the 1850s. The railroad attracted industry and labourers who built the first homes just south of the railway tracks.⁸

The Pape Avenue school was built as a four-room school house in 1899.⁹ The Blake Street Junior Public School was built in 1969 to meet the growing needs of the community.⁶

The Challenge
Will you help the people of the Blake Street patch discover God’s plan for their community and their lives? Would you consider moving in?

Sources
¹“‘Your son would never have been killed if I didn’t have a gun’: Murderer”, Natalie Alcoba, National Post
²www.rapdict.org
³East Alternative School of Toronto Profile
⁴www.eastviewcentre.com
⁵Statistics Canada 2006 Census tract profile 0072.01 (CT), Toronto (CMA) and Ontario
⁶Blake Street Junior Public School.
⁷www.rapdict.org
⁸www.torontoneighbourhoods.net
⁹Pape Avenue Junior Public School Profile