MoveIn Status
Praying for a team.

Firsthand
A visitor to the Vanauley patch noticed that there was hardly a “shred of grass” in this neighbourhood that is located behind Toronto’s famous Chinatown.  It is a concrete jungle.

Graffiti, much of it beautiful, covers the walls. Kids and urban youth are outside playing basketball and talking to each other. The kids are street smart and suspicious of strangers.

Most of the unattractive brown townhouses look the same. There is almost nothing in the way of gardens and next to no landscaping.

The Landscape
Vanauley (”Walk” and “Street”) is a street that runs through the Atkinson Housing Co-op which is located in the larger Alexandra Park neighbourhood off Dundas Street West, between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street in the former City of Toronto. There are 147 apartments in two buildings and 263 town homes covering an 18-acre site.

Residents of the Vanauley patch can walk to the nearby Kensington Market, Toronto’s largest outdoor food market.

The People
The Alexandra Park Community Centre offers service in Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Urdu, and Vietnamese. ¹ Staff at the nearby Alexandra Park Child Care Centre speak Greek, Polish, French, Filipino, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. ²

In the wider neighbourhood that includes the patch: ³

• 50% of families are led by married couples while 42% are led by one parent

• Largest group of immigrants came before 1991

• 60% of residents are immigrants

• Only 32% of residents over age 15 have a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree

• The 2006 unemployment rate was approximately 10.4% as compared with 6.7% average in Toronto

• 82% of individuals were considered visible minorities and most of them were Chinese

The History
The Alexandra Park neighbourhood began to emerge when Sir Casimir Gzowski, a Polish engineer, immigrated to Toronto in 1841 and built a residence at what is now the south-east corner of Bathurst and Dundas streets. Among other notable accomplishments, Gzowski helped build the Grand Trunk Railway from Toronto to Sarnia.

In 1904, the City of Toronto purchased Gzowski’s former residence and the land around it to use as a public park, which was named after Queen Alexandra.

In the 1920s and ’30s many Polish and Ukrainian immigrants settled in this area. Immigrants from Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Hungary soon followed. ⁴

In 1968, Alexandra Park Housing Cooperative was completed—it is Toronto’s third oldest public housing project. Many West Indian and African immigrants along with African Canadian families from Nova Scotia came to live in the project.

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were racial tensions between the established European immigrants and the new immigrants. An infamous African-Canadian gang called the Project Originals emerged. Drugs and violence were a huge problem. ⁵

In the early ‘90s, a group of Alexandra Park residents sought to convert the government housing complex to self-governing co-operative housing. In 1998, when residents voted to become a co-operative, the ballots were provided in 19 languages including: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Oromo, Portuguese, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog (Pilipino), Tamil, Tigrinian, Urdu, and Vietnamese. On April 1, 2003, Alexandra Park public housing became the Atkinson Housing Co-operative—Canada’s first government housing project to convert to a nonprofit co-operative. ⁶

The Challenge
Would you be willing to be part of the healing of the nations in this most diverse of communities that needs the love of Jesus?

Sources

¹http://www.211toronto.ca
²http://www.toronto.ca/children/dmc/doccs/docc1839.html
³All statistics in this section taken from Statistics Canada 2006 Census tract profile for 0039.00 (CT), Toronto (CMA) and Ontario
⁴http://www.torontoneighbourhoods.net/regions/toronto_downtown/16.html
⁵http://www.rapdict.org/Alexandra_Park
⁶http://www.coophousing.com/development/development_atkinson.asp