GOING THE DISTANCE
Ontario tips hat to Jones
Windsor native Charles (Spider) Jones completed the most improbable journey from a convict on the mean streets in his youth to receiving the Order of Ontario at Queens’ Park Wednesday.
Jones was honoured for his three decades of work with disadvantaged youth in Toronto’s core.
“It’s a real honour,” said the 76-year-old Jones, who with his wife, Jackie Robinson, founded their youth advocacy organization Believe to Achieve.
“We’ve been doing it for 30 years, so it’s part of our life.”
The Order of Ontario is the province’s highest honour and recognizes outstanding individual contributions and achievements benefiting others.
At the heart of the Jones’s efforts is Spider’s Web Youth Empowerment Centre in a large apartment complex at the intersection of Jane Street and Wilson Avenue in Toronto.
“That’s a safe haven for the kids,” said Jones, who credited the complex’s owners Greenwin Inc. for partnering on the project for nine years.
“We can give them the mindset and discipline to not get sucked into the street life.”
Jones, a longtime broadcaster, motivational speaker and member of the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame, said many of the lessons he learned in his youth on the streets of his hometown shape the message he delivers to youth. The issues of racism, poverty and bullying, remain troublesome for kids.
“It’s more challenging for kids today because of the gangs in Toronto,” said Jones, who lives in Pickering. “I think I’ve been successful with them because I have street cred. I went to jail, but jail doesn’t have to be the end of your journey.”
Jones can back up his message that it’s never too late with his own story. The three-time Golden Gloves champion went back to college to study communications in his 30s and has enjoyed a successful career in radio and television.
“I was the first black man to have a coast-to-coast radio show in Canada,” said Jones of his sports talk show on Toronto’s The Fan 590.
Jones, who grew up on Windsor Avenue, across from Wigle Park, said things turned for him when Canadian boxer George Chuvalo took him under his wing after he was released from Millbrook Reformatory in 1966. Chuvalo set him up at Toronto’s legendary Sully’s Boxing Gym where he helped in Muhammad Ali’s training camp.
“Ali talked a lot to me, encouraged me to follow my dream to be on radio,” Jones said. “We became friends. Muhammad Ali and George helped turn me in the right direction.”
Jones lived on and off in Windsor-detroit until 1967. He still visits his four siblings and their families in the area regularly.
Jones said he finds it unbelievable the kid who got kicked out of Prince Edward Elementary three times and dropped out of Lowe Tech at 15 has gone on to rub shoulders with celebrities like Ali, Mark Wahlberg, Jesse Jackson, LL Cool J, Bill Clinton and Ron Howard.
“Windsor shaped me, but there was no opportunity for me here,” Jones said.
“Here I learned the mindset that makes you feel inferior is what keeps you down.
“Working hard and the proper mindset is the difference between success and failure.”