Out of the darkness, a chance for light

Ayear or so ago, two people died in separate apartments in a massive highrise in St. James Town. One hopes the causes were natural. Their bodies were not found until this past spring. The best guess is that they’d been dead six months.

It is not that their deaths were unexpected. The woman was ill and the man was old. Nor was it unexpected that they died alone. She had no close family and he tended to avoid others.

Ever since their bodies were discovered, a shadow has darkened St. James Town: How could two people die in the midst of such a large community without anyone noticing their absence for so long? The awkward colossus of the Toronto Community Housing Corp., shaken by the outrage of the residents, roused itself. There were meetings and dis-

cussions and suggestions and plans of action for review. Now, a year or so later, there may be solutions at hand. The first St. James Town Health Fair was held the other day at 55 Bleecker St. The fair was designed to strengthen the social housing community and to make all the people aware of all the services available.

It was, in a way, pretty cute. On entering 55 Bleecker, residents were given a folded paper “ passport.” Inside the building, there were displays of various social and community services. Each display was a “ country.” For example, the Canadian Hearing Society was “ Cambodia” and the Sherbourne Health Centre was “ Mongolia.” You were supposed to stop at various “countries,” pick up pamphlets and get your “ passport” stamped; if you managed to fill it out in full, you were entitled to a free lunch, the salty scent of which drifted through the building as a kind of encouragement.

I got in without a passport, which I guess meant I was an illegal alien; no one else found this quite as amusing as I did.

At least 200 people gathered in the main activity room of 55 Bleecker, the majority of them elderly. The price of the free lunch? Speeches. Vinod Sharma, a TCHC property manager, said society was getting older, and older people were leading more isolated lives. Mitchell Kosny, the chair of the TCHC board, said he wanted neighbours to meet and make friends and ask questions of all the agencies present.

After the speeches, entertainment. Some older women did Tai Chi exercises. One of these was in her eighties and I cannot do what she did, which was to stand on one leg, bend at the knee, wave her arms gracefully and turn around without falling over.

Then, led by a perky animator, some Sri Lankan women in saris and sneakers did a kind of ribbon dance to an exercise tape of “ Deck the Halls.” The arrangement was a cha-cha for the trumpet, and it is one I will not soon forget. Some Falun Gong people also did exercises after the cha- cha, and then a chipper old fellow did yoga. He was not wearing any fancy yoga clothes, and this was no impediment. And there was a raffle, and somebody won a coffee maker, and then there was lunch.

There are some 168,000 people of all ages and abilities living in community housing in this city. As you know, not all TCHC housing is equal. Some buildings are in good shape and others are not. Some have good security and others are overrun with crack dealers.

It is by no means easy to build community in such circumstances. Old Tamils do not bond easily with young hip- hoppers. The parents of working families from Somalia have little in common with single, unilingual Chinese elders. Basketball doesn’t work for everyone.

Here’s another example of how hard it really is: A woman was attacked near the 10th floor elevator the weekend before last. One of her neighbours — she didn’t want her name used — said, “ She was pushed down at the elevators by a prostitute. She’s 80 years old. They took her purse, her ID, her keys. I saw her the other day. Her nose, her face was black and blue.” Yikes.

Later on, I was speaking with Wu Jiashu, who has lived in the building for six years. She said, “ I heard an old lady was killed last Saturday. Four police cars come here. Why? Someone told me it was murder.”

There you have it. One incident, filtered through a sense of fear, mingled with equal measures of old age and outrage, passed around in half a dozen languages and you can see how . . . wait a minute, how did the prostitute get in?

Still, there is hope.

Jiashu, who is 80 and looks 65, said, “ The city is not safe. But I think this meeting is exciting, a lot of people are here, it’s crowded, I like that.” There are plans, almost in place, for a system to help neighbours keep in touch with neighbours, and these plans include the good people of Central Neighbourhood House. There are plans to improve security, plans to help people shop, plans to check on their health. Such plans might have helped two old people a year or so ago. Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@