Ensuring ‘small, sweet’ histories survive demolition

Toronto Community Housing is collecting stories to preserve Regent Park’s heritage amid decades-long revitalization plan

When the machines ripped apart the row houses of 44 Wyatt Walk, the walls told the stories of former residents.

“Love this house,” wrote a young girl on the pink wall of her old bedroom. “May God Bless us all in our new home,” her mother added.

For a brief moment, before the bulldozers took down the building, the structures of Regent Park told its stories.

“It’s very bittersweet to go through a redevelopment of this size . . . there’s this feeling of loss, feeling of trauma,” longtime area resident Diane MacLean told the Star.

As buildings disappear in Toronto Community Housing’s decades-long revitalization plan, the housing agency has been tasked with commemorating the neighbourhood’s heritage.

The result is Regent Park Stories, a project telling the story of the place through the memories of its people.

“Regent Park has a very strong community identity. That’s something that endures even when the buildings are no longer there or have evolved,” said Tatum Taylor, a heritage planner with ERA Architects. Known for work on some of the city’s most notable heritage projects, including the Distillery District and Maple Leaf Gardens, the firm is consulting on TCH’s project.

On other jobs, they looked to the “material fabric of the building” to represent the history, Tatum said.

“In this case . . . the buildings aren’t there. So we have to really look to the community to find out how they want their history to be incorporated into the experience of the neighbourhood.”

Where heritage can drum up images of preserved moulding and plaques on cobblestone streets, Regent Park Stories are tales of cherished swing sets and guerilla skating rinks.

It captures the “small, sweet” histo- ries, said TCH associate development manager and project lead Jed Kilbourn. “When you commemorate something . . . the risk that you run is freezing something in time, and we want this to be as dynamic as possible,” he said.

For him, the project is as much about inspiration as it is preservation.

These are stories of “collective impact,” he said, the moments when the community built its own neighbourhood.

Like the time residents raised money and rallied city hall to build the area’s first community centre.

Or the north Regent Park skating rink’s origins as the pet project of a local man who started flooding a parking lot in winter and refused to stop.

Historically built under top-down planning and development, people always had a hand in shaping the neighbourhood’s character, Kilbourn said.

“Once the project has become built, there were always these opportunities for really strong community voices to change the shape and nature of Regent Park.”

Storytellers can submit photos, videos, audio clips or written tales through the project website, the TCH office at 415 Gerrard St., at tenant meetings and through one-onone interviews in the community.

TCH hopes to have a public meeting in early January and a better idea by the end of that month of how the final product will preserve the collected memories.

Not every memory of the area is pleasant, but Taylor said the project is committed to an “inclusive and honest” portrayal that includes the “full spectrum” of stories.

“There have been some negative experiences in the neighbourhood’s past, and that is a part of the history, and it’s part of what makes this community strong and resilient.”