Shame on Metrolinx for ditching Jane-Finch plan
How do we stick it to the poor, the unconnected the voiceless the weak and powerless among us? Count the wways —wending with the stomach-turn- ing abandonment of plans to deliver a desperately needed cultural and com munity hub project to Jane-Finch.
The weasels are the double-dealers at Metrolinx, builders of the Finch West LRT; they are never to be trusted again.
If there is one neighbourhood that you dare not backstab, dupe, mislead and totally promise to help, only to turn your back, it is Jane and Finch. Not ever, considering its deficiencies. And certainly not at a time when the world is growing wise to what systemic antiBlack racism looks like — in all its ugly forms. And the LRT fiasco on Finch is so clearly among the ugliest.
Jane- Finch. The metaphor for crime and punishment. The intersection whose very name is a symbol of urban living gone awry. Black. Ghetto. Canadian-style, of course. Lite.
A long, long, long time ago, a Toronto Star editor had the idea that I should drive around Jane-Finch with a white female reporter in a big car and see what happens. Maybe the cops would think I am a pimp. Maybe we'd see the underbelly of a broken community. Who knows.
Nothing happened. “This is it?” my consort asked, unimpressed at the utterly run-of-the-mill presentation of the place. “The big, bad Jane and Finch?”
How many times have I taken Ameri can visitors through the intersection only to evoke laughter and “You got to be kidding” when they are told, “This is our ghetto, my friend, the heart of the Black community in Toronto?”
That is what my great Jane-Finch friends deal with all their lives. An amazing community of hard-working people, sharing an eclectic mix of bungalows, single-family homes, semis, townhouses and apartment buildings — with a little bit too much of a tilt toward multiple conglomerations of social housing — and enduring the stigma.
’Cause what else is there in Jane-Finch — on the surface? Where is its curb appeal? Where are its community assets?
Point to the public infrastructure amenities that says the entire city so cares about you in this corner that the city is willing to invest in your beauty and your capacity and your livability and enjoyment of life so that you feel good about yourself and the space you inhabit and you then transform that sense of pride into productivity and a competitive spirit that propagates and multiplies and spawns more like you.
Jane-Finch was a poor neighbourhood before they coined the nice phrase “priority neighbourhood” to funnel tax money into social and community programs — because, y’know, you have to strategize and scheme to spend public money on poor people who don’t vote and have no time to sit on ratepayers’ associations when they spend their days catching hell doing two jobs with no one to take care of their kids at home after school.
North York shouldn’t have a Jane-Finch, no sir. If its civic representatives were worth their compensation — and if they cared about the poor apartment dwellers there, instead of the voting homeowners — the community would look oh so different.
North York is rich. Has been rich. Mayor Mel Lastman used to boast that he cleared the snow before it hit the sidewalk. Garbage was picked up twice a week; snow cleared out from in front of your driveway. Go along Sheppard and Finch to see North York’s wealth and strength where the city wanted to showcase it, before amalgamation in 1998.
From Don Mills Road to Bathurst, does it get better? Willowdale is Shangri-La. Stable neighbourhoods in the midst of massive redevelopment means tiny bungalows turning into $2-million-plus “monster” homes. Two subway lines, along Yonge and along Sheppard East. But trail farther west toward Keele and Finch and you trade in forgotten or compromised spaces.
Take Finch West. It tries. The Xerox towers and condo alley at Yonge give a hint of urbanism. A little west, the privileged neighbourhood managed to seize a beautiful Edithvale Community Centre near Senlac Road. Privilege knows privilege, and how to keep it.
One intersection west, at Bathurst, there is a community hub and a rearguard action to rescue the Branson-Westminster neighbourhood, hard hit when the Mike Harris government closed the Branson Hospital there.
At Dufferin, what passes for public infrastructure is the 1000 Finch courthouse building. Then, it is industrial wasteland — the infamous oilfields where gasoline tankers come by the hundreds to refuel the gas stations of southern Ontario.
By the time you get to Jane, the message is clear. The city is not invested here. At Jane and Finch there is zero sign of any public realm.
The four corners? Gas station, mall parking, gas station, apartment highrise. A block west, at Norfinch, next to Hwy. 400, used to be home to York Finch hospital. Harris closed that, too.
By some providence, a large and flat open green space exists half a block west of Jane on the north side of Finch, directly opposite York Gate mall. On the south side is Hawthorne Place, where COVID-19 raged to dangerous effects last month.
It is here, on the open field, that residents of Jane and Finch dared to hope that they might have something to treasure: swimming pool, theatre, studios, mental health and employment and multiple services, business incubator, and the like. With Metrolinx’s blessings, community members consulted and planned — following the blueprint of privileged communities. Plans were years in the making.
For Metrolinx to threaten to take it away is despicable. The transit agency sent the city councillor a letter saying, in effect, “Oops. Somebody made a mistake. This land is too valuable to give to the people of Jane Finch. We can sell it to the highest bidder for between $7 million and $9 million.”
Odious, yes. But it stinks even more. When governments announce they will spend our money to build major infrastructure like transit lines, we understand the nature of the social contract we enter. It costs us all — some $1.2 billion in this case. The construction will be noisy and disruptive along the route for years. Businesses will be greatly impacted, as along Eglinton Avenue. However, as compensation for enduring most of the pain, the local neighbourhood gets more of the benefits.
Yet before the prospect of the community arts hub, all Jane
Finch stood to gain from the 11-kilometre LRT line was a maintenance yard. In the middle of the community, on its most precious open space, the city and province and Metrolinx is putting 100,000 square feet of repair and maintenance shop and attendant facility for as many as 26 light rail vehicles. Jane-Finch is left on the other side of the tracks. Again.
Except some smart citizens, learning from their allies in privileged neighbourhoods downtown and in midtown, proposed this: OK, put in the maintenance yard if you must, but cut off a 32-metre sliver closest to Finch so we can build a community treasure — a perfect mask for the industrialstyle repair shop that would dominate the open space.
Metrolinx said yes. But now that the maintenance yard is being constructed (LRT service is scheduled for 2023) Metrolinx has effected the doublecross. They plan to relocate the community treasure.
Hell, no. It’s sickening. Metrolinx would not contemplate such a ruse on the Kingsway, Leaside, Rosedale, Willowdale (insert 100 other neighbourhoods here). Jane-Finch residents should be leery of promises of support from the premier, mayor and other politicians that do not expressly say — stick to the original deal.
If you think Jane-Finch is not worth “$7 million to $9 million,” consider the costs of police, courts, detention centres, jails, hospitals and grief counsellors to manage the carnage of urban blight.
‘Oops. Somebody made a mistake. This land is too valuable to give to the people of Jane Finch’