Regent revival

Michael Lewis hits the power button on the cracked clock radio above his bed and heads to the bathroom, a muscled 17-year-old with the V-shaped body that comes from a thousand days and nights on the basketball court.

As he gets ready for school, happy screams carry up the stairs. His twin five-year-old nephews are wrestling on the couch and watching Power Rangers while they wait for the babysitter to arrive. Michael's parents have already been at work for hours: His father is a security guard at Woodbine racetrack, and his mother works as a cook at a daycare centre.

His parents work hard and come home tired, but they're not rich. The two-storey townhouse the family rents on Gerrard Street is showing its age. The walls are cracked, ancient wiring spiders along the baseboards, and no matter how often they clean them, spores of mould keep sprouting from the bathroom tiles.

From his bedroom window, Michael looks out over a grid of buildings, grim and unadorned, some with rusting bars over the windows. A steel-encased security camera hangs, unblinking, over the cracked sidewalks.

In his childhood memories, the space behind his house was like Sherwood Forest, filled with trees that he could climb and hide behind, but now many of them are gone -- Michael thinks the police had them cut down to open the sight lines.

"I liked it better before," he says. "When I was little, it was all green and beautiful."

Michael lives in Regent Park, a 50-year-old housing project that was designed as a workers' paradise, only to degenerate into one of Canada's poorest and most violent neighbourhoods. Now, his world is about to undergo an unprecedented change in the hope of altering its dismal course. Beginning this fall, Regent Park will be demolished, making way for a $1-billion development that will mix subsidized housing with market rent units and owner-occupied homes.

The first major reconstruction of a housing project in Canada, the 12-year redevelopment will change not only the 69 acres of downtown that make up Regent Park, but the lives of the 7,500 people who call it home.

There's no timetable yet for the demolition of the house where Michael's family has lived for the past 18 years, since it's part of a later phase of construction, but they know the end will come soon. Like many residents, the Lewises recognize that the redevelopment is designed to bring about important social changes, yet they feel a deep emotional attachment to the neighbourhood they know, and regret that their history is about to be erased.

"There's a lot of memories here," says his father, Michael Sr. "It won't be easy to see it go."

By 8 a.m., Michael is standing in a glass TTC shelter on Gerrard Street. Just up the block, a junkie in a stained ski jacket wobbles along the sidewalk, and a tired-looking prostitute waves at the morning commuters, hoping to bag one last john before she calls it a night. Michael looks across the street at Cabbagetown, a neighbourhood so different from his own that it seems like another planet. On his side of Gerrard is a collection of roach-infested buildings, abandoned cars and overflowing trash bins. On the Cabbagetown side is a middle-class universe of college funds and Volvos, a place where babies are wheeled in Bugaboo Frog strollers, and families live in homes that look as if they've been primped for an Architectural Digest shoot.

Although some residents embrace the idea of the redevelopment, and the concept of making Regent Park more like this world across the street, others are suspicious that it's a thinly disguised land grab by moneyed interests. As he rides the streetcar to school, Michael and his friends exchange conspiracy theories about the hidden forces that may be in play.

"They're tearing down Regent Park because rich people want the land," says Paul Oliha, who has lived in the neighbourhood since 1996. "I saw people in Mercedes driving around."

Michael takes in this bit of intelligence and shares a look of commiseration. "Yo, dog," he says. "It's gonna be Regent Park, the home of the rich."

Regent Park opened in 1949 to the accolades of social progressives, who proclaimed it a "heaven" for the poor. The project replaced Toronto's worst slum, a Dickensian collection of ramshackle houses, junked cars and pigeon coops. Regent Park, by comparison, represented the state of the city-planning art. Inspired by Ebenezer Howard's Garden City movement, the development included open green spaces and winding streets that ended in cul-de-sacs designed to discourage traffic.

Walking through Regent Park today, it's hard to imagine that it was once regarded as a utopia. In the evenings, crack dealers converge on the green spaces that were intended as play areas for children, and garbage skitters along the walkways, propelled by the hard wind that funnels through the spaces between the buildings -- this unfortunate aerodynamic feature is just one in a long list of unanticipated consequences of a design that was supposed to change people's lives for the better.

The curving, dead-end streets and off-the-grid placement of the buildings, for example, may have looked good on paper, but they make it nearly impossible for emergency crews or pizza deliverers to find an address. They also isolate it from the rest of the city, deepening the social divide and turning Regent into what one academic described as "a neighbourhood of exile."

Although many dismiss Regent Park as a welfare ghetto, it is also home to large numbers of working people, including foreign professionals whose credentials aren't recognized in Canada. The community's population includes doctors, lawyers, professors and engineers, as well as truck drivers, mechanics and parking-lot attendants.

Neil Clarke, a former courier driver who has lived in Regent Park for 16 years and raised three children there, says he has always been frustrated by the stereotype that clings to the community. "People think that no one who lives in here works," he says. "They think everyone's a crack dealer."

The Regent Park stories that are rarely told are the ones like Fatima Uddin's. At 10 p.m. on a recent weeknight, Ms. Uddin, a slim, perfectly coiffed young woman in jeans and an orange scarf, makes her way past a row of dented garbage bins to the entrance of the Blevins Place high-rise where she has lived for the past seven years with her parents and her 16-year-old sister, Khadija.

The trip up to her seventh floor unit isn't pleasant: The elevators often serve as urinals for junkies who roam the buildings. Engineers have tried to help by installing waterproof floors made of steel plate, and caulking around the edges, and cleaning crews swab out the elevators almost every day and hang deodorant vials from the ceilings -- even so, the ride can be an eye-watering experience.

Then there are the hallways, which often echo with screams, cries and the smell of crack cocaine. But inside the Uddins' apartment is a world unto itself. The walls are freshly painted, the kitchen is meticulously clean, and there are shelves lined with books on astronomy, archeology and physics.

Fatima's days are long -- she's a second-year medical student at the University of Toronto -- and this one has been particularly tough, with a series of classes, then an evening orientation session at Toronto General for future surgeons. But when she arrives home, she sets the table with her sister and makes tea for her two visitors.

She and her sister don't see their apartment as part of a ghetto, but as an ark in which they sail toward their future. Fatima is part way there, and Khadija, a Grade 11 student, is also making plans -- at the moment, she's considering a career as a volcanologist.

By any standard, Fatima, 22, is an overachiever. She graduated from high school with a 97-per-cent average, and spends many of her weekends working as a volunteer. Scholarships have paid almost all of her undergrad and medical-school tuition. The annual tab, not including books, is $17,284. "That number is seared into my mind," she says.

Fatima came to Canada with her family from Bangladesh in 1991, and the decision to come here carried a steep personal price for her parents -- both have graduate degrees, but their accreditation doesn't count in Canada. Her mother was a professor in Bangladesh, but now works as a low-paid educational assistant for the Toronto District School Board. Her father doesn't work, because of ill health. Fatima and her sister spend a good deal of their time caring for him.

Fatima sees the dark side of life in Regent Park -- the paralyzing social inertia that can lurk in the background. "You can feel like there's no way out," she says. "It overwhelms people, and takes away their energy."

But she takes pride in the community. After she becomes a doctor, she wants to remain connected with Regent Park, perhaps by working in a community health clinic. This wasn't always the case -- until a few years ago, she would avoid telling people where she lived. "If they asked, I'd say 'downtown,' or 'east of the Eaton Centre.' Now, I tell them. I like being from here. Everyone thinks that if you live here, you're a loser, and that all you want is to get out. But the reality is 180 degrees from that. A lot of people love it."

In an abstract sense, she sees the wisdom of the upcoming redevelopment and its recalibration of the community's demographics. "It should make things better," she says. "But something's going to be lost. A lot of people have lived here. Good or bad, this is their world."

It's a sunny afternoon, and Elsaida Douglas is crying as she stands in her 13th-floor apartment, looking out over the buildings of Regent Park and the city that stretches beyond it in endless waves, like Lego bricks spilled out over a vast table. She is hosting this week's meeting of the Dreamers, a collection of nine women whose sons have been killed by gunfire in the housing project. Only one other woman has shown up today, but their conversation brings back painful memories.

Of the dozens of groups that meet each week in Regent Park, the Dreamers is one of the smallest and most passionate, united by shared loss. Ms. Douglas's son was still alive when she started the group in 1995. Her idea was to assemble a women's support group to come up with ways to battle the rising tide of drugs and violence. "I don't really know why I called you here," she told the friends she assembled in her apartment for the inaugural meeting. "Except that I believe we have to do something."

"You're dreaming," one of the other women replied. "Maybe I am," Ms. Douglas said. "But someone better."

Now, 10 years later, Ms. Douglas has a dead son, and serious doubts about her ability to change the course of events. In her modest apartment, she keeps the scattered documents that make up the records of the Dreamers -- there are a few organizational charts, a phone list, and artists' sketches of the Dreamer's Memorial, a three-metre-high cenotaph that would commemorate the young men who have been killed in Regent Park.

The Dreamers want the memorial to be placed in one of the parks that will be incorporated into the Regent Park redevelopment. If it gets built (there has been no official commitment), it will be Ms. Douglas's only consolation for her son's murder -- a loss that came as a coup de grâce in a life that has never been easy.

At 62, Ms. Douglas has raised eight children and spent more than 40 years working at low-paid jobs. She has lived in Regent Park since 1977, the year she arrived from Jamaica as part of a wave of Caribbean immigrants. At first, Regent Park seemed like a great opportunity -- the rents were based on income, and Ms. Douglas got a five-bedroom townhouse for a small fraction of what it would normally cost.

But as time passed, she saw the community changing for the worse. There had always been drugs, but the arrival of crack cocaine in the 1980s upped the ante. Ms. Douglas watched as dealers paraded through Regent Park, flaunting their massive jewellery, gold teeth and fancy cars. In a community where countless young men lived without fathers, the dealers easily assumed the role of big brother and surrogate parent, dispensing both money and approval.

"I knew there was trouble out there," Ms. Douglas says. "Everything was changing. You had to be out there all the time, letting your kids know that you were on them, that you weren't going to stand for anything."

One of her biggest worries was her third child, Cleamart, then in his mid-20s, who had struggled in school and dropped out by 14 to begin working a series of dead-end jobs. Ms. Douglas could see that her son was slipping -- he had been thrown in jail several times for assaulting his girlfriend.

On May 9, 2001, Cleamart came to see her. It was Ms. Douglas's birthday, and he wanted to take her out and buy her a new pair of boots. As they walked through the courtyard of Regent Park toward Parliament Street, he suddenly stopped and hugged her, lifting her feet clear off the ground.

"Everything you told me since I was a baby is still inside of me," he told her. "I remember it all." Then he set her down. "Hold up your right hand," he said. "Promise me. Promise me that you'll take care of yourself."

That night, Ms. Douglas knelt by her bed and prayed. "Sweet Jesus," she said. "Something's wrong."

The next day, Cleamart was shot and killed behind the 51 Division police station by a local drug dealer he had argued with a couple of days before. Ms. Douglas buried her son in Pickering, with a funeral she paid for with her Visa card. "I couldn't afford downtown," she says. "Only rich people get buried here."

Today, she owns almost nothing, aside from some inexpensive furniture. Her apartment is decorated with plastic flowers and a reproduction of The Last Supper. But she's happy with where she lives. "I live around people I care about," she says. "What more do I want?"

It's a Monday evening, and 15-year-old Tameecka Osbourne is at the Regent Park Community Centre, staring at something she has never seen before: High above the buildings, a giant light hangs from a crane like an artificial sun, illuminating the streets where she grew up with a magical glow and turning the leafless trees into silvered skeletons.

"It's so beautiful," she says. "It's Regent Park, my home."

A film crew has arrived, sparking a wave of excitement. When Tameecka and her friends ask, the production assistants tell them they're shooting a Tim Hortons commercial. But then the truth comes out -- the crew is working on a feature called Four Brothers, starring Mark Wahlberg and Tyrese Gibson.

The movie crew had chosen Regent Park as a stand-in for the Detroit ghetto -- a role the community has played before. Tameecka has come to the community centre for Monday-night basketball, a regular event that brings out hundreds. In the lobby, a policeman in a bulletproof vest stands guard, but Tameecka and her friends ignore him -- to them, his presence is normal.

Out on the polished floor, the players swirl and dive, and around the floor, young men pay each other respect with complex handshakes that communicate affection and belonging. Among them is Michael Lewis, who nods to an acquaintance, then takes his hand and draws him closer. "Yo, dog," he says. "How you doing?"

They both turn to watch the court -- a tall young man is driving to the basket, his dreadlocks streaming behind him like the tail of a comet. He feints, spins, then launches himself over a defender to make a dunk that could make an NCAA highlight reel.

Michael looks on in appreciation. So does Tameecka. This is her world, and she loves it. Here, money doesn't count, only skill and character. A Toronto newspaper has published its annual list of the city's top high school basketball stars, and some of them are here tonight. "We've got some good players," says Tameecka, who is no slouch herself -- she plays for Eastern Commerce, and has a shelf covered with ribbons and trophies.

Tameecka's 28-year-old sister, Kaylin Johnson, has come to the gym too, accompanied by her two children -- nine-year-old Tianna, and five-year-old Raheim, a tiny boy who can outplay many children twice his age. Raheim was recently named MVP in one of Regent Park's youth basketball leagues.

"When he was a baby, he bounced oranges and apples," Ms. Johnson says. "And once he got a basketball, he never put it down. That's all he wants to do."

The next day, at her house on St. David Walk, Tameecka's mother, Roslyn Osbourne, is presiding over a household of near-fantastic action and complexity. Ms. Osbourne, 45, has eight children of her own, including a 13-month-old boy named Marquise. Five still live at home, including Tameecka, and a 15-year-old boy has been staying with the family for the past several months because his mother is going through a personal crisis. Add in the four preschoolers who come to her home every day for daycare and there are nearly a dozen children and young people in the house.

Then the back door swings open, admitting a blast of cold air -- it's Dane, her 17-year-old son. He greets his mother -- who is washing dishes in the kitchen, while watching a pot of curry on the stove and keeping a close eye on the preschoolers -- then logs on to the computer in the living room to check his e-mail.

In the next room, the phone is ringing and the television is blaring. Outside the back door, her neighbours' pit bulls bark and hurl themselves against the plywood door of their doghouse.

Marquise starts crying, and Ms. Osbourne picks him up and cradles him in the crook of her left arm, while continuing to wash dishes with her right. On the other side of the kitchen, a two-year-old daycare child throws wooden blocks at the door. Ms. Osbourne soothes her, then turns to her teenaged son and a couple of his friends who've now dropped by and asks if they want to eat.

This is not an unusual day for Ms. Osbourne. And by Regent Park standards, neither is the makeup of her family. More than half of Regent Park's 7,500 residents are children under the age of 18, and there is an extremely high percentage of single mothers.

Ms. Osbourne plays the role of an economy-minded Martha Stewart, making a home for her family on an income of about $20,000 a year. She paints the rooms in a regular rotation to keep them looking fresh, and invests in home improvements like linoleum tiles and wallpaper borders. She shops once a month at No Frills on Parliament Street and brings the food home in a taxi.

If it weren't for subsidized housing, Ms. Osbourne might find it impossible to survive -- in Regent Park, where rent is calculated as 30 per cent of pretax income, she pays just $270 for her five-bedroom townhouse.

Ms. Osbourne is proud of her children. So far, all have finished high school, and two of her older daughters hold college certificates. On the wall of her living room, she displays Tameecka's Honour Roll record -- the most recent of three.

She has high hopes for Tameecka: "She's smart and she works hard," Ms. Osbourne says. "I don't have to tell her to do her homework. She gets to it all by herself."

Ms. Osbourne hasn't had much time to consider the upcoming redevelopment, or how it might change her life and the lives of her children. But in theory, she believes it will be a good thing to mix up the demographics of the area.

"If I could, I'd like to buy a place here. I'm proud of Regent Park. People forget all the good things that happen here. They think we're all on welfare. Look around. There's factory workers and stewardesses. There's mechanics and labourers -- people that work. Maybe after they fix this all up, people will get it, and stop looking down at us."

Across the park from Ms. Osbourne's townhouse, in the lobby of 42 Blevins, a down-at-the-heels high-rise, three young men stand in the lobby smoking a few joints and escaping the cold. The youngest is 16, the oldest 20. All have grown up in Regent Park, and none are happy about the impending demolition, which they see as the eradication of their own proud ghetto history.

"Why they going to tear down Regent?" asks one. "Why don't they go up to Jane and Finch and tear down their fucking hood?"

"It's not gonna be Regent any more," says his companion. "It's gonna be a bunch of rich little fags."

The third boy, 17, agrees. "This is my goddamn home," he says. "You want your house torn down?"

Despite the neighbourhood's reputation, none of the boys say they're concerned about their safety in Regent: "You got to know how not to get shot," says the 16-year-old. "If you want to get shot, you can. Get in the middle of a drug deal gone bad. Or walk up to a bunch of black people and call them niggers. That'll do it."

As he speaks, a young black woman waits for the elevator. She looks away.

"Hey, I'm just saying," says the 16-year-old.

A few minutes later, the boys are gone. A man who looks as if he has just woken up after a night on a heating grate appears. "Can you spare some change?" he asks. "I've got liver cancer."

For Michael Lewis, basketball has always been the way out. For years, he has dreamed of a career in the NBA. Now he's 17, and his bedroom is still a shrine to the game. There are posters of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and of course Michael Jordan, the all-time king.

Next to his bed, a row of basketball shoes sits waiting, arranged with the precision of cars in a showroom, and in his closet are the jerseys of the teams he has played for, including Eastern Commerce, the fabled city high-school dynasty.

There is one obvious fly in the ointment of Michael's pro ball ambitions: his height. He's only five-foot-seven, a midget by the standards of the NBA, or even Eastern Commerce, where the coaches can pick and choose from a wide selection of six-and-a-half footers.

He can recite the career statistics of Earl Boykins, a Denver Nuggets player who happens to be two inches shorter than himself: "If you're small, you have to work twice as hard," Michael says. "But I can do that."

But now he's suffering a test of faith. Last season, he was cut from the Eastern Commerce squad. He's a talented player, but the competition has become more Darwinian each year.

"I'm okay with it," Michael says.

Undaunted, he is still playing where he can. Each Monday night, he goes to the Regent Park community centre, where he meets his friends to play the game as he has since he was a little boy, consumed with the next move and the next basket, not the changes ahead, or what will happen after that. When he comes off the court, he's glowing.

"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere," Michael says. "No one plays basketball better than Regent."

PICTURE CAPTIONS

ELSAIDA DOUGLAS; THURSDAY, FEB. 24, 1:23 P.M.

Fours years after her son Cleamart, 36, was shot and killed, Elsaida Douglas still tears up when she recalls his giant bear hugs and big, bellowing voice. She sees her son's death as part of a pattern of social and economic marginalization: 'No one cares what happens to a boy like my son. Everyone judges you when you come from Regent Park. They make you feel like a piece of shit. That's how they made my son feel, and that's how they made me feel.'

MICHAEL LEWIS IN HIS BEDROOM, MONDAY, MARCH 14, 4:24 P.M.

At 17, Michael Lewis is aware of the negative influences that come from living in such an environment, but his father, Michael Sr., has faith in his son. 'He's a strong boy,' he says. 'He's not a follower. That's how we raised him up. And Regent Park isn't the only place where bad things happen.'

ROHAN (TRINI) JAGROO IN HIS APARTMENT, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 5:09 P.M.

Trini, as everyone calls him, arrived in Regent Park in 2001 after losing his last full-time job. He was working in a cabinet-making shop, but injured himself on a table saw when he became distracted by thoughts of his wife having an affair. 'The blade was spinning, and I was having these bad visions,' he says. 'All of a sudden my fingers were in there.' In his living room, on the 13th floor of a South Regent high-rise, Mr. Jagroo keeps a red tricycle that belongs to his son, whom he hasn't seen for more than two years. He also has the last real Christmas tree he bought -- now four years old, brown and tinder dry. 'I'm afraid to plug it in,' Mr. Jagroo says. 'But I don't want to get rid of it. I've got loyalty to my tree.' At 48, he collects $364 a month in welfare and occasionally earns a few extra dollars cleaning a hair salon. His rent is $115 per month. To pay for his cigarettes, he walks a neighbour's dog. Mr. Jagroo spends the rest of his time trolling local neighbourhoods for castoffs: By his latest count, he has five televisions (none of them working), three microwave ovens (also non-functional) and at least four stereos (one working).

AHMAD AHMAD AT UMAR BIN KHATAP MOSQUE, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 2:06 P.M.

There are two churches in Regent Park, but no mosques or other places for Muslims to pray, even though Islam is the community's most prevalent religion. Muslims like Ahmad Ahmad, left, worship at a mosque under a pizza shop on Parliament Street.

TANGA NAGARAJAH IN HIS SOUTH REGENT HIGH-RISE, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 6:03 P.M.

Often regarded as a haven for people on social assistance, Regent Park is in fact home to many working people, like Tanga Nagarajah, below left, who is on his way to work as a waiter at a downtown hotel.

NORTH REGENT BOILER HOUSE, THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1:32 P.M.

Built along with the rest of North Regent in 1948, the boiler house, below, provides heat and hot water to 37 buildings in the community and remains the only facility of its kind in Canada that services residential dwellings. It will be demolished along with the last remnants of Regent Park, but a similar plant is to be constructed to service the new structures.

LAUNDRY ROOM UNDER SOUTH REGENT HIGH-RISE, MONDAY, FEB. 28, 7:30 P.M.

School-aged children represent 35 per cent of Regent Park's population, compared with 17.5 per cent in the rest of the city. Still, playgrounds are inadequate, and the community has no indoor pool, no swimming lessons and a lack of daycare spaces. While there are three public schools nearby, there is no secondary school, and Regent Park has a 56-per-cent dropout rate, compared with a city average of 29. One teen found smoking pot in the laundry room under one of the high-rises says he dropped out because the high school is too far away.

SOUTH REGENT, SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 3:44 P.M.

Crime and lack of policing are chronic complaints about Regent Park, and urban planners have pointed to bad design as one of the culprits. Without streets, police can't drive their cruisers into the community, and the layout of the buildings has created spaces for crime and vandalism.

ROSLYN OSBOURNE WITH SON MARQUISE, 13 MONTHS, AND MARSHA, WHOM SHE BABYSITS IN HER SOUTH REGENT TOWNHOUSE, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 8:16 A.M.

MICHAEL LEWIS ON GERRARD, MONDAY, MARCH 14, 8:05 A.M.

Many residents of Regent Park live in large, extended families. With an average of 3.39 persons per unit, life here is significantly more dense than elsewhere in the city, where the average is 2.57. While the Uddin sisters share an apartment with only their parents, Michael Lewis lives with his mother, father and sister -- plus her twin boys. Roslyn Osbourne shares her five-bedroom townhouse with five of her children, a friend of her son and, during the daytime, the four kids she babysits. One of Ms. Osbourne's daughters, Kaylin Johnson, lives in a nearby unit with her own two children.

RENVILLE (JIMMY) JAMES, NORTH REGENT WALK-UP, THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 8:42 A.M.

When this North Regent unit became vacant, cleaner Jimmy James found creeping mould on the ceiling and walls in several of the rooms. Cleaning crews face a losing battle against the spores because of the decaying state of the buildings. Many were built with galvanized-steel plumbing that has broken countless times, permeating the structures with water. Water also enters the structures through worn roof membranes and leaky window frames.

*****

*****

The wrecking ball starts swinging in November, demolishing a neighbourhood that was built 50 years ago to turn a miserable slum into an oasis for poor people. The result, however; became a blighted area itself, and now the aim is to build a community where a mix of people can live

REGENT PARK 2016

A Diverse Neighbourhood

The plan is to create a neighbourhood reintegrated into the fabric of the city by restoring most of the streets that were torn out a half-century ago. Apartment buildings and townhouses will be built along those streets, and commercial establishments and services such as doctors' offices will make use of the first floors.

The $1-billion rebuilding job is to begin later this year under the direction of a non-profit corporation the Toronto Community Housing Corp. will create to direct the project. The first buildings are to come down in November, and the entire 69-acre site is to be rebuilt in six stages - one very two years or so - during the next 10 to 12 years.

While the new Regent Park will have about the same number of public-housing units as it does today, they will be joined by a similar number of privately owned units, mostly mid-market condos and townhouses, In all, there will be 5,100 units housing about 12,500 people - almost twice the current population

Live-work space: Some of the townhouses and apartment units, particularly along main streets such as Gerrard, Sackville and Sumach, are to be designed as live-work spaces so that residents have the flexibility to work out of their homes.

Large Park: One six-acre park on the north edge of Dundas is to have a similar size and variety of activities as the west end's Dufferin Grove park, with spaces for sports and relaxation, including community barbecues and cookouts. The buildings bordering the park will have community uses, small retail shops and local institutions.

Linear parks: Wide sidewalks with a double row of trees will form linear parks along Oak and St. David Streets to connect the three main schools, Nelson Mandela Park School, Lord Dufferin and Duke of York-Regent Park, with the neighbourhood. It provices a tree-sheltered, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly network.

Retail space: About 250,000 square feet of retail, commercial, community and educational space are to occupy the ground floors of buildings fronting Parliament Street and Dundas Street, as well as surrounding the central park. The anchor will be a 35,500-square-foot supermarket.

Apartments: Mixed among the apartment buildings will be 1,722 rent-geared-to-income units, and 1,978 market units. Most apartments will have a six-storey base, with upper floors set back, particularly for the taller towers. The buildings along Gerrard Street are intended to be mix of eight-storey and six-storey structures. The high-rises will be built facing the main park and along River Street, with views of the Don Valley.

Townhouses: The plan calls for 800 townhouse units, with 365 designated for rent geared to income, and 435 rented at market rate. Some will be stacked single-storey units and others will occupy the buildings' entire three storeys.

More parks: A large park will be surrounded by houses and expands the campus of Nelson Mandela Park Public School with facilities to be shared with the community.

Streets: Cabbagetown streets such as Sackville and Sumach will no longer end at Gerrard Street, but will carry through all the way to Shuter.

Parking: Parking will be on the streets and under the high-rise buildings

REGENT PARK 1959-2005

A garden city gone awry

Planning for the first incarnation of Regent Park began during the Second World War and was first approved in 1945. Inspired by the garden-city movement in Britain and designed by J. E. Hoare Jr., North Regent Park was built between 1948 and 1957 as a series of walk-up apartments and row houses that looked out onto open space. Most of the original streets were closed off as there was to be no through traffic. South Regent Park, designed by modernist architect Peter Dickinson, is a series of five high-rises with some townhouses, built between 1957 and 1959. The entire community is home to about 7,500 people in 2,083 units.

But with no natural arterial roads for pedestran or vehiclular traffic, Regent Park is cut off from its adjacent neighbourhoods. With little street life, the environment is unsafe, and the lack of traffic makes a hostile environment for retail businesses. Currently there is only a convenience store and a laundromat. The lack of economic opportunity has contributed to the cycle of poverty in the neighbourhood, which has beeen described as a gated community for poor people.

Phase 1: Demolition and reconstruction will take place in six phases and the initial steps are under way as community workers prepare 1,160 residents for relocation so the 418 units in Phase 1 can be demolished. Residents select new homes from available units in the city's public-housing system and have to be moved out by November. It's hoped that many can occupy vacant units elsewhere in Regent Park, but some will have to move away, with the city paying for all costs associated with relocation. Once the first new units are complete - scheduled for November of 2007 - residents can choose to stay where they are or return to Regent Park

Dickinson Tower: One of the only original buildings to survive the demolition will be the 14-storey tower designed by renowned modernist architect Peter Dickinson. He built it with double-storey units that fill with sunshine and fresh air, similar to Le Corbusier's design for a structure in Marseilles, France.

Trees: The existing tall and mature trees, many surviving from the era before the existing buildings were built, will be conserved.

THE RESIDENTS*

*Census tracts used by Statistics Canada do not correspond exactly with Regent Park boundaries.

**employment income compared with Toronto average, 1951 is median income.

***unemployment rate for age 15 and over already in the labour force, except 1951, which was 14 and over.

REGENT PARK 1941

A SLUM VILLAGE

Before the city expropriated it for $1.5-million, the area that became Regent Park was a jumble of row houses, junkyards, sheds and factories lining the edges of rectangular blocks with little open space, trees or community facilities. A survey taken during the Depression found that 96 per cent of the housing in the poorest parts of the city such as this fell below the minimum standard for amenities, for instance, having a cellar or being free of vermin. About 75 per cent fell below the basic standards for health, such as adequate protection from the elements or satisfactory heating. One if five homes did not have an indoor toilet, and there was not a house in the area that rent for more than $34 a month - most went for $15 to $19. Most apartments rented for $10 to $14.

St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church: Established in 1873. In 1910, the church moved to its current location. It plays an active role in the Regent Park community, with a breakfast program and food-bank program, as well as a children's centre.

Park Public School: Now Nelson Mandela Park Public School, it was founded in 1853, and is the oldest school in Toronto still standing on its original site. On Nov. 17, 2001, Nelson Mandela was present, with the student body and other guests, at the ceremony renaming the school.

St. George Macedono-Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church: It was founded by the Macedonian community in 1941. Many Macedonian immigrants had come to Toronto and Southern Ontario around the 1900s.