Dear Toronto,
As I write this I am mourning. Our Regent Park community recently lost Mackai Bishop Jackson, a boy that was gunned down in his friend’s apartment the day after his 15th birthday. The week before, a teenager on a bike open fired at a group of kids outside the swimming pool on Sumach St. The kids ran into my building to hide from the bullets. The month before, I lay in bed wondering if I had heard fireworks or 7 gunshots. I have developed a new habit of checking @TPSOperations to help discern between fireworks and fatalities.
It is brutal. I am rocked to my core by these events. And yet I am lucky to recognize the signs of trauma and to have an ever expanding tool-belt to cope — only because I have been traumatized before, many times. I have learned that each time a terrifying situation happens that leaves someone in a place facing death or takes away their sense of power, it’s like a piece of them breaks off for safe keeping and is preserved in time forever. Every time something terrifying happens, all the traumas experienced before get triggered, as though they are happening again.
Growing up in Regent Park
You see, I am an immigrant who arrived from Vietnam in the mid 80’s. My family was assigned a place just down the street from where I live today in Regent Park. It was on Cornwall St in one of the townhomes. At one point we had 10 people in a 3 bedroom house. My brother and I would get bullied and beat up on our way to school, and again on our way back home.
I joined a Vietnamese gang when I was 9 years old to protect myself against being pushed around on the playground.
I used to sleepwalk and have recurring nightmares, because I would hear loud “fireworks” outside my door. Gunshots. Pimps. Prostitutes. When evening hit, all kinds of noises were outside our door, conjuring up all kinds of fears, thoughts and imagination. The sleepwalking was a frantic response to my fear and uncertainty about whether my uncle had made it home safely from night shift.
We moved away in the summer before I turned 11. Guns followed me in my nightmares and they followed me to Scarborough.
I dated a gang member and when he went to jail and I stopped answering his letters or his collect calls made from juvenile detention, gang members would threaten me with a gun. When I hosted a high school graduation prom after-party, a Korean gang ended the party by pulling a gun on a classmate, because he was Chinese and brought a Korean date.
Leaving the Hood
Decades later, I have buried these stories about guns, violence, ethnic conflict, fear and loss of power but they nevertheless remain in my DNA. If you have lost someone to gun violence or had a loved one injured or hurt, you think that the only way you’re going to protect yourself is through power, money, and dishing out fear upon others. You try and forget all the times you stared death in the face and avoid confronting the truth of how helpless and fragile you are in this world. You go hard, you gang up on others, you focus on getting money, you get into drugs and alcohol — all as ways to forget and hide how scared you are.
I’m super lucky. With the help of government assistance, I was able to excel in school, go to University of Waterloo for Computer Engineering and leave Toronto to work all over the world, including many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve even launched a few tech start-ups and advised a few others, brushing paths with all kinds of people with varying degrees of wealth and poverty (not just financial) and all walks of life. I haven’t ever quite been functional though; I live with ADD, diabetes and cancer. I continue to heal from the complexities of growing up with a single mom. I grieve the loss of some very dear friendships and family ties through my base of mistrust and rage and trauma. Work on addictions that have destroyed my liver, and stress that has destroyed my kidneys, are in my not-too-distant past.
When I got cancer, I finally accepted that I didn’t know what I was doing and that I had it all wrong. I was finally willing to drop all I knew about how to live; the only thing I was sure about was that I wanted to live. It has been a decade-long shift from a life fueled by rage — wishing to bring others down so they might feel even an ounce of the suffering that I felt — to one filled with love and compassion for the human condition. Through luck and grace, I have stumbled upon meditation techniques, various counselling and healing modalities, volunteer and service work, and a myriad of teachers, guides, angels and friends who have shifted my “fight” against suffering to an embrace of it as part of life.
Coming back Home
I decided to move back to Regent Park following its revitalization 4 years ago because I was excited about what was happening and perhaps as a way of giving back to the community that changed my life.
Now I host circles at my home every month for any and all to come sit in silence for an hour, share wisdom and reflections, and have a family meal together.
In neighbouring Moss Park, we’ve started a series of picnics this summer called Karma Kitchen Picnic in the Park where a group of friends just bring delicious food, blankets, music, and paint, and we invite anybody that comes by to hang out with us. And at the end of the day they get a note saying that today’s meal is a gift from someone they don’t know, and if they’re moved, they can pay that kindness forward, whether in the form of money, in hugs, in cooking for someone…and the ripples of generosity have a chance to continue on.
At the end of last month, we paid forward all the financial gifts we received to help neighbouring St Jamestown residents after the fire to help provide shelter while 1500 of them wait to move back in. Who would’ve thought? Moss Park residents, overflowing with kindness and love, feeling and exercising the power to help fellow neighbours. We’re going to be indoors at Moss Park Apartments through fall and winter to continue to hold space for human dignity, great food and community. You’re all welcome for lunch every month.
I believe that I’m back in Regent Park at this time to grieve along with the community and also maybe hold space to observe the fear, division, and anger. We need to face the truth that while we have yet to build a resilient community here, it remains possible. It will take all of our affirmative participation — not just our pointing blame at the city, the gentrification, the thugs, the community centre availability, and thousands of reasons why life is unfair to us. If we want safety for our kids and for each other, we all need to get to know one another and build some trust.
I still think Regent Park is a hidden gem in the city. I want to celebrate how far we’ve come, at least in my eyes over the past 30 years. It’s pretty incredible that we have *FREE* access to the newest and best facilities and programming in the city: swimming pool, hockey arena, soccer field, community centre. All right here in our backyard, we benefit from the incredible work of CRC, YSM, CSI, Daniel Spectrum, Building Roots, Friends of Regent Park, St Michael’s, TCCLD and from the presence of a myriad of other programs, nonprofits, volunteers and community builders and residents.
It’s also important to recognize that we have a ways to go to understand what’s really needed to uplift each other from poverty, trauma and violence. And we have much more community resilience to build.
What I’ve learned in my life is the underlying honest truth of it all: our life is fragile. One gunshot will destroy each of us and the community. One kid lost to gang violence and drugs is a loss for all of us. Domestic abuse hurts both perpetrator and victim, and many others. Poverty puts us steps behind the rest of the city.
But I know another truth, which is that each of us is unique and funny in our own way, talented, smart and beautiful. Someone looks up to each of us, we can make someone smile, and when we hug someone they appreciate it. We’re all humans and we have dignity and we do have power within ourselves. We all deserve to live a peaceful, loving, happy life and to have the chance to thrive.
In my case, I could’ve chosen to live anywhere in the world, but I chose to live here in Regent Park. I totally understand how unfair life is and can relate to having to deal with the repercussions of things totally outside of my control. But through it all, I guess I found some awesome powers inside of me as well. I found out that I have a great sense of humour, I’ve become a good listener, and….I can make a mean banh mi that seems to makes other people smile. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” Why do we perpetuate this cycle and give hate more power?
I don’t claim to have any answers on how we can actually revitalize Regent Park or end the increasing gun violence in the city and in the world. I just know that we are all hurting and we are all scared and it’s important to recognize what we share in common. I just wanted to share my own experience and create the space for others in our neighbourhood to share their own life experience too. Maybe that’s the first step — instead of increasing the number of police patrolling the area and pointing fingers at different people and organizations. Let’s face reality together.
Residents of Regent Park,
I see you.
I hear you.
And I am here for you.
This is our home.
My hunch is that everyone who lives in Regent Park has stories to tell, of where you came from, what it was like growing up, and what’s going on in your life now. if you’re moved to share your origin story as well, email it to regentparkstories@gmail.com or join this Medium Publication and add your story.
In Peace,
Thu
