Streets Of Toronto Research Articles

Sketches (review)

Reviewed by: Total Constant Order Deborah Stevenson Chappell, Crissa-Jean Total Constant Order. Tegen/HarperTeen, 2007278p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-088606-6$17.89 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-088605-9$16.99 R Gr. 7-10 Life on the Toronto streets may be rough for teenaged Dana, but it's better than what she left behind at home. At least here she has good friends in Brent and Ashley, fellow street teens, and she's beginning to find satisfying expression at a drop-in art center for the homeless called "Sketches," where her natural artistic ability allows her to shine, and where helpful adults begin to elicit her trust and convince her to face the traumas of her past. The story is programmatic from the get-go, with Dana's dark, secret history (her stepfather molested her) immediately apparent to any experienced genre fan, characters neatly divided into heroes or villains, and events, including the happy ending for the deserving, more convenient than believable. The text is more accessible than in many stories of homelessness (such as Blank's much tougher and more realistic Almost Home, BCCB 11/07), however, and the artistic slant is an original one. Dana's wholesome suburbanity makes her a figure with which the similarly young and sheltered will empathize, and while her story offers some cautionary elements, readers will be glad to see her finally in safer quarters. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A qualitative exploration of prescription opioid injection among street-based drug users in Toronto: behaviours, preferences and drug availability

BackgroundThere is evidence of a high prevalence of prescription opioid (PO) and crack use among street drug users in Toronto. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe drug use behaviours and preferences as well as the social and environmental context surrounding the use of these drugs among young and old street-based drug injection drug users (IDUs).MethodsIn-depth interviews were conducted with 25 PO injectors. Topics covered included drug use history, types of drugs used, how drugs were purchased and transitions to PO use. Interviews were taped and transcribed. Content analysis was conducted to identify themes.ResultsFive prominent themes emerged from the interviews: 1) Combination of crack and prescription opioids, 2) First injection experience and transition to prescription opioids, 3) Drug preferences and availability, 4) Housing and income and 5) Obtaining drugs. There was consensus that OxyContin and crack were the most commonly available drugs on the streets of Toronto. Drug use preferences and behaviours were influenced by the availability of drugs, the desired effect, ease of administration and expectations around the purity of the drugs. Distinct experiences were observed among younger users as compared to older users. In particular, the initiation of injection drug use and experimentation with POs among younger users was influenced by their experiences on the street, their peers and general curiosity.ConclusionGiven the current profile of street-based drug market in Toronto and the emergence of crack and POs as two predominant illicit drug groups, understanding drug use patterns and socio-economic factors among younger and older users in this population has important implications for preventive and therapeutic interventions.

Canadian Oxford Dictionary (review)

Reviewed by: Canadian Oxford Dictionary Elaine Gold (bio) Katherine Barber, editor. Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition Oxford University Press. xix, 1830. $59.95 The first edition of this dictionary (1998) was greeted with great enthusiasm. Here was an excellent dictionary based on extensive research into the characteristics of Canadian English. It included words and expressions unique to Canada, such as toonie and Nanaimo bar; place names such as Kawartha Lakes and Jacques Cartier Strait; and such people as David Suzuki and Jane Jacobs. It included Canadian variations of pronunciation, spelling and meanings, and regional vocabulary such as hangashore ('an idle person, esp. one regarded as too lazy to fish') from Newfoundland and the Maritimes. The second edition has now been published, only seven years after the first, and, according to the editor, Katherine Barber, it has been completely revised, with five thousand new words, senses, and phrases. These include more Canadianisms, more biographies, and two hundred derivatives of place names – that is, the name for the inhabitants of a particular place. I have now discovered that there are Canadians who are also Moose Javians, Nanaimoites, or Ottawans, although we must await a future edition to learn what to call someone from Oshawa. The range of Canadian culture, from the tundra to the streets of Toronto, is apparent in such new listings as muktuk ('traditional Inuit food consisting of the skin and surface blubber of a whale'), and shtreimel ('a round broad-brimmed hat, edged with fur worn by some Hasidic Jews'). There are more people, places, and events: for example, Michael J. Fox has now joined Terry Fox, Mississippi Mills has joined Mississippi River, and Nunavut Day is listed alongside Nunavut. While much information has been added, some has also been deleted: surprisingly, for this linguistic endeavour, the second edition no longer includes official languages in a country's entry. You will have to consult the first edition to learn that the official languages of Rwanda are both Rwanda (a Bantu language) and French, and that Romansh is one of the four official languages of Switzerland. Also new to this edition are recommended word breaks in the headwords. These are provided in the optimistic hope that writers will consult this dictionary rather than relying on computer programs to divide words at the end of lines. The breaks suggested reflect the derivation and meaning of the words rather than traditional rules of syllable division. Thus alpine is listed as alp-ine, preserving the structure of alp + ine, rather than al-pine. Although this division better represents the word's meaning (no pines are involved), it does not reflect pronunciation; such unexpected breaks might actually slow readers rather than aid them. Pronunciation is, in any case, less of a priority for this edition, and this is, for me, its main drawback. While the first edition gave a pronunciation [End Page 321] for every entry, the second edition provides pronunciations 'where necessary.' The guidelines used to decide where pronunciations were necessary are not explained; it appears that pronunciations are given for less familiar words and for words that show variation across Canada. The entries for schedule, tomato,drama, and student all include the two pronunciations found in Canada, but this pattern is not consistent: no pronunciation is given for new, although the first edition provides the two Canadian variants. It was also not considered necessary to provide pronunciations for short words like mush. But if readers have to consult this dictionary for the meaning of mush, they may need guidance on whether it rhymes with bush or brush. New Canadians might wonder whether skew sounds like skyou or skoo. Does lethal rhyme with methyl (which is supplied with a pronunciation)? What about Lethbridge? Information that might not be necessary for native speakers of Canadian English could indeed be necessary for English speakers from other lands and for those who have English as a second language. These readers will prefer the first edition for its complete pronunciation information. Overall, however, this dictionary is a delight. It is clear, easy to read, with the reliable etymologies one expects from Oxford dictionaries. It provides extensive information about international English as well as vocabulary and usages particular...

The Human River

On a Sunny Sunday Afternoon You are sitting on your porch steps under the dappled sunlight of the old maples that line your Toronto street, enjoying a beautiful fall day. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a steady stream of people walking out of the alleyway across the street from your house. What is this procession all about?

Underground landscape: The urbanism and infrastructure of Toronto’s downtown pedestrian network

Beneath the surface of the streets of Toronto lies a sprawling labyrinth that serves over 100,000 people every day and countless tourists and visitors. One of the city’s most under-valued urban spaces, Toronto’s underground is remarkably the largest underground shopping complex in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records with more than 30 km of shopping tunnels and retail nodes. Since the 1970s, this underground system has grown and multiplied beneath the surface of the city with relatively little intervention from city planners. This article discusses the development pattern of the underground as a network and the future it holds as an important urban infrastructure.

Archetypes, Urbanites and Bus Rides: How the “Here“ Becomes the “There“ in Bluemouth Inc.’s American Standard

The spinning red-and-white pole outside Pat’s Barber Shop on D’Arcy Street in Toronto carries all the promise of a “clean cut“ — flat-top, military cut or shave with a straight-edge razor — fast and cheap. Inside Pat’s shop, there is more talcum powder than oxygen, and the mise en scène, consisting of yellowed walls, worn chairs and a hat rack, appears like a deteriorating illusion nesting among city hospitals, university buildings and trendy restaurants. It is precisely this incongruous setting of small-town coiffeur and modernist architecture that first attracted Bluemouth Inc., an interdisciplinary, site-specific theatre collective based in Toronto and New York City, to mount their March 2005 production, American Standard, in Pat’s Barber Shop. Unfortunately, the shop’s landlord did not share the collective’s enthusiasm for turning a men’s grooming business into a performance site and abruptly denied them the use of the store one week before the production was scheduled to open. “It’s not uncommon for us to lose a space at the last minute,“ says core member and composer, Richard Windeyer (Personal interview). Fortunately, Zero Gravity Circus, an east-end movie theatre turned circus rehearsal hall, was made available to the collective, and spectators were bused from the original D’Arcy Street location to a simulated version of Pat’s Barber Shop that consisted of a lone barber chair, multimedia and some masking tape.

Peace, Order, and Good Songs: Popular Music and English–Canadian Culture

Industry sales statistics demonstrate the extent to which popular music permeates Canadian life. According to the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, Canada is the sixth largest market for recorded music sales. (1) Figures from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (whose members sell 95 percent of recordings sold in Canada) show that in 2003 about 50 million music CDs and cassettes were sold in Canada. (2) Scholars have long pondered the impact of the musical and lyrical content of popular music on people's political beliefs and activities. Survey research, (3) lyrical analysis, and musician interviews, (4) as well as experimental designs (5) have been used to determine the impact of music on people's ideas and actions. The research presented here contributes to burgeoning area of scholarship by examining the place of popular music lyrics within the definition of culture. Next it examines the lyrics of a major Canadian band whose songs have been rife with images and ideas of Canada. By examining the ideas and images presented to Canadians by important band research shows the role musicians may play in the creation and re-creation of and points toward a rich array of popular musicians whose work may be similarly important and worthy of investigation. Symbols and Themes in Canadian Popular Music What do we mean by the term culture? First and foremost, culture is not static. People change culture by interpreting and reinterpreting it, so it is difficult to say precisely and definitively at any moment, this is exactly what we mean when we say the political culture of English-speaking Canadians. Paul Nesbitt-Larking puts it well when he writes culture, including political is a broad, diffuse, and vague set of beliefs, emotions, values, preferences, and ideals. It provides a kind of 'tool kit' with which to reflect, communicate, and evaluate experience. (6) Ann Swidler defines culture as vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, rituals, practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life (p. 273). It seems there are as many definitions of culture as there are scholars interested in the concept, but a complete discussion of all the variants need not detain us. For the purposes of research, culture may be thought of as a collection of symbols whose meanings are constantly being reinterpreted. As carriers of symbolic meaning, the lyrics of popular music constitute an important element of culture. (7) Barclay, Jack, and Schneider argue that the years between 1985 and 1995 represent a golden age in Canadian popular music, in part centered around the bands that got their start in the clubs of Queen Street in Toronto. (8) This period begins roughly at the same time as the funding by the federal government of the Sound Recording Development Program in 1986. The program gave out $81 million between 1986 and 2000 to encourage production of Canadian music recordings. (9) The program was replaced in 2001 with the Canadian Sound Recording Policy. (10) Moreover, by the beginning of period Canadian content requirements had been in place on radio for nearly fifteen years. (11) Blue Rodeo, Cowboy Junkies, and The Tragically Hip are three of the most famous bands mentioned by the authors as leading the scene. Barclay, Jack, and Schneider quote former Blue Rodeo and Cowboy Junkies multi-instrumentalist Kim Deschamps on the positive changes in the music industry in Canada since the 1970s: Historically, in the era of Neil (Young) and Joni (Mitchell) there was no industry here. There was no possibility of making a living, and they all followed the (Gordon) Lightfoot example: release in the U.S., become a force down there, and then the Canadian public will take you seriously. That's less the case now, but it's still a factor . …

Homelessness, Gender and Subsistence: The Case of Toronto Street Youth

Research on employment segregation and women's lower earnings has predominantly focused on labour‐market participants. Marginal groups such as the homeless have therefore been excluded from theory and research on work‐related gender segregation. In order to fill this void, this paper explores how income creation among homeless youth from Toronto, Canada varies according to gender. Based on questionnaire and interview data our results show that, in relative terms, males are involved in the more financially lucrative sectors of the street economy. We frame the analysis of our findings in terms of a broader discussion of how homelessness is gendered within the spaces and places homeless youth occupy.

“The Walls Were Closing in, and We Were Trapped”

Semistructured interviews focusing on suicide were conducted with 80 street youth in agencies and on the streets of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Participants described their understandings of the phenomenon of suicide among street youth and the meanings suicide held for them. Qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed themes of worthlessness, loneliness, hopelessness, and most centrally the feeling of being “trapped” as forming the construct of suicide held by the participants. These idioms of distress were situated within the context of a street life that included social stigma and drug abuse.

The Critique of African-Canadian Literature…

A literature must be greater than its critics, yes; but that does not mean lesser-than assessors are permitted a carte blanche illiteracy. Even carpaltunnel-syndrome-challenged typists who jet newspapery opinions should attempt a minimal degree of scholarly probity, so as to prevent their inventing idiocies or venting idiosyncrasies. Such observations must apply forcefully to critics of any obscure literature-such as that of African Canada-possessing a phantasmal bibliography, a shadowy canon, and murky archives. The critique of African-Canadian literature remains an enterprise open to any form of intellectual abuse, for the literature itself has not yet been granted the dignity of an accepted, distinct existence. To many, it is a branch of Caribbean-or West Indian-or African-American-or African, literature. Its critique need derive therefore from no Canadian source. Too many think that by reading Toni Morrison and Derek Walcott, they are equipped to read, without alterating any facts of geography or society, Austin Clarke or M. Nourbese Philip. Thus, the public-and the academy-is assaulted with abstract social work or political bavardage that is alien, irrelevant, and unreal. See, for instance, Donna Bailey Nurse's op-ed piece in The [Toronto] Globe and Mail Books insert of Saturday, 21 February 2004, appearing on page DlS. Titled Black in print and prefaced by a teaser proclaiming, What you need to know about... being in Canada, the article purports to offer an analysis of black Canadian identity, but it is perversely narrow. Nurse begins with a canard, the idea that According to Canadian culture, there was no such thing as a Canadian woman. Yet, all one has to do is pick a decent history, or even go to First Baptist Church on Huron Street in Toronto (not that far from Nurse's native Pickering, Ontario) and examine its documents, to commence a discovery of the deep roots of African men and women in Canadian soil. Agreed: European-Canadian nationalist propaganda has never wanted to accept the prior presence of First Nations peoples, let alone the later arrivals of people of colour. It is lazy, however, to deny the history of the continuous presence of Coloureds and Natives thwarting white anglophone and francophone claims of cultural primordiality. Nurse then posits, suddenly, things have changed, and I think it has to do with the stories, the accumulation of voices and literary ideas, characters and themes that are showing me who I am. One must applaud this development of positive self-consciousness, but the literature did not materialize into existence yesterday, nor did it do so simply to provide solace for one individual. Again, Nurse demonstrates a refusal to engage any AfricanCanadian literary earlier than, say, 1970-or maybe 1980 (or maybe 1990 or 2000). One must ask what her phrase over time really means: since 1783 or since 1983? Nurse opines, too, Black Canadian literature has reached the tipping point. (Her use of the metaphor popularized by African-Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell is unfortunate: Is the literature tipping up or down?) Problematic here is the determination that now the literature is doing something, whereas before, presumably, it was somnambulant, infantile, or comatose. …

Bourdieu in Canada: An Invitation for Debate

On 25 July 2002 a group of squatters, led by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), occupied an empty apartment building on King Street West in Toronto's Parkdale neighborhood. The date coincided with World Youth Day, a global mega-festival for young Catholics. The highlights of the one-week event were several pilgrimage spectacles, including a vigil and a mass in which Pope John Paul II participated. While the streets of Toronto had the world's attention, the OCAP squatters hoped to capture some of the spotlight with their protest action.

Toronto street youth and HIV/AIDS: prevalence, demographics, and risks

Purpose: The purposes of this study were: (a) to identify human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence in Toronto street youth through paired blood and saliva specimens; (b) to identify the HIV risk and prevention behaviors of street involved youth; and (c) to identify demographic or other factors that may contribute to the risk of street youth becoming infected with HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the future. Methods: This was a cross-sectional convenience study of street-involved youth aged 14–25 years. The youth participated in interviews to identify HIV-related knowledge and personal risk and preventive behaviors. Following interviews, they were asked to provide a saliva sample, blood spot, or both. They could refuse one or both samples without jeopardizing their involvement or receiving an honorarium. Two males were the only participants who declined to provide a sample. Results: Fifteen of 695 (2.2%) youth tested positive for HIV infection. All were male, ranging in age from 18 to 25 years. Same and opposite sex, intravenous (IV) drug use, prostitution, and incarceration were risk factors associated with positive HIV test results. The rate of HIV infection was seven times greater for the group 20 years of age and older (20–25) compared to the younger group aged 14–9 years. The proportion testing positive for HIV from small cities, towns, and rural communities in Ontario was 40%; yet, they represented 21% of the study population. Most (57%) youth had been on their own for no more than 3 years and had moved frequently. Nearly two thirds (60%) had stayed in hostels or homeless shelters in the previous 6 months. Conclusion: Street youth in Canada are at high risk of HIV infection with their risk increasing with age. Unprotected (same and opposite) sex, IV drug use, prostitution and incarceration were linked to their HIV infections. The high level of mobility identified by street youth challenges governments, communities, and public health officials to develop appropriate prevention strategies and to carefully monitor the spread of HIV infection in this vulnerable population.

Racing from the Great White North

This article focuses on Motion Concept Vehicles Inc.’s (MCV) in Mississauga, ON, which is creating a $225,000 supercar. When the idea was born, the car was to run on natural gas, or methane—hence, the car’s original name, CH4, as in the chemical nomenclature for the gas’s operative compound. The prototype has already hit the Toronto streets and runs on natural gas. The engine in the CH4 prototype is a General Motors 4.6-liter, multivalve V8, converted to run on natural gas. The maker of the gasoline engine that will power the first production models is still being determined. MCV had a strong enough story to attract optical scanning leader Steinbichler and alias/wavefront, the Silicon Graphics subsidiary that builds software for designing and refining surfaces. MCV must bring the design geometry up to so-called class A surfaces within the alias/wavefront software environment, which is called SurfaceStudio 9 in its latest release. This process of perfecting a car's surfaces to be both structurally and mechanically sound as well as aesthetically pleasing takes a fraction of the time it took in the days of clay models, the companies point out.

A Survey of Food Problems Experienced by Toronto Street Youth

A brief survey was undertaken to assess the nature and severity of food scarcity experienced by a sample of 88 street youth in downtown Toronto, and to identify markers of vulnerability to food scarcity. Almost half of the youth reported experiencing involuntary hunger or food deprivation during the previous 30 days. Youth who were literally homeless (i.e., on the street or "squatting" in abandoned buildings) and those relying primarily on street-based activities for income appeared particularly vulnerable to food deprivation. Although limited in scope, the findings raise questions about the nutritional well-being of street youth and highlight the need for more effective interventions to address problems of poverty, hunger, and homelessness among Canadian youth.

Pregnancy in Toronto's Street Youth • 7

Objective: To determine what proportion of street-involved youth in a large Canadian urban area have ever been pregnant and to describe the outcome of those pregnancies.

Spare Any Change ? : Power and Discourse in Toronto’s Urban Panhandling Subculture

This article is the resuit of fieldwork carried out alongside panhandlers on the streets of Toronto, whose discourse is gleaned for dues to cultural norms and ideas about social belonging. The life stories of panhandlers are summarized in order to set the scene and their modus operandi is described in some detail. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which panhandlers “other” certain segments of society (including fellow panhandlers who refuse to abide by the common code of behaviour), often reflecting the mainstream ideology they profess to reject. One of the authors spent several stretches actually panhandling amid their informants, in order to better understand this seemingly permanent feature of urban living today.

Reviews : Choice Menus: An Easy Guide With Recipes for Healthy Every day Meal Planning, by Marjorie Hollands and Margaret Howard (1993). Canadian Diabetes Associa tion, National Office, Attention: Coor dinator of Special Projects, 15 Toronto Street. Toronto, Ontario M5C2R1. 128 pages. Price: $19.95

Reviews : Choice Menus: An Easy Guide With Recipes for Healthy Every day Meal Planning, by Marjorie Hollands and Margaret Howard (1993). Canadian Diabetes Associa tion, National Office, Attention: Coor dinator of Special Projects, 15 Toronto Street. Toronto, Ontario M5C2R1. 128 pages. Price: $19.95

Tactics of Appropriation and the Politics of Recognition in Late Modern Democracies

Walking down the street in Toronto one day in 1987, pedestrians were surprised to see a message flashing across an electronic billboard. “Lesbians fly Air Canada” it repeatedly signaled. The next day the message was gone. A gay rights group broadcast the phrase, but their communication terminated abruptly when Air Canada threatened to apply for an injunction to stop the group from using its name.

Surviving on the Street

This article documents the living conditions of a sample of adolescents (N = 390) who had left home and were living on the street in Toronto, Canada The majority of these youth had spenta considerable amount of time without adequate shelter, food, or income; furthermore, many were involved in a variety of illegal activities and had been incarcerated or suicidal Multiple regression analyses revealed that the most consistent predictors of hunger, criminal activity, and incarceration were conditions of street life itself: thelack of secure shelter and the length of time on the street. Overal4 the living conditions of these youth closely parallel those of homeless adults. Although there are differences between adults and adolescents who live on the street, the similarities suggest that it may be inappropriate to label the latter runaways and to consistently separate adults and adolescents into two completely distinct homeless populations.

Double Take: The Story of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres

Double Take is an intelligent, accessible, well-documented, and attractively illustrated history, designed to increase appreciation for and understanding of the Elgin / Winter Garden theatre complex on Yonge Street in Toronto. The complex is unique, not only because it is the only example in Canada of an eccentric turn-of-the-century architectural phenomenon, the “stacked” theatre, but because it was recently purchased by the provincial government of Ontario, restored with care and accuracy at great expense, and re-opened in 1989 as a venue for live theatre. Any such manifestation of cultural generosity on the part of a government certainly deserves a publication; this book, more than a souvenir of the theatre’s re-opening, may be seen as a souvenir of and defence for such government financing.