Regent Park

Toronto, A City Becoming, by: David Murphy

The photographs for Scott Johnston’s Regent Park document t the uneasy calm that existed just prior to the demolition of one of Toronto’s more notorious communities, revealing not a crime-ridden enclave of urban strife, but a sanctuary reminiscent of an old resort. Bulit in 1948, Johnston’s essay tells the story of the housing project located east of Parliament Street, between Gerrard Street East and Shuter Street.

Toronto’s Regent Park, Canada’s oldest and largest public housing project, represents one of city’s poorest neighbourhoods, with a reputation for drugs and violence. My photographic excursion into the community revealed something completely different: the quiet vibe of an old resort replete with amenities such as swimming pools and ice rinks, all within a quiet sanctuary removed from the urban fray surrounding it. The aim of the community’s original planners was to create a self-contained “garden city,” the vestiges of which still existed as I roamed the grounds before bulldozers and wrecking balls razed the neighbourhood in the name of urban renewal. The exhibition that grew out of the photographs presented viewers with a chance to look inside a neighbourhood that only a few outside of the community have actually seen, and to reveal the complexity and the unique environment of a well-known, but not-so-well understood, area of Toronto.

I did not seek out to expose poverty and deprivation, and discovered that the surroundings were quite nice, quieter than most of downtown, but there was a strange underlying tension. At first , I saw things on a large scale: the buildings, the vast green space, the landscape and the design. Then I started to focus on certain areas that I found particularly interesting , in visual terms. I attempted to capture its uneasy peace. It is a very uneasy downtown location, but somehow claustrophobic at the same time—a place that seems to be almost uncertain of itself, and in the process of disappearing. In photographing subjects for my other exhibitions, I captured dilapidated, aging homes in Toronto’s Bridle Path neighbourhood, and condemned churches in the process of being torn down.