Outlaw Radio 1960

  Another week has come and gone. This one, however, was the most pivotal in most people's lives as they grew up. Yes, the last day of school and the start of the summer break for kids in elementary school it was a time to spend at the pool or playground and play to your heart's content. The parks, safe and free from bullies by the city parks staff, were always a refreshing relief from the daily schoolyard bullying that many face tragically too often in a place where you should feel safe and secure. It was this reason that I hated my elementary and junior grades and turned to multiple venues of escapism to try to run from problems that should never have existed for any child in the first place. In 1975, I would find myself taking the money I had earned from working after school and buying a plane ticket to Toronto, committed to the idea of never returning to the hell I was going through. This, of course, would not last, as I was made a missing person as a juvenile and quickly...

  Buried deep in the back of office towers and surrounded by the trappings of the first gentrification waves in Toronto during the 1980s and 1990s sits St. Andrew's United Church at 117 Bloor Street.    A church that once thrived with numerous professionals , artists, musicians and seniors is now reduced to a mere shell of its original self. Now, looking to redefine its role in a downtown community that has changed so dramatically since I first set foot in its doors in 1986 might be a task that will either lead the church to a new beginning or result in its shuttering, like many mainline churches and parishes before it.    When my friend Darlene , who once served as the clerk of session at St Andrews, appeared there just a few months ago, there were only five people still present, and only a handful of others to listen and worship. The attention to the music program was still there . Still, again, its dwindling numbers of participants speak volumes of a chur...