Opposition to gay-only Moss Park rec centre gets organized

Dennis Hanagan —

Gay rights and anti-poverty activists oppose designating a new recreation centre planned for the Moss Park area as “gay-focused.”
They fear it would leave the rest of the low-income neighbourhood feeling excluded and lead to the neighbourhood’s gentrification, forcing out current marginalized residents.
Last September, The Bulletin reported that a $100 million rec centre—with one-third of the funds coming from a private donor—would have a gay designation.

The facility would be at Queen and Sherbourne where now stand an indoor skating arena, a large playing field and the John Innes Community Centre.
It’s “really going to focus on inclusion in sport and hopefully become home to Toronto’s LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer] sporting community,” Kristina Flynn, senior consultant for sport and recreation at the 519 Church Community Centre, told The Bulletin at the time.
She also said it would be open to the general public.

A Dec. 13 blog called No Pride in Gentrification posted by Queer Trans Community Defence and endorsed by nine organizations and close to 100 individuals, spoke against the rec centre, not just because its gay focus could lead to feelings of exclusion but also because the centre would gentrify the neighbourhood.
Among the nine organizations are Maggie’s Sex Worker Action Project, No One is Illegal, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Network for the Elimination of Police Violence and Queer Ontario.

Helen Lenskyj with Queer Trans Community Defense said her group became involved in the rec centre matter, along with OCAP, when city-level talks put forward plans to revitalize George St.
In an interview, Lenskyj said the area is home to homeless and precariously housed people who spend their days in and around Moss Park and John Innes Centre where they are connected with Downtown support services. “That is their community,” she said.

“There is some connection between the two projects (the rec centre and George St. revitalization) and that is the city’s plan to decrease the number of shelters in the Downtown and spread them out into the suburbs which is a problem because of the lack of support services (there),” Lenskyj said.
She said she’s seen no indication how the new rec centre would make itself inclusive for the entire Moss Park neighbourhood.

“How were they going to be a welcoming place for the current users … young and old, rich and poor who live in the neighbourhood who, for them, this is their neighbourhood recreation community centre,” Lenskyj said, referring to the John Innes centre, the indoor rink, the play field and the indoor sports facilities.
She said the rec centre “is the wrong place (at) the wrong time, from our perspective, at a time when shelter beds and transitional-housing beds and emergency beds of various kinds are diminishing in the Downtown.”
Lenskyj said that in the past 20 or 30 years gay sports groups in Toronto have flourished. “For all of that time the groups have used existing facilities with a fair amount of success, fairly problem-free.”
She said current Moss Park facilities are in need of renovation, but they shouldn’t be replaced with one that brands itself gay-focused “which gives off a message of exclusion, even though all its supporters say it’s welcoming to everybody,” said Lenskyj.

“The existing users’ needs must be addressed, the existing users need to be consulted thoroughly. The connections between this and the George St. revitalization are of concern to a lot of the groups (and individuals) that signed on” to the Dec. 13 blog, Lenskyj said.

Queer Trans Community Defence wants to hold a meeting, likely in March, for a community discussion about the rec centre “where we get all the people who would have something to say, some needs to express.”