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Some kids, even the bright and feisty ones, need a helping hand when the odds are stacked against them. Having a mentor can make growing up just a little easier.
Giving guidance
It started out like any other pickup game of ball hockey in the underground parking garage of 10-year-old Dwight Drummond's apartment building. In the midst of play, says Dwight, now 35, the game experienced an unwelcome interruption. "This guy runs right through our game, followed by another guy firing a gun," he says. "Us kids were caught in the middle." Luckily, no one was injured.
Though Dwight had heard of other shootings in his neighbourhood, he never expected that he would be caught in a crossfire. He speculates that the shooting incident was likely over a drug deal, an all-too-common occurrence in the area around Jane Street and Finch Avenue, considered one of Toronto's roughest low-income public housing communities.
Dwight managed to escape the obstacles children from Jane and Finch face growing up, largely because he had a mentor - Lennox Holdford. Today Dwight is a popular Toronto television crime reporter and news anchor, and though he talks matter-of-factly about that shooting incident, he speaks with emotion about his mentor.
Lennox, 41, who lived in the same neighbourhood as Dwight, recognized even as a teenager that kids could thrive if they were given options - something some adults didn't understand. "I was told by my Grade 9 teacher that I would never graduate high school," he says. "I did, but I always felt I had to be twice as good to be considered equal to someone who lived outside the projects. I felt a duty to help those coming up behind me." This prompted him in 1977 to cofound the Firgrove United Sports and Culture Club, which offered children and youth after-hours programs at the on-site recreation centre and school. Two years later Lennox developed a mentoring program, in which young men and women became mentors to area teenagers.
From the beginning, Dwight and Lennox shared a special bond. Both had immigrated to Canada from the West Indies when they were young boys, grew up with several sisters and no brothers and had mothers who were single parents. Lennox, who is from Trinidad, became the positive male role model the Jamaican-born Dwight desperately needed. "My mom gave me $1 a week for allowance," says Dwight. "But the drug dealers on the corner would give kids $20 to pick up something at the store and tell them to keep the change. I needed a male figure in my life to tell me that the latter path, while appealing financially, led nowhere."
Among other things, Dwight credits Lennox with teaching him about his Jamaican background and educating him about black leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Angela Davis and Marcus Garvey. Lennox organized buses to take kids from the projects to hear speakers; he would sit and tell them the history of their people. This knowledge, says Dwight, was invaluable in the development of his self-esteem and the awareness that he, too, could make a difference in the world. "I became a journalist because I hated how my neighbourhood was covered," he says. "The stories were always negative, and I wanted to report on the positive things that were going on, like the work Lennox and others were doing."
Dwight and Lennox both left Jane and Finch years ago but neither has forgotten his roots. Dwight often returns to the area to talk with the kids. And Lennox, an outreach worker for homeless youth, still mentors others at the Firgrove United Sports and Culture Club. "People tend to move on from the neighbourhoods where they grew up and not look back," says Lennox. "That is wrong. Every community needs people to return and help guide the young."
