EXCERPTS:
There is probably no house in this city that has been a better home to more Toronto children than 95 Bellevue Ave.
In the Depression, it was a rescue house for at-risk mothers and infants. In wartime, it became a publicly financed nursery, then a modern model for city-run child care.
Countless babies, toddlers and kids have played, napped, painted, wrestled and sung in this red-brick house on the edge of Kensington Market - thousands of them, over 100 years, growing up to become the teachers, hockey players, doctors and fire fighters of downtown Toronto.
And now, due to the city's proposed budget cuts, my son, Zev, may be part of a diminutive yet auspicious group - the last kids of Bellevue Daycare. If city council allows, the centre will close in August, the same month Zev is set to graduate - a small lucky dodge before the rubble falls.
If you want to show tourists why our city is special - how its heart beats like a racehorse beneath the blue sky - you bring them to this neighbourhood. These are streets not only of fishmongers, buskers and students, but of families and children, too. This helps balance downtown: families with kids stay a little longer, upkeep their homes a little more, curb the nighttime bar scene with early-morning walks to daycare.
And when, on sunny days, those little kings and queens of Kensington take their midday turn around the hood - waving at the barbers, beggars and baristas - the beauty of this city comes into full relief. Then they trundle back to Bellevue Avenue.
Built in 1887 as a private home, 95 Bellevue was turned into a safe house by the Salvation Army in 1920. Here, single mothers were given refuge along with their infants. For the next two decades, this house had 23 women and 23 babies sleeping beneath its roof.
During World War II, it became a federally funded day nursery, eventually taken over by the city. For the past 20 years, while functioning as a modern daycare for infants and toddlers, Bellevue has also been home base for child care in downtown Toronto - the upper floors containing offices for the children's services division of Metro.
It is far more than just a daycare. There is a light kind of happiness and comfort on that playground, in those rooms. Among Zev's first words were the names of his daycare workers - these lovely gentle women from here and all over who speak, read and sing in English, Spanish, Croatian, Korean, Portuguese and Tagalog. His little daycare friends are just as diverse, and love each other fiercely.
Last summer, for practical reasons, we took Zev out of Bellevue and moved him to another daycare with more amenities. Within days, we were nearly distraught. It felt as if we'd found something small yet magical, then tossed it away. We begged Bellevue to let him back in, which they mercifully did before someone took his spot.
And now here we are: watching Bellevue about to be lost to everyone, for good. Apparently the plan is to shut it down, move the office managers to Metro Hall, then sell off this historic piece of real estate. The infants and toddlers are to be moved "elsewhere in the ward," apparently to Alexandra Park - where an unknown bit of space will somehow be found and two endless waiting lists turned into one. How this is more cost effective than allowing parents to pay thousands of dollars per month in perpetuity while renting out space to growing businesses, I cannot fathom.
To make matters more unsettling, there is good reason to believe that the proposal to shut down Bellevue came from within its very walls. The managers on the upper floors, forced to cut 10 per cent from their operating budget, will neither confirm nor deny this, nor will they allow the daycare workers on the main floor - stressed, yet stoic, still caring for our kids - to speak with parents or journalists about any of it. The house is already divided.
It is what the mayor has done to our city: turned it against itself - planted fear, cowardice and self-interest on every corner. And so much of it is irreparable.
This week, if council lets it happen, we'll cast aside a house that was not only home to the children of Toronto, but has, for 100 years, embodied the generous smiling spirit of this city, and all that it's about to lose.
Our kids, I hate to say it, should not forgive us.
-reprinted from the Toronto Star