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The citizens had long been speaking up for themselves and winning concessions at City Hall and in social services when the CRC moved into 40 Oak St. in 1980. There were 20 people then in a congregation divided between Regent Park residents and a group of Guyanese, and eight women in the lone mothers’ group.

Soon the CRC was operating Operation Springboard for the families of convicts; Costruct, a furniture refinishing factory where parolees worked their way back into the community; one of the first neighbourhood legal services in the city; a co-op nursery school; and in the basement, a theatre and art program where three plays about Cabbagetown were performed on the stage.

Metson says his mantra was to encourage “dignity, integrity and creative input in residents towards building their own community”. Under his watch, the CRC owned and operated rooming houses and supportive housing. He created CRC Self-Help in 1985. It runs 33 properties now and is independent of CRC. Metson is its CEO.

He’s thrilled there will be 87 housing units at the new centre. “You’ve got to have housing. People have got to have the dignity of opening and closing their own door.”

The group decides what they’d like to buy each week — “It’s basic produce,” says Marilyn Dombrowski. “Seasonal too, like strawberries,” Jim Leonard adds.

Then Doug Rice does the early morning shopping for deals at the Ontario Food Terminal. “Our benchmark is the No Frills store,” he explains. “It has to be cheaper. We check their prices every week. We’ve got to be careful about their loss leaders.”

They pair up into teams of two to work 90-minute shifts. Last year Marie Corriveau worked the cash with Dombrowski, Henry Welch wrote up the bills and did the packing with Mary Webb, and Leonard worked with Rice.

Construction cut into business last year — “Sometimes it was d-e-a-d, dead,” Leonard laughs — but this year they’re moving in front of 415 Gerrard “right in the middle of everything,” according to Dombrowski.

Webb is sure their regulars will follow them. People come from St. Jamestown and from the west end to shop there. “One lady buys oranges every week,” she says.

Plus, he realized, here was a congregation that believed in faith-based social justice work. “From faith we understand something of the innate value of the individual person,” he says. “I was able to keep nurturing that.”

Blair also set out to raise “the excitement level” by reconnecting the CRC with the United Church family and with the congregation at Rosedale United Church, where CRC had its genesis. He called on other area churches, and then other agencies, to work together on the issues of the revitalization. He made sure the CRC and the other faith-based area agencies were at the table for the redevelopment not only as social service providers but as voices of the faith community.

He was involved in the Social Development Plan “for three long years” and reacted to the trauma about the changes he saw among residents who were being relocated by hiring a chaplain to help those in crisis. “It’s the highlight of my time here,” he says but in 2007 he left the CRC for a position in the general offices of the United Church. “That was hard,” he admits. “It was after eight months when I was returning from Brazil that I realized I was finally able to breathe.”

That’s why Sakina Khanam and Husneara Mojumder went door-to-door throughout Regent Park, talking to their neighbours, listening to their concerns. They did this after their work; some nights they were still visiting at 1:00 a.m. “We came to know lots of problems,” says Mojumder. So they began after school homework classes, sewing classes for the women at home and a year ago, an English as a Second Language program.

Members of about 20 families meet monthly; they talk about their culture; they talk about how to help their children find jobs. Realizing their kids didn’t want to speak Bengali anymore, Ismet Alam has helped start up classes in their language and culture. “As immigrants we had to stay. But this is now our country; this is our community,” says Khanam. “We have to develop [these classes] so our children can feel like it’s their home too.”

The women have worked hard for their community and they have also worked to convince their members to believe in the revitalization plans for Regent Park. “We have lots of friends from different countries here,” says Mojumder. “We are happy. We are proud of Regent Park. It’s a tiny world of people from all over the world,” says Alam.