Heidi Calder, a Scarborough local who worked at UTSC in various capacities from 1997 to 2015, here discusses her memories of growing up in the community, which she describes as originally being largely white, and the ways in which this community has changed over time. She also touches on how mainstream media spreads misconceptions about Scarborough, largely due to racist bias.
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0:04
I was born and raised in Scarborough. I went to Mowat Collegiate, so I feel like it was a coming home for me in some ways, but I think my Scarborough growing up was different, again, than perhaps what the U of T Scarborough experience is, because the diversity and the changes.
0:21
Even over the time I’ve been here, how the student body has evolved and what UTSC has become.
0:28
I think when I went to Mowat, it was very much a white neighbourhood and a white institution. That’s changing and it’s nice.
0:40
I lived in Scarborough. I moved back to Scarborough with my family, I’m kinda bouncing around a little bit but I raised my family in Scarborough up until a year and a half ago I moved out to Ajax.
0:55
So my girls also grew up in an environment that for them is just so natural, and Scarborough to them, they have friends of every nation under the sun, I think.
1:06
So for them that’s what is normal and they’ve never felt uncomfortable getting around on TTC or anything. It’s never been a scary place.
1:18
I think, like you say, the media can paint a really negative picture of Scarborough unfairly.
1:26
I think even as people are choosing places for their sons or daughters to go to school, sometimes there’s lots of oh, I don’t wanna go near York because that’s near Jane and Finch, or I don’t want my kid to go to U of T Scarborough because Scarborough’s bad.
1:41
And the media does unfortunately have a lot, for people who don’t delve beyond that layer, sometimes it does paint a negative picture for you and it doesn’t allow people to have an opportunity to really experience what the place is about beyond the doors and beyond the facade that they imagine it to be.
2:03
So they’re missing out.
