Regent Park Focus

On tonight’s Catch da Flava, we touched on the world famous elbow gate involving Justin Trudeau and Ruth Ellen Brousseau. On may 19th as votes were being placed for the controversial Bill C-14. The situation went sour when party members starting milling around and doing what it is believed by some to be time wasting. Trudeau saw what was going on, left his seat and grabbed conservative MP Gordon Brown and pulled him from the little crowd so he could go cast his vote. In the process, Justin Trudeau bumped into NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brousseau with his elbow and subsequently caused a bit of a ruckus. The public response was insane, many critics went as far as saying Trudeau should be banned from the House of Commons and some called Brousseau a crybaby. One thing that stood out was the extent in which the other political parties (NDP and Conservatives) milked the situation for extra firepower in their campaigns. Trudeau ended up apologizing multiple times for his actions. Our second topic

On last nights Catch da Flava, we had two eye opening discussions on two entirely different topics. For the first half of the show, we spoke about a TEDx talk by Mallence Bart-Williams. Her TEDx talk was about countries in Africa that have and still are, exploited for their rich abundance of alternative resources, small examples of these resources are gold and diamonds. A key point that Mallence brought up was the way western media portrays African countries. I am sure at some point in our lives we have seen commercials showing a hungry family or baby with flies surrounding them. Those images have been blasted on TV screens all over the world and they paint the pictures that show some parts of Africa as countries that rely and survive on western charity. Mallence said that the situation is actually the opposite and the west survives on charity from Africa. Without Africa’s resources the west would not be as powerful as it is right now. Our second topic of conversion was centered

May 4th Catch da Flava Blog On tonight’s Catch da Flava, we talked about the Regent Park Revitalization Project in partnership with the MLSE foundation. The Regent Park Revitalization project is a public/private partnership, which will transform 69 acres in Toronto’s east downtown - gaining recognition for being an innovative, sustainable and urban redevelopment initiative. On Monday May 3rd; we had an opportunity to speak to Drew Abbott, founder and co-chair of 3to6 team, which is a branch of the MLSE foundation. He highlighted what would be built in the Regent Park community. There will be state-of-the-art sports facilities that will include a new soccer field, basketball court and ice rink. Neighbourhood residents will be given priority access to the new sports facilities, and they will be run by a community agency. Today I had the opportunity to interview Tristan Blackwood, a pro-basketball player from the Regent Park community. He grew up in Regent Park and is one of many succes