'I was hurt': Richmond Hill resident angered by town's response to racist graffiti

Richard Maurice speaks out after racist graffiti scars sign and sidewalk in Oak Ridges

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 8, 2020
Jeremy Grimaldi

Richard Maurice has dealt with racism his entire life, but always a more subtle kind of prejudice.

On Aug. 26, though, he faced a very direct form indeed.

It began on his morning walk, when his ‘visibly upset’ neighbour showed him a picture on her phone of an anti-Black slur scrawled on a sign at Four Winds Parkette, near the intersection of Bayview Avenue and Old Colony Road and his Oak Ridges home.

Similar words were scrawled in spray paint on a nearby sidewalk.

“I was hurt, really hurt, it reminded me of all the other incidents I have experienced in my life,” said the Black former principal, who originally hails from Trinidad and Tobago.

But this was not his only gripe.

Maurice was further angered by how the Town of Richmond Hill dealt with the situation.

He said after the neighbour who showed him the picture called the town, workers were quick to clean the graffiti but neglected to call the police.

“We were notified by a resident,” said York police Sgt. Andy Pattenden

As for the incident itself, Maurice said he felt it was important for other residents to understand what these kinds of incidents can do to families like his as well as other racial communities.

Maurice said soon after the incident his daughter explained to him how it’s changed her viewpoint on her home.

“She said to me, ‘You know what, I felt so free before, but now I don’t feel so safe’,” he said. “She said, ‘Dad you have to keep walking with me to make me feel safe.’ ”

Maurice said his neighbourhood has always been a special place for him considering he and many of his neighbours bought their homes directly from the developer, growing together.

“My hurt is to know when I came to Richmond Hill we came into a neighbourhood where we all bought homes from a developer. We were all blended and diverse and we all built that loyalty together in our own neighbourhood.”

Maurice said it was important for him to explain why he chose Canada over the United States when he chose to move north more than 30 years ago.

“The Canada I know, the Canada that I came to, the people are transparent in how we do things,” he said. “That’s why I chose Canada -- there’s a level of truth here. That’s why it’s important to me.”

He said he planned to meet with Coun. Greg Barros in order to speak about the issue on Sept. 2. Barros did not respond to request for comment.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Richmond Hill said town staff did not call police but did speak to them at the scene.

"We take incidents of racism seriously and work closely with our police counterparts when these incidents arise," she wrote in an email.

The suspect is described as white male, bald, driving a black hatchback that resembled a Fiat or Mini Cooper.

“York Regional Police does not tolerate hate crime in any form,” Pattenden said in the service’s press release on the matter.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 1-866-876-5423, ext. 7241.