'We need some real action': Reporter reflects on four Aurora residents who tackled tough issues in 2021

#2021 Reflection: Residents lobbied on 'torture' at former Pine Ridge centre, beaver traps and anti-racism task force

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 24, 2021
Lisa Queen

It was people who shone a light in dark places that stood out when I reflected on Aurora in 2021.

They were willing to call attention to and take a stand on tough issues, things that are uncomfortable to think about, things many would rather be left alone.

Four prominent examples are Kathy Kantel, Len Bulmer, Elaine Evans and Phiona Durrant.

Last spring, Kantel and Bulmer came to me because they wanted public recognition of the abuse that victims had suffered when the provincial government ran the former Pine Ridge Centre as a home for men and teenaged boys with developmental disabilities from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Let this sit with you:

“If you didn't do what you were told at Pine Ridge, you got the water torture,” former resident Martin Levine recalled.

“They put you in a freezing cold shower, put a bar on the door, and you had to sleep shivering on the cold hard floor. They stripped me -- took all my clothes off. They laid you down on a stretcher, tied your body tight across your chest so you couldn't move and tight across your legs.”

In the same way abuse at residential schools is now coming to light and being addressed, Kantel and Bulmer have spent months pushing for victims who suffered “torture” at Pine Ridge to be formally recognized.

Formal recognition not only publicly validates their experiences and fosters healing, it makes us take steps to prevent such mistreatment from happening again.

Disappointed the town had turned a blind eye to Pine Ridge’s “shameful” past, Kantel and Bulmer doggedly kept at it, first persuading the heritage advisory committee and eventually convincing council to recognize the abuses suffered at Pine Ridge as part of its heritage designation on the property.

The next step is getting the provincial government to follow suit.

When Evans took her fiancé's dog, Molly, for a family stroll northeast of Bayview Avenue and St. John’s Sideroad a year ago and the dog almost got caught in a conibear trap, she could have easily just gotten the border collie to safety and turned a blind eye.

Instead, worried about other pets, children and animals getting caught in what she calls “inhumane” traps, Evans dug into the issue.

Conibear traps are condemned by animal welfare advocates because they cause a prolonged and agonizing death, are ineffective in the long run and often kill unintended targets, such as family dogs.

Alarmed to discover it was the town using the traps to get rid of nuisance beavers, Evans mounted a public campaign to convince the municipality to ban them.

The town initially suspended their use but then “sneakily” reintroduced the devices until Evans once again sounded the alarm.

Plain and simple, Durrant is a human dynamo.

Whether it’s running the Aurora Black Community group, co-organizing the Every Child Matters vigil in the Town Park, bringing attention to the deplorable racism an Indian-Canadian family suffered from a neighbour, putting together an event that included supporting moms at Rose of Sharon Services for Young Mothers or writing a column for the Aurora Banner and yorkregion.com, she is forever on the go.

Durrant is a powerhouse for change, someone not content to remain in the shadows when she feels it’s time to champion social justice.

In July, the owner of Coconut Village Nails & Spa resigned from the town’s Anti-Black Racism and Anti-Racism Task Force, feeling the group was just “tokenism” rather than a forum to properly address issues of racism.

“I just don’t want us to be pretending that we’re OK in Aurora because we’re not. I don’t want to be afraid to speak,” she told the Banner.

“And I don’t want the town to continue to keep going on every day without really pausing and looking if something is working. These things aren’t working -- at least they’re not working for everybody. We need some real action.”