Filed under: Afro-Canadian, Religion | Tags: Afro-Canadian, Audi A6S, black, BMW 7 Series, canada, Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian Council of Christian Charities, christian, evangelical, Florida, Gospel, Jane and Finch, Lexus RX 330, Mercedes-Benz CLK 320, Ontario, Paul Melnichuk, pentecostal, Pentecostalism, Porsche Cayenne, Prayer Palace, the Melnichuks, Tim Melnichuk, Tom Melnichuk, Toronto
A Star investigation into Toronto’s Prayer Palace congregation finds that despite the members’ dutiful tithing, the church spends little on charitable projects.
After worshipping at the Prayer Palace this morning, Hyacinthe Houghron will, as she does every second Sunday, stuff her tired green minivan with a small feast: six coolers of homemade soup, a mountain of sandwiches, cakes and sweets.
Loaded down with second-hand clothes pulled from the ceiling-high piles in her hair salon, she’ll give out the goods to homeless people on downtown Toronto’s grittiest streets.
Missions like this aren’t cheap for people like her and other volunteers at the church. “We’re poor folks,” says Houghron, describing the majority of the 3,000-strong congregation who attend the spaceship-shaped church at Hwy. 400 and Finch Ave.
The hairdresser scrapes together $600 of her own money each month to keep up the program because the Prayer Palace – one of Canada’s largest evangelical churches – stopped running it five years ago. Other charitable works, like a promised orphanage in Brazil, either dried up or never materialized.
Meanwhile, the three white pastors – Paul Melnichuk and his 40-year-old twin sons, Tim and Tom – lead lavish lives in contrast to the mainly working-class black families that make up the bulk of the church.
Between them, the pastors have amassed a real estate fortune worth about $12 million. Each owns a multi-million-dollar country estate north of Toronto (Tim’s is worth as much as $5.5 million), they share a Florida vacation villa, and the pastors and their wives drive luxurious cars – among them a Porsche Cayenne SUV, a Lexus RX 330 SUV and a Mercedes-Benz CLK 320 convertible.
Congregants are largely unaware of the pastors’ extravagant lifestyles.
Filed under: Afro-Canadian, News | Tags: , dalton mcguinty, ghetto, government, government of ontario, ignorance, liberals, racism, U of T
‘Ghetto dude’ email sent by mistake: province
Sender says her message to U of T student awaiting callback for job was copied to him by accident
July 21, 2007
Evon Reid couldn’t believe his eyes yesterday morning when he opened an email from the Ontario government’s cabinet office where he’d applied for a position.
“This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before,” said the email to the University of Toronto honours student from the very person handling his job application.
That was it. One stark sentence.
“Ghetto dude? It means I’m black. It’s very insulting,” Reid told the Star yesterday. “It’s still pretty shocking to me.”
As he sees it, the email explains why he hasn’t gotten a followup interview for a job as a media analyst. He applied July 3 but missed a July 10 call from Aileen Siu in the cabinet office.
Although he called her back and sent followup emails, there was no response. Until yesterday’s email.
“Based on my resumé I deserved to be called, but I was not worthy of being called back once they heard my mother’s voice and my voice,” said Reid, 22. “She has a Jamaican accent and it’s about the way I talk. There’s a nuance.”
And so he asks: “Is it standard policy in the (Dalton) McGuinty cabinet office not to hire any ghetto dudes?”
The email was never intended for Reid, according to Siu, who learned she had sent it to him only when the Star telephoned yesterday.
An acting team leader in cabinet office hiring, she said she was “multi-tasking” Thursday when she hit the wrong button and copied Reid on an email she was sending to a job-search colleague.
“It wasn’t directed at Evon at all. That was internal … It didn’t have anything to do with any of the applicants,” said Siu, 26, and a recent U of T political science graduate.
She insisted the email didn’t refer to anyone “outside my circle of friends.”
Siu acknowledged the term is negative but said, “I don’t even know what nationality he is, right?” She added she’s of Asian descent and doesn’t want anyone to think she makes racially based judgments.
Reached on vacation in the Maritimes, Craig Sumi, manager of Siu’s department, last night referred to her as “an unclassified, part-time employee … low level.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” he said.
However, he termed the email “totally inappropriate … a complete error in judgment” and said he’d left a message of apology late yesterday on Reid’s voice mail.
According to Siu, Reid is still a candidate for the position he sees as “a dream job for any political science student/political junkie such as myself.”
He had been instantly intrigued by the job posting on the U of T website as a foot in the door at Queen’s Park.
“A very challenging and interesting position which is a critical part of day-to-day media monitoring and analysis for the Government of Ontario,” said the posting.
The work would be “for use by senior levels of government … (applicant must) write high-level summaries of important issues and events … (working in) the most technologically advanced and comprehensive media operation in Canada.”
Reid thought he’d be a good candidate. His resumé appears stellar:
A summer course in international management strategies at the University of Hong Kong; one credit short of an honours degree in political science at U of T; completed project on paradigm shifts in United States foreign policy; working on another to evaluate the effects of electoral reform on public policy.
Extensive job experience; Get Reel Festival organizer; founder of Canadian International Peace project (at U of T’s Scarborough campus); participant in Forum for Young Canadians on Parliament Hill; etc., etc.
In a reference letter, an executive with White Oaks Conference Resort called Reid “truly a valuable asset to our company … a trustworthy, dependable young man that takes initiative in work that has to be done.”
Reid saw another reason for the email. “I’m from Malvern,” in Scarborough, he said. “The community I live in has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in Canada. I’d hate to think that this (memo) accounts for that.”
Filed under: Afro-Canadian, Music | Tags: Afro-Canadian, Flemingdon Park, guitarist, musician, Scarborough, soul, the carps, Toronto, urban
The Carps are from Scarborough, a pretend hood in Toronto. They are a duo that plays music for human ears. Having two people in a band can be a liberating thing, as it has been seen. Such a shame they are so young — had they come around any earlier they could’ve taken credit for more than a few novel ideas. With the EP the Young & Passionate Days of Carpedia VOL.2, the two ragamuffin soul rockers deliver the promise to set themselves far apart from elephants, swirly red and white candy, beards, brothers and sisters, and Phil Collins. The Carps stand alone. They sound like nothing you could imagine, and everything you’d like to.
The Carps thrive on ingenuity and vicissitude. Newness always! Therefore the captain of the ship, Neil White, wielding his disheveled bass and a wonky synthesizer, steers this raw emotion into a palatable and progressive direction. All this while never leaving his “mindless self-indulgent” duct tape Punk Rock days far behind him. Perhaps the jungles of Sri Lanka still run through his veins, though he could never lose the class and distinction that only he, as a real British bloke, could carry.
Jahmal Tonge is the soul junkie. Growing up on asexual legends like Michael Jackson and Prince, it was sifting through his father’s record collection that exposed to him to Motown, Stax, Soul music! These are the sounds that are at the heart of The Carps. From behind his drum kit, or with his guitar strapped and his MPC drum machine at his side, Jahmal soulfully screams his soul- ful, soul-catching, soul-baring soul in a raw way… It’s the only way he knows. It was Bold, Black, Christian women that led him that direction. Discernibly, the sight and sounds of the Caribbean still stick. Hearing the tropical wind blow through an open church tent as a woman cries out to God, tearing her vocal cords from the deepest part of her being, will change a temerarious young boy.
http://www.myspace.com/thecarps
Filed under: Afro-Canadian | Tags: African, black, Caribbean, education, race
What is a highway? What is its purpose? Is it simply a transportation mechanism that allows us to travel at high speeds? So, what is our highway? Where is our direction? What are we headed to? For Canadians, of African / Caribbean origin, I am optimistic that our future is bright in this country of ours. However there is a lot of work to be done. For a group a people I feel that we can do better. However, under the circumstances, this is not to say that there has not been impediment to our development, as a people in general. From the time of slavery, until recent, we have lived in the shadow of our former greatness. We have been easily whipped into submission, and indoctrinated so well by our former masters. The images we have seen for years did not include us. With the conditioning of our minds to believe that we can reach no higher and go no farther. This is changing, but again there is still work to be done.
We can go as high as any other group of people or race. We do not have to believe that we cannot. Do not yield to the feeling that you are not great and you cannot go to the top. We are all important; however there is a cycle that must be broken amongst our people. At some point we, as individuals, must realize that we must help each other and ensure that a difference can be made in the lives of our brothers and sisters. Those in our community who are stuck in the gang life, uneducated and lost must be pulled off of that lost highway. Education a key to freedom and once those facts of life are passed to the next generation the cycle is broken. There will be a destination and a purpose to life. But we must acknowledge that there is a problem to be fixed. Just telling our children that an education is important is not good enough. Lead by example and show our children how important it is. Let is not continue to complain about how “marginalized” we are. Of course there are problems and obstructions to our development. But this is not an excuse and we cannot depend on someone else to fix that problem for us. Let’s not loose another generation, just because we could not see the destination ahead. Let us not focus on ourselves, leaving no investment in our own future generations of Afro-Canadians. A highway is a way for us to quickly move from one point to another, hopefully by-passing the traffic and obstacles in the way to that end. I do not really believe that we are lost. It’s just that some of us just need a little help to get off of that highway.
By: Torontomatic
