Written by Barry Rieder, Jane Finch Community Minister

Just before Easter in 2007, a young man by the name of Allen Benn was stabbed to death in Firgrove. At first we thought it was gang related but later found out that it was more of a Cain and Abel story.

The two youth were from the same youth program with one youth extremely liked by his peers, going back to school and just being offered an outreach workers job. Everything seemed to be going great for him. The other youth just recently got out of jail, was homeless and on the fringe of formal and informal youth groups.  Something must have transpired between them resulting in the one youth robbing Allen of his life. 

This murder sent shock waves through Firgrove, the youth community and Jane Finch itself. In conjunction with resident leaders and other institutional and organizational support we conducted two talking circles in Firgrove to bring some healing.  One of the circles was a healing circle which was done in conjunction with a First Nations youth from Firgrove who smudged the circle.  This helped with the grieving process and also helped other youth to learn from this senseless tragedy.

This year another Cain and Abel story happened. Several years ago, after the “Year of the Gun” in 2005, Toronto Community Housing, started a pilot program in which private contractors doing painting, carpentry and landscaping in the public housing communities of Firgrove and Yorkwoods had to hire youth from these communities as apprentices. Those targeted for the program were youth involved in negative activities such as selling drugs. The life skills and support for the program was provided by Micro Skills for Change and the whole premise of the program was that by providing some of these youth with a trade it would take them out of their illegal making money activity.

Omar Baldwin was one of the star pupils of the apprenticeship program and successfully turned his life around. He became a painter and through training got his contractors license, set up a business, just bought a condo and was recently engaged. I knew him well since one of his first jobs was painting the Community Ministry office.

This winter an argument arose between him and a good friend who has suffered from mental health issues and had been in and out of prison. The argument escalated to the point of stabbing Omar in the chest. It seemed to be a superficial wound which took only a few stitches to sew up. Against the medical staff’s wishes, Omar signed himself out of the hospital. 

Unfortunately the knife nicked his heart and he bleed to death internally at home that night. His friend turned himself in the next day and the community has been left with the shock of how a close friend could have done this and I am left with the puzzling question again:

Why is it that when one person seems to get the favour of God another brother takes it upon himself to rob him of life’s blessings?