“Scarborough” is a love letter you’ll love

by Chris Knight

If you’re not all that familiar with Scarborough, you might think of it as “the place where Mike Myers comes from.” (True!) Or, less generously, “where all the crime is.” (False.)

One thing it’s not is a single neighbourhood. With an area of 187 square kms and a population in the last census of 632,000, this chunk of Greater Toronto is huge and diverse. If it stood alone it would be Canada’s 10th largest city.

Five years ago, Catherine Hernandez’s debut novel, Scarborough, delivered a love letter to the region, with a story of three children growing up in its Galloway Road area. Now she has closely adapted her work into the screenplay for Scarborough the movie, directed by filmmaking/life partners Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson.

At the centre of the sprawling story are three kids, each about eight. Bing (Liam Diaz) is a Filipino boy struggling with his sexuality; he’s also quietly brilliant. Sylvie (Mekiya Fox) is a First Nations girl whose younger brother may be developmentally delayed, if only the doctor at the walk-in clinic would pay attention to the signs.

Then there’s Laura (Anna Claire Beitel), a white girl who has bounced from her mother’s care to her father’s, though neither of them is particularly good at the job. She can’t read and doesn’t talk much, but enjoys making arts and crafts out of the eviction notices that are regularly pushed under her mother’s apartment door.

Filmed in an almost documentary style and from a kid’s-eye perspective, the movie finds the three developing a friendship at the school they attend. Before classes they can often be found in its drop-in centre, where the friendly Ms Hina (Aliya Kanani) entices her tiny charges with a snack program, amuses them with songs and games, and gently tries to encourage reading skills.

It’s a lovely oasis of calm for the children, whose parents – two single moms, one single dad – are often too busy working to spare them the attention they need. There’s more than enough love, but never enough time.

You’re going to need a store of sympathy before sitting down to Scarborough’s two and a quarter hours. Sure, it’s easy to feel for the kids. But the parents are just as deserving of our understanding.

And my heart went out to Ms Hina, whose dark skin and hijab make her a target of several parents’ micro-aggressions. One mom pointedly asks if the kids will be singing Christmas carols at that time of year. Laura’s dad (Conor Casey) is even worse, giving the well-meaning co-ordinator the stinkeye at very opportunity. “Daddy says you eat babies,” Laura says in an unguarded moment. Ms Hina merely asks if Laura also thinks that. The girl shrugs: “No.”

Ms Hina also has to deal with her supervisor, who piles on the work and criticizes her methods from behind the safety of an email address. Her in-person appearance late in the film provides one of the movie’s few moments of joyous comeuppance.

Not that Scarborough is a sad film, though it does have moments of tragedy and even heartbreak. But the overwhelming mood is one of resilience – the ways people find to make ends meet and even have a little fun on the side, with whatever is at hand. (There’s a schmaltzy ending that the film totally earns.)

Scarborough is also a raucous portrait of a community that has become a treasured home for all manner of Canadians, from long-term residents to recent arrivals.

Full disclosure: I’m a proud “Scarberian” who grew up in the same neighbourhood where the film was shot, even attending the school they used as a setting. The racial makeup in the 1970s was nowhere near as diverse as today. So despite its issues of poverty and crime that do sometimes plague the area, Scarborough has in many ways just gotten richer.

Scarborough is playing now in Toronto, Hamilton, Saskatoon and, yes, Scarborough; and opens March 11 in Vancouver and Sudbury, with other cities to follow.

Source: National Post