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I grew up and still live in Cabbagetown, an area of Toronto that's known to be kind of eccentric. The neighbourhood is made up of an interesting, diverse group of people. I really love the place and I spend a lot of my time walking though its street and hanging out there. Often, while I'm out and about, I'll encounter people behaving in ways that are considered to be outside the norm and, being the observant person that I am, I take notice. I also find myself regularly being stopped by "odd" individuals who want to talk with me. A few a my friends have commented on the fact that when they hang out with me, they more often have encounters with "strange" people. I'm told the reason is that I've got a kind face and I'm that an approachable individual.
In the summer, a lot of my time is spent hanging out in local parks. I like to sit on benches, people watching. And as a result, I've had many conversations with homeless individuals, drunks, oddballs etc. who sit down beside me and strike up a conversation. I love when this happens because I love people and I love conversing with them, no matter how strange they may seem to others. And meeting new people always makes my day.
I feel that taking notice of these individuals is important. If I see someone screaming on a street corner, I stop and listen to what they have to say and most of the time, I can see why they're angry; they're yelling about things that I'd like to yell about too. It saddens me to see people turn their heads or run away afraid when they encounter these situations. I see marginalized individuals on a daily basis who try and connect with people around them only to be ignored, written off, or labelled. This seems to be the standard response from Torontonians. I feel that many people in the city are afraid of confronting these issues and thinking about them; they would rather avoid them and pretend that the issues and the individuals do not exist.
Over the years, I've experienced a lot of sad and disturbing things that have effected me deeply. I try and discuss these problems as much as I can. I'm always telling my friends stories about the encounters I've had with people and we talk about them till no end. Some people seem to be uncomfortable discussing these issues; they treat them as though they are out of bounds. But I feel that drawing attention to and trying to work through problems is the healthy approach.
As an individual, I feel powerless when I consider the state of things in Toronto. There are so many homeless and alienated people out on the street. All I ever hear is people talking about how sad the situation is and how we need to help these individuals, but when I look at the street, it seems the same to me as it did twenty years ago. I just keep seeing people ignoring others who are in need. And in some ways, it seems that the city is moving backwards. We recently created anti-panhandling laws and now many of the shelter beds are in the process of being moved uptown. I guess that's one way to deal with people who don't fit in: take away their rights and displace them.
My way of dealing with these issues has been to create art. I started writing and drawing comics about the streets of Toronto ten years ago. Over the years, I experimented with my approaches to these issues and the medium. At first, I produced straightforward third person narratives. These stories were about odd people in the city and most of them were written from a purely sympathetic point of view. Some of comics were first person narratives; I'd depict myself walking around the city talking with people on the street. I even did a second person narrative from the point of view of a homeless man. I've taken a different approach with The Rabble of Downtown Toronto that I think is both compelling and challenging.
The book is written from a sort of cold, detached point of view, one that I feel represents the attitudes of most Torontonians towards the people I've written about. Ideally, this will cause readers to examine their own voice and think about how it contributes to the way people on the streets of Toronto are perceived. I hope that my comic book helps draw attention to and raise awareness of the reality of the situation in our city. I also hope that it causes people to reconsider how they view the individuals I've depicted, no matter where see themselves sitting in relation to them. There are no easy answers to the problems our city faces and my book provides no solution to these issues; but that is not its role. It is up to the reader take the book, face the content and then work though the problems for themselves.
I see The Rabble of Downtown Toronto as being one of my contributions to the conversation. I'd like to encourage people read what I've written, take the time to consider the contents and then discuss the book and the issues that it raises in different forums. I hope they can look beyond the artist to the larger problems at hand and as a result, move the discussion forward toward new understandings.
Jason Kieffer
March, 2010
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Jason Kieffer is a Toronto-based cartoonist whose work has appeared in Taddle Creek, Broken Pencil and on BlogTO. He has also published two comic book series: Kieffer and Downtown Toronto. His work was twice nominated for a Doug Wright Award.
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