Andre Bermon –
90s film tells a story of class conflict around Dundas and Sherbourne
In 1999, the British-born filmmaker and CBC producer Robin Benger released a short documentary movie called East Side Showdown.
The film is a human-centred story depicting escalating tensions in the Dundas-Sherbourne neighbourhood. On one side are newly established middle-class homeowners – determined to fight for their hard-earned investments and way of life. They square up against the long-standing urban poor of the area, who struggle to succeed in an environment rife with violence and drugs.
It’s a powerful film that captures a microcosm of urban conflict through the eyes of those involved. Renée, a bed-and-breakfast owner, represents the burgeoning middle-class. She leads the homeowner group against the forces of the drug and sex trade that have descended upon the neighbourhood.
John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is Renée’s opposite. Clarke and his fellow street activists defend the poor and destitute through confrontation and often disruptive means.
Caught in the middle is Reverend Jeannie Loughrey, minister at All-Saints Anglican Church. Loughrey runs a drop-in program that provides much-needed support to the local marginalized population. The church is often accused of harbouring criminals and turning a blind eye to anti-social behaviour, with Loughrey herself at the centre of debates around community safety.
On the sidelines is Leanna Hamel, a known prostitute and drug addict, who goes by the street name of “Angel.” Hamel plays the unceremonious third party, aligned neither to the homeowners or poverty activists – she is the reminder of the human cost of the conflict. Neither policy nor protest can save her.
At one point in the film the narrator says, “Here [Dundas and Sherbourne] it may be quiet from time to time but never peace,” a line that speaks to the persistence of conflict between socio-economic classes.
Two decades later the observation still holds. The four corners of Dundas and Sherbourne are in no better shape than in 1999. Layer on raging opioid epidemic and an acute housing crisis, and some would argue the situation has only worsened.
Homeowners in the Cabbagetown South neighbourhood continue to duke it out with All- Saints Church and neighbouring non-profit service providers. The problems are the same and the answers still fleeting.
OCAP is now defunct, but some of its members are still active. Gaetan Heroux, featured alongside Clarke in the film, now coordinates an initiative to get a plot of vacant land just south of Dundas and Sherbourne turned into social housing. The site was once occupied by rooming houses rented by low-income people. Most of the houses were later demolished but one abandoned building still stands.
The land (214–230 Sherbourne Street) is owned by KingSett Capital, a real estate investment trust that plans to build a high-rise condominium. The Cabbagetown South Residents Association supports the proposal while Clarke, Heroux and the 230 Fightback group object, urging the city to purchase the site, or, as a last resort, expropriate it.
Ward 13 Councillor Chris Moise and Mayor Olivia Chow, two progressive politicians, provide only lip service to their cause. There is no interest at City Hall to negotiate further with the developer (which outbid the city for the land) or to expropriate.
At the end of the film, Renée gloats to the camera saying, “residents are winning.” Not the poor struggling in social housing or the many homeless and drug addicted – she claims the homeowners and businesses have the upper hand.
A true statement then, as it is now. The future of Dundas Sherbourne may still be opaque, but the relentless force of gentrification will one day permeate. With more condo applications coming in fuelled by a future subway line just a stone throw away, pressure on the low-income community will continue to mount.
That pressure was already visible in the film, which framed the conflict as a “war of values”– a moral clash between two fundamentally different ways of seeing the city and what it should represent.
More than 25 years after Robin Benger’s camera captured the battle at Dundas and Sherbourne, lines have barely shifted. What has changed is the scale: an opioid crisis, a worsening housing emergency, and condo towers pressing in from every direction.
The war of values Benger described – security versus survival, property versus people – is no relic of the 1990s. It’s the question that is still being contested today.