STEVE: Good morning Linda: LINDA: Good morning Steve. Welcome to Capalano and Community Services Society. I'm happy to have you here today to spend some time with you. STEVE: Thank you. I'm looking forward to finding out more about what you do here. Maybe we could begin by explaining how long, you know, when did this society start and we'll take it one little bit at a time so we won't, we'll kind of have a bit of a back and forth here. LINDA: Ok sounds great. You give me the cue when I'm going on too much about any one part. The Society is almost 30 years old and it's very interesting because it's a small society, however, it's been very active in this community despite its size for a long time, so almost 30 years. It started as a result of some youth riots in Edgemont Village and the community came together to take a look at what services we needed for youth.
STEVE: Now that strikes me as surprising as I drive out here along these quiet streets and nice trees and the little homes and 30 years ago there was a youth riot? What happened?
LINDA: You know 30 years ago the community was even quieter than it is today and we are up in the hills, up in the mountains and it is a small, fairly affluent community. I think that there were a number of youth that gathered in Edgemont Village and there was some vandalism to some of the stores within the village, and that absolutely shocked the merchants and the local community members.
STEVE: Now how old were these youth? I mean, what are we talking about here?
LINDA: You know I don't have the actual facts, but from, based on my understanding of the impetus for the programming that came out of that time, I would estimate that we were looking at probably mid teenagers. So 15, 16, 17, that sort of age group because as a result of that, our youth outreach program was developed. And, the focus at that time was on teens, mid teens and a little bit older teens.
STEVE: Now I guess these teens were, had been drinking beer or had been, were slightly you know, not in full control of their faculties or what, what was the conclusion as to what caused those disturbances at that time?
LINDA: You know, my understanding of what really was learned from that, those actions in the village at that time is that youth were getting in to trouble because there weren't enough things to do in this community. They didn't have access to a number of activities and organized events and so resultingly, we have things like the Youth Lounge, the Youth Center at William Griffin that were started with the intention of hosting safe events for youth in the community. STEVE: But you know, pardon me if I'm a little skeptical, but when I think back to when I was a kid, I mean there were parks, there was the street. You could play ball hockey, you know, in the street. You could go to the park with a football or a baseball. Why do you need someone to organize events for you? You know, I'm just a little bit skeptical. Excuse me.
LINDA: Skepticism is sometimes a good thing because it encourages us to look at things more closely. You know, Steve, I don't have access to the first hand information about what happened at that time. I do understand though, that there are many youth on the North Shore that have used the explanation that the North Shore isn't very friendly to youth, in that, there aren't a lot of things to do on a Friday or Saturday night in this community and you've got the bridge as a barrier and of course, parents' sense of whether or not that it's safe for their youth to be crossing the bridge to access more activities. I haven't had an opportunity to really scrutinize that explanation very closely. However that is sort of, our history explains that period of youth having identified that need in our community about 30 years ago.
