Jamestown

From Rap Dictionary

Jamestown

Jamestown Crescent, also referred to as Doomstown by local residents, is a small Ontario Housing community of townhouses near the northwest limits of Rexdale, Ontario in the former city of Etobicoke located off of John Garland Blvd, between Martin Grove Road and Kipling Avenue. Rex Heslop developed the subdivisions in Rexdale in the 1950’s as well as a large industrial corridor around the area. Once to be home to many European and Italian immigrants, Jamestown Crescent became home to a large number of West Indian families during the late 60's and then saw an influx of Somalian immigrant families in the mid to late 90's. By that time, Rexdale was going through a change where many of the once bountiful manual labour jobs (once held by many new immigrants) became scarce, making way for more office orientation jobs, which many new immigrants found difficult to obtain due to cultural conflicts (among other reasons). The sudden influx of new immigrants, the changing racial demographics, along with the competition for the limited work positions available, helped garner a subtle disdain by long time residence within Jamestown against new arrivals. For a number of years, conflict and tension between the West Indian and Somalian residents had divided the community (especially among youths). Many times the simmering animosity between the two groups resulted in violent clashes [1]. But akin to Toronto's reputation, most residence in Jamestown co-exist peacefully amongst each other, despite the cultural differences.

Jamestown is notoriously known for gun and gang violence pertaining to the subtle, yet prevalent, drug activity in the surrounding area which has been controlled by a notoriously violent Crips set called the Jamestown Crew since the late 80's. Jamestown has a high number of single parent families living below the poverty line and unemployment among youth is high as well. On average, households report earnings of $47,929, compared to the city-wide average of $69,125. 86% of residents are visible minorities; 51% are Black, the next largest group is South Asian.

60% of Jamestown residents are immigrants; 88% arrived in Canada before 2000. Only 37% of residents over the age of 15 have a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree. 40% of families are led by lone parents, compared to the Toronto average of 17%. 91% of those lone parent families are led by women.