Scarborough-born activist and educator Curtis Carmichael wants to help kids thrive, not just survive
“It’s tricky,” says Curtis Carmichael as he explains the difference between how the police treated him and his friends in their housing project in Scarborough and the way they operate in other parts of the city.
Carmichael, 28, seems to use these two words when he’s holding something back, perhaps softening the edges around the complex realities of living as a young Black man in Canada for someone like me — a privileged white journalist who grew up in the same city, but in the world outside the four streets of the self-contained neighbourhood where Carmichael spent all his time. Or maybe it’s his way of saying he is exhausted from having to explain it to people who don’t share those experiences. “It’s tricky.”
When he was seven, Carmichael and his family moved from a pre-gentrified Regen
