ontario: a province divided · 2019-08-30 · thunder bay’s victoriaville neighbourhood is a...

Nina’s son, Nicolas, is a year oldand his dad is long gone.

He left in Nina’s third trimester,returning to England to serve timein jail for a crime she didn’t knowabout at the time — and won’t dis-close.

It was a blow — but she said herson helped her get through it.

“It’s him that I need to be takingcare of and living for. It gets mymind off other things. Withouthim, it would be way harder.”

Nina lives with her dad and hisnew wife on the Mountain. She’sgot a new boyfriend, too — a guyshe said she met on the dance floorof a club last summer.

For Nina, it’s their different reli-gious backgrounds, rather thanthe baby, that complicates the rela-tionship.

“He knows I’m a good girl. Andhis parents do, too, so they’re notreally stopping anything.”

Nina said her child motivatesher to stay out of trouble, and itwas he who drove her to go back toschool at Grace Haven — a localcentre for pregnant teens andyoung moms.

She’s almost done Grade 9 nowand thinks she’d like to become acosmetician one day.

“This is making me stronger,pushing me more to school andI’m just not doing stupid things,”she said. “I think having a childmakes everything better for me.”

Not far from the rail yardsnear the old downtown of

what was once Fort William,there’s a piece of Thunder Bayknown as Victoriaville.

The neighbourhood is home to anear-vacant mall, a methadoneclinic and a homeless shelter witha soup kitchen that serves 500meals a day.

Of the province’s 2,100 munici-pal neighbourhoods, it had thehighest rate of teen mothers.

One in four babies in Victoria-ville was born to a teen mom be-tween 2006 and 2010.

Based on Statistics Canada cen-sus data, it appears about one ofevery three teen girls living in theneighbourhood had a baby at somepoint between 2006 and 2010.

The stories of Hamilton andThunder Bay are similar in someimportant ways, at least when itcomes to their local economies.Both have watched their tradition-al industrial bases erode.

Once a major shipping hub,many of Thunder Bay’s grain ele-vators stand abandoned along thewaterfront.

“There were lumber mills andpulp and paper mills, and all that’sreally declined,” said Lee Sieswer-da, an epidemiologist with theThunder Bay District Health Unit.“In the same way as Hamilton hasseen that hit in terms of employ-ment, we’ve seen the same kind ofthing.

“If teen pregnancy is more com-mon around disadvantaged peo-ple and we’ve seen a real hit to oureconomy, it kind of follows thatteen pregnancy would followalong with that decline.”

One critical difference in Thun-der Bay is the much higher concen-tration of aboriginals, many ofthem young people. About one ineight people in Victoriaville is na-tive, the same proportion as Thun-der Bay itself.

Statistics also show the Canada-wide fertility rate for aboriginalteen girls is seven times higherthan the national average.

“You have a group that has highfertility among teen moms and alarger proportion of that particu-lar subpopulation in the city, so it’snot too surprising that you end up

with a higher teen pregnancyrate,” said Sieswerda.

Six of the 12 neighbourhoods inOntario with the highest rates ofteen moms are located in ThunderBay, Hamilton and Sault Ste. Ma-rie, another steelmaking hub thathas suffered from substantial joblosses over the past three decades.

Drill down to the level of Onta-rio’s neighbourhoods and the dis-parities in teen mom rates be-tween rich and poor are obvious.

Take Victoriaville, for instance.The median household income

there, according to the last census,was $16,200 — below the povertyline and far behind the Ontarioaverage of $60,500.

In Victoriaville, two of everythree children live in poverty,more than 40 per cent of all incomecomes from government transfersand nearly one in three families isheaded by a single mom.

In fact, take the five Ontarioneighbourhoods with the highestrates of teen mothers and look attheir average characteristics.

All five have teen mom rates thatrange between 21 and 25 per cent.Together, their median householdincome is just over half of the pro-vincial average, and both theirpoverty rate and the proportion ofincome that comes from govern-ment transfers are more thantwice the provincial norm.

Compare that with the fiveneighbourhoods at the other endof the scale — in Burlington, Oak-ville, Vaughan, Markham and To-ronto. Of the 4,461 women whogave birth in those five neighbour-hoods, not one was a teenager. Themedian household income is near-ly 50 per cent higher than the pro-vincial average, the rate of govern-ment transfer income is half theOntario rate and less than one in 10families is headed by a single mom.

12

Cochrane

The Spectator's analysis of 535,000 provincial birth records reveals that between 2006 and 2010 the 20 communities with the highest incidence of teen mothers are either in Ontario's Far North or native reserves.

ONTARIO: A PROVINCE DIVIDED

SOURCE: BORN ONTARIO, STATISTICS CANADA 2006 CENSUS Steve Buist, Teri Pecoskie, Dean Tweed // THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Sandy Lake First Nation

Pikangikum First Nation

Fort Albany First Nation

Shoal Lake First Nation

Big Trout Lake First Nation

Cochrane, unorganized North

Wabaseemoong First Nation

Wapekeka 2 First Nation

Grassy Narrows First Nation

Fort William 52 First Nation

Weagamow Lake 87 First Nation

Wikwemikong First Nation

Thunder Bay, unorganized

Fort Severn 89 First Nation

Attawapiskat First Nation

Factory Island 1 First Nation

Smooth Rock Falls

Whitefish Bay 32A First Nation

Deer Lake First Nation

Kenora, unorganized

St. Joseph

East Garafraxa

Assiginack Township

Schreiber

Vaughan

Markham

Oakville

Caledon

Richmond Hill

Whitchurch-Stouffville

Milton

Middlesex Centre

Burlington

West Lincoln

Aurora

King

Wellesley

Mississauga

Uxbridge

Halton Hills

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

15

13

14

16

18

19

20

17

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

15

13

14

16

18

19

20

17

14

85

111

19

2

7 9204

18

1310

17 6

15

3

16

Sioux Lookout

Timmins

Niagara FallsNiagara FallsNiagara Falls

KitchenerKitchenerKitchener

Windsor

Sarnia

PeterboroughPeterboroughPeterborough

North BaySudburySudburySudburyOttawaOttawaOttawa

Cornwall

KingstonKingstonKingston

Barrie

Sudbury

Sault Ste. Marie

Thunder Bay

40% 32.6 30.1 29.2 28.2 27.6 27.1 26.9 25.9 24.4 24.4 24.1 23.3 23.1 22.9 22.5 21.9 21.6 20.9 19.2

00000.60.60.70.70.7 1.1 1.1 1.2 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.5 1.7 1.7 1.8

191516 10

6958

17

3

4

1

12

1120 18

7

Median household income: $74,969Unemployment rate: 4.6%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 7.3%

Rate of teen mothers: 1.4%

Burlington

13

14

2

Toronto

Median household income: $30,805Unemployment rate: 26.4%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 58%

Rate of teen mothers: 40%

Sandy Lake First Nation

Median household income: $28,000Unemployment rate: 11.9%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 74%

Rate of teen mothers: 28.2%

Big Trout Lake First Nation

Median household income: $17,824Unemployment rate: 31.9%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 51%

Rate of teen mothers: 25.9%

Grassy Narrows First Nation

Median household income: $92,394Unemployment rate: 5.3%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 5.7%

Rate of teen mothers: 0.7%

Oakville

Median household income: $66,680Unemployment rate: 4.8%No high school diploma, certificate or degree (ages 25-64): 19.5%

Rate of teen mothers: 1.4%

West Lincoln

Communities with the highest rates of teen mothersPercentage of all mothers that are teenagers

Communities with the lowest rates of teen mothersPercentage of all mothers that are teenagers

Thunder Bay’s Victoriaville neighbourhood is a virtual case study in the close correlation between high teen mother rates and poverty.

Victoriaville: a neighbourhood in crisis

SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA Dean Tweed // THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Median household income: $16,187Percentage income from government transfers: 41%Percentage of families headed by single mother: 32%Percentage of residents living below poverty line: 57%Percentage of children living below poverty line: 64%Percentage with a university degree (ages 25-64): 4%

THUNTHUNDER DER BABAY

FORT FORT WILLIWILLIAMAM

0 4kmTHUNDER

BAY

FORT WILLIAM

Victoriaville

TERI PECOSKIE, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

In Thunder Bay’s Victoriaville neighbourhood, which is blighted by grindingpoverty, one in eight people is native.

BORN CONTINUED FROM // WR5

BORN CONTINUED ON // WR7

WR6 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2011 THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR l THE SPEC.COM