My mother and younger sister are still asleep when I begin my journey. I shut the door to our basement apartment, secure the straps of my backpack, and begin my walk through the aisle of grey townhouses towards the Humberwood Loop.

At the bus stop, I fiddle with a ticket I split in half to afford my round trip. The empty accordion bus crawls towards me, and the doors open. Thankfully, the bus driver is silent as I deposit my excuse for a fare. I rest my head against the window as the bus curls onto Humberwood Boulevard heading towards Finch Avenue. I’m on my way to high school. One hour and twenty minutes to go.

I was raised by my single mother in Rexdale and grew up on the 36A Finch West Bus, which travels from Finch West station across north Etobicoke. It’s one of the workhorses of the TTC, connecting workers and students and families from the northwest corridor to the rest of the city. In 2018, the last year the TTC’s ridership statistics were available, the 36 was the city’s third-busiest route, transporting an average of 47,300 riders a day. Earlier this year, city council approved service cuts to the line.

The Humberwood Loop, the end of the bus route, is tucked away deep in Rexdale. There, a sprawling arboretum gives way to squat apartment buildings and rows of suburban homes. Wide intersections are punctuated by plaza strips—Western Unions with crooked, half-illuminated “OPEN” signs, halal shawarma eateries next to Hasty Market convenience stores next to dry cleaners that always seemed to be closed. It’s a low-income neighbourhood of immigrants, where 78 percent of residents identify as visible minorities, most either South Asian or Black.

If you live in Rexdale and need to clock in at 8:30 for work at, say, one of the hospitals in the downtown core, Google Maps says the TTC trip will take you an hour and a half. That’s not accounting for delays, traffic, or not being able to fit on an already overcrowded bus.

Disjointed transit has left Rexdale physically disconnected since it was built. And decades of media depictions painting the neighbourhood as a “ghetto” or “a forgotten corner” have only increased the psychological distance between the neighbourhood and the rest of Toronto.

But soon, though no one can say when exactly, this distance is supposed to be bridged. After almost a decade of contentious politicking and years of construction, the Finch West LRT is slated to open sometime next year. The transit project, delivered by Metrolinx and operated by the TTC, will run above ground through the inner suburbs of northwestern Toronto, with brief underground or below-grade portions at Finch West station and its terminus at Rexdale’s Humber College. On their website, Metrolinx promises the line will “cut down travel time,” “increase transit reliability,” and “offer more choices.”

For the residents of Rexdale, however, who have seen many broken promises from city officials over the years, skepticism is in the air. After so many years, will the Finch West LRT be everything the community needs? Will it finally connect a part of the city that once was just farmland—a neighbourhood which, for almost all of its existence, has been isolated from the rest of Toronto? That might be a lot to ask of a new transit line. But as always, if residents have hope for nothing else, they still have faith in the future of Rexdale.

As always, if residents have hope for nothing else, they still have faith in the future of Rexdale.

On paper, the genesis of Rexdale is attributed to one man: Rex Heslop. In a grainy monochrome photo taken in 1965, Heslop stands with a large paper in his hand, surrounded by eight other white men in suits. They’re all grinning as they look into the camera. Born in 1905 on a farm near the east side of Islington Avenue and Highway 401, Heslop began developing the land we now know as Rexdale in the late 1940s.

The man was on such a roll building houses that the Etobicoke Township Council couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t afford to build infrastructure, like plumbing, to support housing without the tax revenue that industry would bring. So they made a deal with Heslop: he could continue to build homes if he could also establish manufacturing in the area.

Heslop made it happen. With his collaboration, seven industries purchased building sites in the area. Canadian General Electric bought one half of Wardlaw farm, and Heslop bought the other for residential development. In 1952, employees of the A.V. Roe Canadian aircraft factory in nearby Malton purchased a row of Heslop’s homes. By 1954, Heslop’s construction empire consisted of 1754 acres.

But the “father” of Rexdale wasn’t too concerned with bridging the gap between the area and the rest of the city. Ever since its conception, it’s been a neighbourhood disconnected, even within its own boundaries.

When the north campus of Humber College of Applied Arts and Tech opened in 1968, public infrastructure was still under completion. Students and staff had to hike or drive to the nearby Ascot Hotel to access toilets or running water.

There was also no public transit. The TTC refused to service Humber’s north campus because, as covered in a 1969 issue of one student newspaper, it was not “economical.” So the college purchased a private fleet of shuttle buses to service students along TTC routes.

Heslop died a millionaire in 1973. Two years later, the 36 Finch West bus route was extended to accommodate the new Humberwood Loop and rush services to Humber College were established. This is around the time the neighbourhood as I know it began to materialize.

According to the 2021 census, 60 percent of the area’s total population identify as immigrants, most of them recent. Just seven percent of residents report immigrating before 1980. From 1991 to 2001, the numbers jump to double digits at 13 percent, and stay that way.

During that period, however, when writing about Rexdale, the mainstream media mostly covered news stories about poverty, violence, and crime. It was heartbreaking for me to sift through stories about Rexdale in the archives from this time period, when phrases like “projects,” “ghettos,” and “gun-plagued” were used in opinion articles. By the turn of the millennium, not only was Rexdale physically difficult to get to, the recycling of this narrative cemented the neighbourhood’s reputation as a corner of the city most people didn’t want to go in the first place.

At Finch and Kipling one warm morning in June, it’s clear that things have changed since I commuted through the neighbourhood in high school.

Albion Mall is still here, complete with the hot-dog stand that was the highlight of my family’s trips to the place. But the intersection is in disarray. A metal fence creates a border between the mall parking lot and the stretch of Finch Avenue West, with warped fencing sprawled out on the grass below in criss-crossed stacks.

Thirty-six-year-old Adjoba Messam, wearing her Jamaican flag ball cap, carefully makes her way to the intersection while manoeuvring through the maze of thick orange street barricades, some of which are toppled onto their sides. She vigilantly scans the terrain as she approaches the chaotic intersection, wondering where’s the bus stop even located today?

Messam moved to Rexdale in April 2022, after living in a shelter hotel downtown. A year after arriving, she connected with a great-uncle, who happened to live in her apartment complex, and now she accompanies him to the Jamaican Canadian Association at Finch and Arrow Road a couple of times a week.

For Messam, and especially for seniors like her great-uncle, navigating the neighbourhood can feel dangerous.

“I fear for him,” says Messam. “[Seniors] have to completely change their route just to get to the grocery store.”

This intersection is where one of the final platforms is being built for the Finch West LRT construction, begun in 2019. The construction seems perpetual, but it is a sign that the loaded promise of a functioning LRT might actually be kept. For now, however, the installation is only causing confusion and inconvenience.

The “father” of Rexdale wasn’t too concerned with bridging the gap between the area and the rest of the city. Ever since its conception, it’s been a neighbourhood disconnected.

According to residents, communication and transparency have been poor. Notices for bus stop relocation aren’t clear, and construction sites have been left in shambles.

“It’s really messy up here,” says Messam. “You only hear about the politics evolving around [the line] being built. I never hear about how dangerous it is for people, not on the news.”

And while no one can really say when the LRT will be complete, the fate of the 36 is clearer.

Earlier this year, the TTC detailed a proposal to eliminate the 36 Finch West local bus service west of Finch West Station when the LRT begins operation.

“I’m disappointed to hear they’re getting rid of it,” says Messam, who has travelled the route for many years.

It’s more than nostalgia tugging at residents’ heart strings. Some people will be walking longer distances to access stops if their local bus stops are not directly replaced by an LRT station.

The changes are also shrouded in uncertainty. When will the project be finished? In 2022, Metrolinx announced the line would be open by summer 2023. The summer has come and gone, and construction still isn’t complete. In a statement to The Local, Metrolinx said: “Mosaic, our contractor on the project, has informed us that major construction remains on course to be completed by the end of 2023. An exact opening date will be determined with the TTC once construction is complete.”

And given the current state of disarray in the neighbourhood due to the project, concerns about a smooth final transition from a longstanding bus system to the finally completed light rail line are not misplaced.

Four stops are to be built across Etobicoke North: Albion, Martin Grove, Westmore and the final stop, Humber College. As for the riders who need access further northwest, beyond Humber College, like me, the old 36 route will be serviced by the 37 bus, which will run from the Humberwood Loop to Humber College.

Until then, the 36 bus and its riders are stuck navigating the mess.