Date:  Tuesday, October 29

Time:  9:00 AM to 10:30 AM (approximated travel time included)

Located in downtown Toronto and built in the late 1940s, Regent Park is Canada’s oldest and largest social housing project. It has been a transitional community for new immigrants and has a socially marginalized population.

In 2005, the City of Toronto began a 12-year revitalization program to redevelop the 69-acre neighbourhood into a vibrant mixed-use and mixed-income community, making Regent Park one of North America’s largest urban redevelopments. At the heart of this initiative, the 28,000-square-foot Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre serves as the key civic amenity.

The Centre was to make wellness and leisure accessible to all demographics and abilities, be a community centre for Regent Park, and serve as a welcoming facility for all of multicultural Toronto. The Centre has achieved this and more. It has helped to reintegrate a closed-off community into the larger urban fabric, becoming both an energized community social hub and a source of pride and identity for this re-emerging community.