By Jim Barber
As passionate about alleviating the economic and social disparity in our communities as much as she is for creating, recording and performing music, Toronto singer/songwriter/filmmaker/educator Andrea Ramolo has harnessed the latter of these pursuits in the service of the former, with the recent release of her latest single, ‘Castle on the Street.’
A co-write with fellow Toronto musician and recording artist R. Grunwald, the song tells stories that should not just tug at the heartstrings, but should raise both ire and voices to do something to ensure that the more vulnerable members of our towns, our cities and our nation have lives of dignity, hope and abundance.
Ramolo always understood that there were unhoused people living rough on the streets of Toronto, and always felt deep compassion for their plight. But her concern and sympathy soon became action, and then advocacy, leading her to step out of the comfort zone of her life as an educator and musician and step into the world that most don’t see – the world of folks living not only on the margins of the cityscape, but on the margins of life itself.
“During the pandemic, tent cities were popping up. There were different encampments around Toronto. There was one in a park that was very dear to me; a park that I lived right beside at one point in my music career and life and where I spent a lot of time. It’s called the Dufferin Grove Park, close to the Dufferin Mall near College and Dufferin Streets. I would walk and drive by there and it hurt my heart so bad that so many people were living there, living these despairing lives, so far below the poverty line that the world made it so that they couldn’t even have their bare necessities met and a roof over their head. What kind of dignity is that? But what really sort of shook me was when I first brought over the Italian band Kalascima that I tour with now that first summer [four years ago] and the park was still thriving; the encampment was full. I don’t even know how many tents there were, at least 30 or 40 and probably more,” she explained, as she talked from first-hand experience with these individuals, about the structural and political flaws in a system that seems to be okay with people living lives bereft of even the basics.
“These Italian friends, who are now like my family, like my brothers, I didn’t know them as well at the time, and they looked at the park as we were driving by in our tour vehicle to head out of the city for a show. And they were like, ‘what is this? How do you guys let your people live like this.’ That’s what they said. When they said it to me that way, ‘how do you let your people live like this? Your neighbours,’ it put it into a perspective where I thought, yeah, they’re right. It is our responsibility. We can’t rely on the government to do anything because we all know where that’s going to lead us. And many of these people are in that situation because of policies of the government – all levels of government. They are there because of inflation and unaffordable housing and groceries costing hundreds of dollars a week to feed a family. And lack of funding for mental health and health care. I have learned so much from being out on the streets with them, which I did intensely for about a year and a half, travelling with my new friends to various shelters, warming houses, community housing. What I have learned, and what I have seen is that it’s just a vicious cycle that’s seemingly never going to end based on these structures that don’t seem to work. They just don’t work. There’s so much red tape.”
One story in particular, one that, sadly, is not unique to Ramolo’s own experience trying to mitigate and mediate some of the squalor and deprivation of people she calls her ‘new friends’ still stokes the fire she has to raise awareness, and motivate action.
“I will never forget this one example. I remember when I first met Debbie, my friend who has become literally like my adopted mum. She’s a fiery, charismatic Indigenous woman who I heard in her tent, yelling in pain. I was giving out sandwiches on my first outreach day and it was blistering cold in December. Somebody had stolen her walker and she couldn’t get up and her two cute chihuahua dogs, were living with her in this tent. She couldn’t walk, she was lying in her own stuff, her own waste, for about five days. So I tried to reach out to a few organizations to help me and they literally came and just gave me some rubber gloves and some bags the next day. I put the gloves on and I was cleaning all the dirty clothes and napkins and diapers and everything around her tent to clear a pathway so we could get her onto a stretcher and to a hospital. And they were just watching me. When I asked them to help they said, ‘oh no, we’re not allowed to touch anything.’ The Italian ‘Nonna’ in me was like “How do you help if you’re just standing there? You have to get your hands dirty.’ And that sort of symbolizes what I’m trying to say. In order to help these people, we have to get our hands dirty. Whether they’re suffering from mental health issues, or addiction or physical immobility, this is how you help people. You show up, you touch them, you hug them, you do for them,” she said.
“They need love. Most of them don’t have family, and if they do have family, they don’t see them anymore. If you befriend them, that might be the only light in their life that helps them want to keep on going. I’m not saying that I’m that for Debbie or anybody else. I’m just saying that we have to be kind to each other, because that could be my mother, your mother. That could be somebody’s sister. In fact, it IS somebody’s mother and sister. We can’t understand the complexities of what put people in this situation, but we can be kind, we can help. But this nation is not doing enough for the people that fall into those spaces. And they don’t have a voice for themselves because nobody listens to them. Nobody gives them the time of day. Be honest, how many times have we all passed by these people on the street and been afraid of them because maybe their mental health is not in check or whatnot, or they’ve just smoked crack or are on fentanyl. These are the realities. These people are struggling with addiction and mental health issues – that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve love.
“It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a roof over their heads and some hot food in their bellies and some tenderness – some human care. Every human being on this earth deserves care, and who are we to decide who gets care and who doesn’t? The world does not work the same way for everybody. Some people can’t work. Some people have major injuries or are dealing with debilitating pain, or are bipolar or schizophrenic and have tried working but lost their jobs and don’t have a family network to take care of them. So what, they just deserve to end up in a doorway corner sleeping in a sleeping bag for the rest of their lives? No, they don’t. We have to be their family. Wouldn’t you want that for yourself if you were in that situation. I would. A little bit of human decency goes a long way.”
‘Castle on the Street’ was created for a new documentary developed, produced and directed by Ramolo called Stories from the Street. It was also based on the stories of her new friends.
“The song was specifically written, well, for all the characters, but specifically for Brent, who is in the documentary. Brent is no longer with us, and he was very close to me. He was such an angel of a human being. Everyone who met him was just so touched by him. He was such a genuine, kind man. And he just had a rough go of it. He had throat cancer, and he was withering away to nothing. At the end of his life, Ryan [Donais], my friend who runs Tiny Tiny Homes, he gifted him a tiny home in the park. But then, of course, the government came and took those away. But while they were taking them away, Ryan advocated for him to get an apartment, like a real apartment. I think he just managed to get enough funds together to get him that apartment. Brent was in the very late stages of his cancer, and he only got to live in this new apartment for about two months. So, it was too late to give him that dignity, to give him that basic human care. Why? Why are people, elderly people, all people, why are they dying on the street? Why are they sleeping on heating grates and in sleeping bags. Can you picture that for our parents? It’s just so wrong. It’s so unjust. People are sleeping out in the open, in the middle of downtown Toronto, and it’s hard to see all of that, but it’s necessary because a lot of us, we close our eyes to it. We pretend it doesn’t exist. And it’s easy not to recognize the inequality of the world when your eyes are closed. But when they’re open people realize there’s something terribly wrong with our world. There are so many terrible things going on in the world, and one person can’t fix them all. But I do believe in love and in human kindness. And I do believe that every little thing that we do for another person creates waves and could possibly make someone’s day a little brighter.”
Like the Italian Nonna characteristics she inherited from her own powerhouse of a Nonna, Ramolo has a remarkably vital wellspring of compassion, passion, fiery righteousness and inner strength. But she is also deeply sensitive, taking everything into her heart – the good, the bad and the unjust. So she’s had to learn to temper her passion with a healthy dose of self-care. Just as airline passengers are instructed to put the oxygen mask over their own mouths first before putting one on their kids, Ramolo knows to be most effective in her work raising awareness and developing practical ways to help her friends, she has to be healthy in mind, body and spirit herself.
“It was hard. Even talking about it, it was a hard year and a half. I had to stop at one point going out to the streets as much as I was. Especially on the really, really snowy mornings, I would go out early all the time with blankets and sleeping bags and warm food, socks and whatever, that I always kept with me. I would find people still sleeping literally over vents right in the heart of downtown Toronto. But I had to set some boundaries. There were times when some of my new friends had access to my phone number, and there were a lot of late night calls. I learned along the way how to create boundaries for myself because you can’t help other people when you’re completely depleted.”
To purchase and access ‘Castle on the Street,’ visit https://andrearamolo.bandcamp.com/track/castle-on-the-street. Proceeds will be directed to Haven, a men’s drop-in centre in Toronto. For more information about this organization, visit https://www.haventoronto.ca.
For more information on Tiny Tiny Homes, visit https://tinytinyhomes.ca.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
