When Hazel Alcantara started her fourth year of sociology studies at York University she was sleeping in the gym of the Regent Park Community Centre, set up as an emergency shelter for residents of last summer’s devastating fire at 650 Parliament St.

“I couldn’t really concentrate because I had to do my work on my laptop, but the Wi-Fi connection was really bad. Everyone (in the gym) was trying to connect, so it was slow,” recalls Alcantara, 21, who, along with her mother, father and grandmother were among more than 1,500 tenants forced to flee the Aug. 21 highrise fire in Toronto’s St. James Town neighbourhood.

Because both her parents worked long hours during the day, Alcantara was also responsible after school for ensuring her grandmother, who doesn’t speak English well, was OK in the community centre.

“I (had to) go back there after school because my grandma was alone and my parents didn’t want me to leave her for a long time with all the other people at the community centre. There were other older Filipino individuals there, but they were able to leave the community centre and roam around, but my grandmother wasn’t familiar enough to be on her own,” Alcantara says.

“I didn’t want to stay there. There was no space and being there kept reminding me of our situation, during a time when I wanted a distraction from it. It was a lot,” Alcantara says.

That was just the beginning of a chaotic school year that saw Alcantara and her family move several times after being forced to leave the two-bedroom unit they rented in 650 Parliament. The family bounced around for the next six months, from the community centre, to a hotel across town, to a condo near Yonge and Bloor Sts., to a unit in another St. James Town highrise where they currently reside.

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Residents from both the 22-storey north and the south towers of the building have still not been able to return home and likely won’t before the fall, says a spokesperson for the property manager.

Earlier this year, Mayor John Tory said the fire was related to a “catastrophic failure” of the building’s electrical system.

“The failure contributed to the fire,” he said. “It’s a miracle no one was killed or injured.”

Just more than 560 units were occupied at the time of the fire, which impacted adults and young people alike, the latter particularly when it came to school and their studies.

Young people like Alcantara.

The constant moving and uncertainty about where she’d be living from week to week made her feel “unstable” and took a toll on her school work, Alcantara says.

“It was really difficult to concentrate in class. I’d be sitting there doing the work, but in the back of my mind I would be thinking about my family’s situation,” Alcantara said in an interview.

In the early days following the fire, at the Regent Park centre the Red Cross was on hand to assist families who ended up there. Cots were set up in the gymnasium for residents to sleep on.

Alcantara and her parents and grandmother stayed there for about a week and a half before being relocated to the Courtyard Marriott hotel near College and Yonge Sts. They stayed at the hotel for about two weeks before being moved back to the Regent Park centre, where they remained for another three weeks or so.

Next came another nearly month-long hotel stay, this one near the St. George TTC subway stop.

After that the four were set up in a two-bedroom condo unit near Yonge and Bloor (by this time it was the end of October). They stayed there for about six months before being moved back to St. James Town into a two-bedroom unit at 260 Wellesley St.

“As you can imagine this was all a lot of back and forth during my school year. It really took a big emotional and mental toll on me, I would say,” Alcantara says.

Wellesley Parliament Square (WPSQ) is a property management company that operates 650 Parliament. A spokesperson, Danny Roth, says about $10 million has been spent on housing assistance for residents of the building. The building owners paid for and managed most of the logistics pertaining to relocation, Roth says.

He went on to say that costs for accommodations, the limited availability of units in Toronto’s tight rental market and trying to bring residents as close to St. James Town as possible were some of the key reasons families were moved around.

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“The scope of the crisis at 650 Parliament is unprecedented. No management company, community service agency or municipal official in this city has had to deal with the dislocation of so many people for such a prolonged period,” Roth said.

He added: “As a result of our efforts and the support of so many others, today, nearly every resident who has not chosen to reside with family and friends is now comfortably housed in a comparable St James Town apartment suite.

“We recognize that the process has not been flawless — although crisis response rarely is,” Roth said, later adding “we have been working diligently to meet the unparalleled challenge of rehousing our tenants to the best of our abilities, while meeting the significant challenges of the physical repairs and restoration of the property itself.”

Providing a sense of stability this year for young students impacted by the fire was one of the goals of staff and the administration at Rose Avenue Junior Public school in St. James Town, a school attended by 68 students from 650 Parliament.

“We became the community repository of support for those families,” says David Crichton, principal at the kindergarten-to-Grade 6 school.

That support included helping to raise $40,000 for the affected children and their families. The money came from fundraising at the school, other schools in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), donations from firms such as Manulife and Desjardins, unions, individuals in the community and other sources.

The funds were used to provide free breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the displaced youngsters and their families, Crichton explained.

Money raised also paid for a special afterschool trip for the affected students and their parents to the Evergreen Brick Works, movie and bowling nights for the families, and gift cards to stores that included Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys and Shoppers Drug Mart, Crichton said.

He noted the school has some money left over for this fall when school reopens.

With support from the TDSB, transportation was organized this year so that students relocated far from the school could be brought back to Rose Avenue Junior. These accommodations included rerouted school buses and Metropasses.

There was also a large clothing drive for the residents, managed mainly by St. James Town Community Corner and Community Matters, where thousands of pieces of new clothing including winter coats and boots were collected and donated to Rose Avenue Junior Public school.

Some teachers, Crichton the principal, and members of Community Matters, a local support group in St. James Town that assists in areas such as finances and housing, came to the school on weekends and opened the gym so youngsters could come in and do crafts or play sports.

The impact of the fire was “all consuming” for the families involved, says Chris Moise, the trustee for the area (Ward 10, University-Rosedale and Toronto Centre) adding “parents were stressed, kids were stressed.”

“It’s been hard for them, not knowing where or when they would be moved, or what was happening next, living in limbo for a long time,” Moise says.

So it was key that Rose Avenue — a school many from 650 Parliament turned to for advice, emotional support and guidance — helped “normalize things” as much as it could for those impacted, Moise says.

“The school went above and beyond for these parents and these kids,” he added.

“Kudos to the school.”

Clarification – June 27, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear that items given out during a clothing drive at Rose Avenue Junior public school were donated from an earlier drive organized by St. James Town Community Corner and Community Matters with help from local residents and groups. Incomplete information was provided to the Star.