LOOKING IN ON TEENS

Teens Bored Easily: Haynes

A teenager looking to score some pot approached Isabelle Prosnick and
Josh Wisenthal in Valois Park several nights ago.

"Do you guys have any weed on you?"

Perhaps the teen overlooked their city uniforms, or else zeroed in on
the word 'recreation' in the Pointe Claire Parks and Recreation logo
emblazoned on their T-shirts.

As Pointe Claire's designated liaison between the city and the teens
who hang out in the parks, Wisenthal and Prosnick, both 22, say they
get this kind of reaction often. "They don't see older people as
interested in them beyond policing them. They see us and they think we
must be either drug dealers or cops," Wisenthal explained.

The mandate of these clean-cut, gregarious twentysomethings is to
develop relationships with potentially troubled youths, find out
what's on their minds, and bring this data back to the city at the end
of the summer so that it can implement initiatives to better serve its
teenage population. They drive between 80 and 100 kilometres a night,
hitting the parks and schoolyards where teens are likely to loiter
after-hours.

In the weeks since they first ventured out, Wisenthal and Prosnick
have chatted with adolescents who, although they are smart,
well-spoken and have plenty of wealth at their disposal, feel
powerless and disenfranchised by a system that treats them like cogs
in a bureaucratic machine.

They're also bored.

"What the kids are telling us now are the same things I had complaints
about when I was a teen," said Prosnick, who was born and raised in
Pierrefonds. "There's nothing to do."

Teenage mischief, the unfiltered encyclopedia of the Internet, and the
tide of negativity from the media add up to a petri dish of factors
that can lead to self-destructive behaviour. Stir some suburban ennui
into the mix and it bubbles over, according to Shelley Haynes, Pointe
Claire's social development section manager.

"When they're bored, that's when the trouble happens," Haynes said,
adding that the towns of Hudson and Saint-Lazare have parks dedicated
to youth that offer activities like bonfires and dances. "They're
still hanging out in the parks, but there, they're
supervised."

Pushing the envelope

Wisenthal says he's completely "blown away," by how drug-savvy today's
teenagers are. "When I was 14, it was a big deal to go to a drinking
party, where maybe one person would get really drunk and puke, and
there might be a couple people having sex," he said.

Now, he says, teens are just as likely to talk about crystal meth,
speed, or crack. "They know the street names, they know how buzzed you
can get from it."

According to the teenage addicts at the Portage rehabilitation centre
in Beaconsfield, unsuspecting youths may be getting more than they
bargained for when they toke up. "They told us some of the stuff sold
on the streets is laced with harder drugs to give kids a better buzz
so they'll get hooked and keep coming back to the same dealer," said
Wisenthal, who visited the residential centre with Prosnick last week.
"These sick, twisted people who are our age are pushing drugs onto
kids ten years younger."

Meeting 14-year-olds whose lives had spiraled out of control because
of drugs convinced Wisenthal and Prosnick that the old adage that
"kids will be kids" just doesn't cut it anymore.

"That's just ignorance, man," Prosnick said.

"Fifty years ago it was a different world. The consequences of
drinking a beer when my parents were kids are different from the
long-term effects of inadvertently taking speed or the date rape drug,
or having unprotected sex," Wisenthal pointed out. "The kids in rehab
talk about the same things as the kid on the street smoking a joint.
The only difference is that these kids ended up doing cocaine instead
of weed."

A zone of their own

Wisenthal cruises along the tree-lined avenues of Pointe Claire. "The
problems may be masked by nice houses, but it's naive to assume that
there aren't any just because there's money," he said, offering the
example of the two-income household where neither parent is ever at
home.

"When the parents aren't as involved in their kids' lives, the kids
turn to friends," added Prosnick.

They pull into the parking lot of Dezone, the local teen drop-in
centre located in a squat, nondescript building behind Cheers bar.

Dezone youth worker Terrence Ramsay-Jones has seen it all -- suicide
attempts, sexual assaults, gang violence. He also witnessed a boy ask
his mother for $4,000 -- "and she gave it to him," he recalled. "This
kid dressed like he was from the ghetto."

"They're not hustling because they need the money, they're hustling
because they're bored," said fellow youth worker Allan Hoyte.

"Most of them just need someone to talk to," said Prosnick. "They're
ignored."

Hoyte and Ramsay-Jones offer teens exactly that -- a place to play
cards or video games, or just chill out, in a supervised atmosphere.
It's hard to tell the youth workers apart from the teens who use the
centre -- all are dressed in slouchy baseball caps and baggy pants.

As for Prosnick and Wisenthal, they hope their presence in the parks
this summer will help to make Pointe Claire a more accommodating place
for teens to have fun -- safely.