MARK'S MISSION: TO LIFT HIS COMMUNITY

Mark Thornborrow knows he has to coexist in Beasley with drunks,
prostitutes and druggies, but when they do their business in the
park, he draws the line.

He'll tell them straight, 'hey, not here' ... you're going to hurt
the kids by doing that in front of them."

Some don't take kindly to it. So far, he's only been threatened, but
admits "it's actually pretty stupid of me ... they could have a gun
or a knife."

But Mark is a stubborn man on a mission -- determined to better his
neighbourhood, despite living across from the toughest apartment
building in Beasley and near the roughest corner at Robert and John
streets, a high traffic area for drugs and prostitutes.

His limited income is not what keeps him in Beasley. It's his refusal
to give up, even after his kids have been robbed and his property vandalized.

He's sick of the problems at McLaren Park and that his three kids and
others are afraid to use it. He feels duty bound to reclaim it.

Beasley, one of Hamilton's poorest neighbourhoods, has only two parks
- -- McLaren on John Street North, a few steps away from Mark's tiny
house, and Beasley Park beside Dr. J. Edgar Davey School.

Both are small, plain and a rare respite in this downtown area
riddled with parking lots and rundown buildings.

Mark wants McLaren improved. More than once, he's had words with city
officials to refurbish it and upgrade it. He's had some success, but
not enough for his liking.

"He believes the community starts at the park," says Constable Jamie
Bannon in community policing. "Families and kids meet in the parks."

On summer Fridays, Mark has often taken his barbecue to the park at
lunchtime to cook hotdogs for 20 to 40 kids at the soupie program,
even if he's just come off working a night shift and is exhausted.

The city supplies the hotdogs, and the kids pay $1 each to go toward
an end of summer pizza party. Sometimes when a child can't pay, Mark does.

Two years ago, fed up with finding syringes and vandalism everywhere,
Mark started a Neighbourhood Watch, personally delivering 1,200 to
1,500 flyers for the first meeting.

People were reluctant to get involved, but he forged ahead anyway.

"It's about time people got up and started taking the neighbourhood
back," he believed. And that's exactly what happened.

People too afraid to call police themselves called Mark, who then
forwarded the information to police. Crack houses have been shut
down, grow operations dismantled, but it's a never-ending battle.

"As fast as you close one, they open another. You've got prostitutes
along Barton Street and drugs and drinking in the parks. As soon as
you fix one problem, you have another."

It's been difficult for Mark, laid off from National Steel and now a
temporary worker at Lakeport Brewery, to keep going.

"Every job I've had has been shift work.

"It's hard to tend to the community and to tend to home life ... You
get to the point where you say, why am I doing this? (And then
remember). For the kids, for the community."

Others would have moved out long ago, but that solution is not for him.

"What kind of a community is that, if people run from it?"