From the quiet of Cortown to Cabbagetown and policing the mean streets of Toronto

Anyone who pays a visit to Toronto (once this pesky pandemic is finally over of course) may well end up wondering around the streets of an area that carries the unusual name of Cabbagetown.

If he had a mind to Bennie Smith could even give guided tours of the place. There are few who know the area better than the Cortown native - or at least did know the area.

Bennie, you see, spent most of his working life as a Canadian police officer patrolling the streets of Cabbagetown which these days is mainly populated by affluent professionals who have spent considerable fortunes restoring the area's beautiful Victorian houses ( as a quick trip on Google will reveal). It's a desirable place to live where house prices, even in the context of Ireland, can be eye watering.

Yet it wasn't always like that. Bennie - who has now spent over 50 years in Canada - remembers a different kind of Cabbagetown, which takes its name from the fact that people fleeing the Famine famine-hit Ireland who lived there used to use their front gardens to grow cabbage.

Time was when Cabbagetown was an impoverished area where many of the city's poor lived; a place that attracted the homeless, the marginalised. It became an area of great ethnic diversity, the location for what they call in Canada "subsidised housing." It became rundown too.

In 1964 (a significant year in the life of Bennie Smith) a reporter in the Toronto Star wrote that "Cabbagetown has become a downhill ride and if you're on the way up you don't stay there for long unless you live in Regent's Park."

As a member of the police force in Toronto (which he joined in 1969) Bennie spent his days like a sheriff in the Wild West maintaining law and order in Cabbagetown, area where there was plenty of lawlessness.

"There was a lot of store robberies, some homicides, the kind of stuff that goes on in a big city, any big city. There were drugs there before there were drugs anywhere else. There were drugs there all right, but not like today," Bennie recalls down the line from his home in Toronto.

Working in the crumbling precinct was as far away from life in rural Meath as you get get in just about every way but Bennie took to it. More than that he thrived and prospered in Toronto and made a life for himself. A good life. Now in his seventies he can look back on the remarkable journey that brought him from one side of the world to another; from Cortown to Cabbagetown.

BALRATHBOYNE

Born in November 1946 Charles Bernard Smith is the oldest in a family of 12 (one deceased) that grew up on a farm in Balrathboyne in Cortown. "We had a small 28-acre farm, a small dairy farm, and there was 12 of us, 11 still alive," he explains. He recalls the heroics of his parents who worked and grafted to bring up their large family in a time when the living was anything but easy.

"My dad was a hard worker, my mother too, she was a miracle worker, looking after such a big family, her name was Ann but everybody called her Dolly." Young Bennie left the education system as soon as his primary school days ended. It was the way back then but there was no question of not having something to do.

"It was a hard slog, my dad did a lot of contracting work, he had a sprayer and would go around spraying potatoes and mowing meadows for local farmers so a lot of the time I was at home morning and evening milking cows so, yes, it was hard work, there was always something to be done. There were very few cars around, you were lucky to have a bicycle."

Bennie looked to carve out a career in the bar business. He worked as a "bartender" in Kells then Finnegans of Greetiagh before landing a job in a pub in Glasnevin. He looked like he was destined to spend his days pulling pints. Fate, however, had another route mapped out for him.

In 1964 at a dance in Athboy Bennie met a young woman who had a profound effect him and his life. She was Rosemary Wyse from Longford who became known far and wide as simply Patsy. "There used to be a dancehall in Athboy, I don't think they have it now, and I would go there. I was fairly fond of the dancing, although I wasn't too good at the old dancing! Patsy was working as a telephonist in Kells when I met here."

Bennie had a cousin, Oliver Reilly from Kells, who become a policeman in Canada. Looking to improve his prospects young Bennie decided to go west in February 1969, to Canada. Patsy followed and they were married soon after and set about fashioning a new life. It proved a good match. "I was lucky, Patsy has been fantastic, a great wife, a great lady."

Patsy and Bennie raised a family of three "wonderful" daughters - Orla, Aisling and Sinead. They have four grandchildren.

REGENT'S PARK

For a short time after arriving in Canada, Bennie worked as a waiter before applying to the police and landing a job. He attended training school before he was sent out on the streets. It proved to be something of a baptism of fire. The young Irishman was posted to the infamous Regent Park station in the notorious 51 Division.

"It was the busiest police station in Canada, I don't mean to brag or boast but it was, and probably still is. Yes, Regent's Park, Cabbagetown, it was known far and wide, " he adds in an accent that is firmly rooted in his native county but understandably speckled too with a tinge of Canada.

The station - an old, yellow-brick building (since demolished) - became known as 'Fort Apache,' and as someone else commented, "the armpit of the force" because of its notoriously cramped conditions. It was reported that at times 230 officers worked in a space designed for 120. The 51 Division was central to a innovative community policing project where officers, stationed in the heart of the community, sought to work closely with local people.

During his career Bennie - who is called Charlie by his former work colleagues and Ben by his friends - found himself in some unusual scenarios. He was involved, for instance, in arresting the first woman to escape from the infamous Don Prison in Toronto.

He was threatened verbally plenty of times as he went about doing his job but he found that more often than not, the diplomatic route worked, even when, on one occasion, a man pulled a gun on him.

"I was never shot at but I had a gun pulled on me but luckily nothing came of it. It was after a robbery and we just happened to come across a guy hiding in a window. He had a loaded Luger, a German pistol, but we were able to talk him out of it.

"There were very few guns on the street back in my day to be honest, you would get a few guys with knives, it was mostly people who liked using their fist or their boot. It's a different lifestyle now. Everybody seems to have a gun.

""I was threatened lots of times verbally but I think how you approach people, deal with people, talk to people has a big bearing on what happens to you during your life. Talking to people, respecting people will get you a long way."

Over the years Bennie has steeped himself in the local Irish community, particularly the GAA club, St Vincent's. He has served as player, manager, coach, official and as he says himself "waterboy." In other words the club has played a central, integral part of his life.

When he retired from the police force he kept busy by carrying out volunteer work for the local St Joseph's Catholic Church, doing what he can to help the parish. He still does.

Bennie chuckles when he reflects on how he ended up in one of the toughest, roughest precincts in Canada but no doubt hardened by his own experience growing up in Cortown he got stuck in, grafted and found he loved it. Policing is part of the family DNA as he has a number of close relatives working in the Garda Siochana.

Toronto, he will tell you, is a lovely place to live, the summers are pleasant the winters too if you like the crisp, cold weather. The people, on the whole, are warm and friendly.

He returns home when he can although now with the Covid-19 pandemic worsening rather than diminishing such trips back to "beautiful Ireland" have to be restricted.

A lot has changed in both Canada and Ireland since that day when Bennie Smith first arrived in Toronto and came to know, first hand, about life in the city, particularly that unique place they call Cabbagetown.