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Devontae was a toddler, just 22 months old, when a shooting broke out at a community barbecue near his Scarborough home and a bullet tore across the back of his head.

It happened in July 2012. His mother had taken him out for an evening walk in his stroller to get him to settle. She had stopped by the party, which was taking place at their public housing complex on Danzig Street, in the southeast corner of Scarborough, where several rows of townhomes line insular, treed courtyards. She and a friend fled with Devontae as bullets flew. Then they realized he was bleeding.

Devontae was rushed to hospital. He needed 10 staples to close the gash torn open by the bullet. Had the bullet hit at any other angle, he might have died. Newspapers called him “The boy who lived.”

Devontae doesn’t remember any of this. It wasn’t until years later he would come to understand he’d been a victim of one of the worst mass shootings in Toronto’s history, or that two young people, 14-year-old Shyanne Charles and 23-year-old Joshua Yasay, were killed that night.

“I’m thankful that I’m still alive,” he says in a soft, now deep voice. But he tries not to think about it.

After the shooting, the landlord, pc28����Community Housing Corporation, offered victims and their families the chance to relocate. Dana toured one unit that had yellow police tape stretched around the property, the aftermath of another recent shooting. It was no place for a child who had just been through the same trauma. Dana settled on a highrise in Etobicoke.

Devontae has lived here ever since, in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother, his 9-year-old brother, and more recently the boys’ uncle. Devontae likes Etobicoke. It’s the only real home he can remember.

He feels safe here, but that may be in part because his mother has shielded him from the trauma of surviving gun violence and absorbed much of the impact herself. She has struggled with depression since the incident, while trying everything she can to build a peaceful, ordinary life for her boys.

On a Monday night earlier this spring, loud pops echoed inside their apartment building. Dana recognized the sound right away: gunfire. A 55-year-old man was killed and another was charged with first-degree murder.

“No one expected no shooting around here at all,” Dana said. “It’s a peaceful area.”

Devontae was at a friend’s house that night. For that, she was grateful.

In recent years, researchers and community workers have started to treat violence as a public health crisis — like a disease that needs preventative care — as studies have documented the increased risk of physical and mental anguish for those exposed.

That trauma is not shared equally across the city. In a landmark 2019 report to city council on tackling community violence, pc28����Public Health noted that young Black males are disproportionately affected by violence and that those most at risk are typically part of marginalized groups who experience racial, economic and other injustices.

A seminal 1,766-page provincial government report on the roots of youth violence published in 2008 documented first-hand experience, research and ways to tackle the crisis. But in the years since, little has been done to implement its recommendations.

In an attempt to make good on some of the promises, pc28����city council voted in 2014 to develop a “youth equity strategy,” but for years the plan was chronically underfunded and unfinished. Council has since moved to review its commitments to youth and implement new programs, including a community healing project that trains young people to become peer mentors and hospital-based interventions that connect victims of violence to counselling and resources. But funding from other levels of government to support this work has been slow to materialize.

A $250-million promise to tackle gun violence made by Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals made as part of their 2019 re-election campaign had not materialized by the end of 2022. City staff said Tuesday that to-date $1.2 million had been received of a promised $12.3 million for pc28����over four years. Another two instalments are expected by April 2024.

Under Premier Doug Ford, provincial funding has largely focused on law enforcement, like the $3 million promised in 2019 to fund more CCTV cameras, despite calls to fund community programming over policing.

Meanwhile, concerning trends have emerged. Police data reported by the pc28����District School Board showed alarming year-over-year increases in youth aged 12 to 17 accused in stabbing incidents and in young people aged 12 to 29 accused of assault and robberies.

Young people made up 51 per cent of all gun violence victims in pc28����from January 2021 to the end of 2022, according to police data. Of those, 33 victims were aged 12 to 17.

The school board said recent incidents on school grounds reflect an increase in violence across the city. The TDSB reported 323 violent incidents between September 2022 and April 2023, an increase from 267 during the prepandemic school year.

“All levels of government must be involved as part of responding to this issue and it is imperative that grassroots community agencies are engaged as well,” the school board report concluded.

The prioritization of law enforcement efforts can be devastating for the people who run grassroots programs that have proven track records of preventing violence and responding to it in culturally appropriate ways, with a goal of stopping retaliatory or further incidents. Often these programs are staffed by dedicated workers who grew up in the communities they work in.

But a lack of co-ordination or steady streams of funding has left a patchwork of programming, burnt out youth workers, and a system of injustices and inequalities that continues to fail kids and their families over and over again.

Devontae knows he can’t be late coming from school. His mother will worry. With his freedom comes responsibility.

Soon after class lets out each day, Devontae and his brother take their building’s elevator to the 10th floor and then bound down the hallway. Devontae’s red and purple Air Jordans squeak on the tiled floor.

From inside the apartment, Dana can hear them coming. The thud of their footsteps and the sound of the key in the door brings relief to their anxious mother, waiting for her boys to get home.

“For me, I worry everyday,” Dana says.

Devontae pipes in, exasperated: “About me going outside especially.”

On a recent rainy afternoon, Dana walked to meet the boys outside their middle school.

The sidewalks were packed with kids and parents. A small girl stopped to say hello, the daughter of a friend from their building. Dana stooped to tie the child’s shoelace and reminded the girl’s older sister not to let her walk too far ahead.

This kind of informal neighbourhood watch has given Dana comfort in recent years as her boys walk without her. She does her part in return.

Devontae towered over his friends as they made their way to the school’s front drive. Dana explained to the friends why a reporter was tagging along: a long time ago, when Devontae was little, a bullet grazed his head. The boys’ eyes widened as Devontae rubbed his scar.

One friend said he couldn’t believe he’d known Devontae for 10 years but never knew this.

Devontae said nothing. On the walk home, he was sullen. Back at the apartment, he continued to brood.

His friends often tease him about his past behaviour, when he would get sent to the principal’s office for acting out at school, he explained. He knows they’re joking, but it’s upsetting. He has changed. He doesn’t want to be defined by his mistakes, or by something that happened when he was a baby.

Dana reminds him to focus on the good. In Grade 8, he’s getting Bs and finishing his homework in class. His principal calls home to praise his leadership skills and share how the other kids look up to him. He’s the striker on his soccer team that earned a pizza party for winning one of their first games this season.

Dana is proud of her son’s maturity, the way he has turned things around in school.

After school one day recently, Devontae dug through the pockets of his backpack in a panic. He’d left his keys behind in his desk. He’d have to run back to school to grab them.

For once, Dana wasn’t worried. It’s not a big deal, she told him. You can get them tomorrow.

He’d earned his freedom, and a bit of grace, too.