The first time I got in serious trouble with the police was a couple of weeks before Christmas 1994, when I was 13. I was living with my dad and stepmom in Mississauga, and I went into the dollar store across from the Zellers at Westwood Mall and stole some cap guns and water balloons. How I got busted was I got greedy. I went over to the Zellers for one more thing, but I didn’t know that the store had a lot more cameras. When they busted me, they realized I had a lot of stuff from the dollar store, too. My stepmother was very upset and she grounded me. But my father freaked. He said, “You think you’re a man and you can embarrass me in public?” Then he gave it to me. I ended up being charged and getting probation. I was supposed to work things out with my father, abide by his rules or I’d go to juvenile open custody. I tried my best to stay out of trouble, but a lot of the time he wouldn’t let me out of the house. I felt like a caged animal. I’d sneak out just to piss him off. I was supposed to be in school but I wasn’t really going much then. I’d just hang around. I’d always seen these bigger guys, smoking cigarettes and weed. We called them “doms,” the rude boys. Nobody would say nothin’ to them, nobody tried to disrespect them. I wanted to be one of them, but I wasn’t bad enough.

One time the doms from our school were chillin’ when a whole bunch of guys from a rival school started a big scrap. By then I wasn’t really scared of catching a fist, and I had so much anger in me I just wanted to knock somebody out for the fun of it. So I jumped in and started hitting these guys from the other school. I caught a broken nose and my pinkie finger got dislocated, but I held my own and lumped up a few people. From that day on, the big guys looked at me different, started giving me respect.

When I look back on those days, I know my life was getting out of control. I was knocking people down and taking from them. I’d say, “Yo, empty your pockets, give us your lunch money, gimme those sneakers or that jacket.” We called it shotgun, like “I got a shotgun on that jacket.” At the time, it felt good. Since no one was giving me mines, I felt I was just takin’ mines.

I guess my story really starts when I was little. I was born in Jamaica, the third of four kids. My father, Neville, left for Canada when my mom, Yvonne, was pregnant with me. She left for New Jersey when I was two, leaving me to live with my older brother, Wayne. I never blamed her for leaving because she was trying to help us. She scrubbed toilets and sent us whatever little money she had. The first time I saw my father was when I was three years old. He didn’t come to visit me; he came to visit his friends and enjoy Jamaica, but he said, since I have a son, I think I’ll see what’s goin’ on. So he came by and stayed for 10 minutes, and I never saw him again until I moved to Canada nine years later.

Wayne and I lived in Tivoli Garden, a neighbourhood in Kingston. Tivoli Garden, Waterhouse, The Jungle, Rema—those are pretty much the most dangerous places around. It wasn’t much of a home, more like some boards nailed together. But wherever you rest your head is home.

School costs money down there, and we didn’t have any money, so half the time I was just out on the street causing trouble. I’d climb a person’s mango tree to get food. But a man’s property is a man’s property, so if I got caught I’d tell them I had no family, that I was living on the street. I could look someone in the face, with no smile, and just bald-faced lie and they’d actually buy it.

There were immigration problems with my mom that meant she couldn’t bring me to New Jersey. In 1992, she bought me a ticket to Toronto so I could live with my father. Wayne stayed behind in Kingston. I was excited—I knew there were things that we didn’t have and that I’d never seen. But after I arrived, I swear I was living in hell.

My father never showed up at Pearson to meet me, so people at the airport arranged a ride for me to his home. It was a two- bedroom apartment in a big building on Darcel Avenue, although later on we moved to a house. By then he had married my stepmom, Icilda—I called her Sonya. The next day was a Saturday and Sonya took me shopping. My dad came along, but only because my stepmom told him to. I was excited by all the stuff I saw. I pretty much wanted one of everything. Sonya bought me some clothes and a water gun, but by the time we got home there was already a lot of tension. My father didn’t say anything to me at all, almost as if he was ashamed that I was here.

He was a big guy who worked as a mechanic and was pretty successful. (Later, he owned his own trucking company.) I don’t think there’s anybody who could out-drink him. He’d buy a two-four and finish it in a few hours watching the ball game. He was a gambler, too, and three times a week his friends would be over, drinking and playing dominoes. I wasn’t the smartest kid when it came to school. Because my Jamaican accent was so thick, I took ESL at Darcel Avenue Senior Public. I remember coming home with a report card and I’d got an A in gym class, which was a big thing for me. I said, “Hey Pops, look, I got an A.” And all he says is, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

When I was in Grade 7, there was this bigger boy in Grade 8 who bullied me every day. He would take away the lunch money my stepmom gave me. One day I looked at him and I saw my father, so I stabbed him in the neck with a pencil. He was sent to the hospital, and I got suspended for three months.

Later, when I ran with a gang and had been in and out of jail, my father would say to people, “My son is an animal.” But every animal follows his parents. If you stand around and eat grass, your cubs are going to stand around and eat grass. If you are constantly hunting, your cubs are going to become hunters.