And Another One… When Will Enough Be Enough?

August 16, 2025.

Another day. Another headline.

Another child murdered in their own home.

And another one…

This time, an 8-year-old boy in North York was asleep in bed next to his mother. Shot by a stray bullet that came crashing through the walls meant to keep him safe. The headline hit me like a punch to the gut, not because I didn’t believe it, but because I did.

I saw the shock and outrage ripple through social media. I read the comments, people in disbelief that something so horrific could happen, but what shook me most wasn’t the news itself. It was how surprised people still were.

I wasn’t surprised.

I was shattered, yes. I was angry, but I was not surprised because I remembered.

I remember the 9-year-old boy in Brampton, shot dead while watching TV.

I remember the 12-year-old who died after being shot in North York back in 2021.

I remember the 2005 “Summer of the Gun” like it was yesterday.

I carry those memories like bricks in a backpack. Heavy. Unshakable.

Because, I’ve lived long enough in this city to recognize the cycle. The headlines. The outrage. The silence. The forgetting, and then, inevitably…

Another one.

I’ve studied sociology. I’ve analyzed policy. I’ve read the reports, but my understanding of systemic failure isn’t just academic. It’s personal. These aren’t abstract tragedies to me; they’re the lives of children, of families, of communities like mine.

I moved to rural Ontario partly because of this violence. I needed to create distance between myself and the trauma I had come to expect as normal. No amount of distance can numb the ache of seeing another headline like this one.

Let me be clear: the murder of a child in his bed should stop the world, but instead, it becomes a footnote. Another reminder of a society that is quick to react, but slow to respond, and when I say “society,” I don’t just mean politicians or police.

I mean us.

We, as a community, have waited too long for someone else to save us, for a policy to be passed, for funding to appear, for justice to magically descend. History has shown us again and again that no one is coming to save us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

We need more than outrage. We need radical enlightenment.

We need a real strategy.

We need healing circles and block meetings.

We need mentorship and intergenerational dialogue.

We need mothers and fathers and teachers and elders coming together—not just to grieve—but to build.

This article isn’t about solutions wrapped in pretty bows. It’s about a plea. This is a call to my people: Caribbean, Black, African, diasporic, we must move. Too many of our babies are dying in places that should be sacred: their beds, their homes, their neighbourhoods. If our children aren’t safe in their mother’s arms, where are they safe?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do have one question that I hope echoes loud and long after this article is read. When will enough be enough?

We must come together, not just to mourn, but to organize. To demand more, and to do more. To listen deeply, and to act collectively.

So I’m asking. No. I’m inviting you to join this conversation.

Comment. Write back. Email me at creative@astoldbyanya.com.

Or write a letter to this very paper. This is our moment to shift from pain to power. Not with more hashtags, but with more healing. Not just with louder voices, but with longer tables.

We don’t need another summer of the gun. We need a season of action. Of accountability. Of ancestral strength reborn in us. Let’s make this the last time we say…

“And another one.”