Monday 24 December 2018

Being Thankful for Family and Friends


By Neil Armstrong



I’m thankful that I spent much of yesterday (Sunday, Dec. 23) celebrating the 50th birthday of my friend, Karen Flynn. I’ve known her since 1995 when we met at York University where she was pursuing her postgraduate studies and working at CHRY Radio too. We’ve maintained our friendship over the years, even as she lives in the United States with her family. Karen is an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of African-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Responding to well wishes, Karen reminded us that tomorrow is promised to no one and so we should value the family and friends in our lives and keep in touch with them. [I'm looking forward to our visit of a friend who is in her mid-90s this week.]

That sentiment was expressed at the funeral of Joyce Eulalee Ricketts, 82, that I attended in Brampton on Saturday. My condolences to her daughter, Diane; son, Franklin; grandchildren, brothers, sister and other relatives and friends. Last Monday, an event that I went to in celebration of the life of Carl Edmonson at The 519 in downtown Toronto ended with Dionne Warwick’s 1985 song “That’s What Friends Are For.” Carl worked with PACE Canada [Project for the Advancement of Childhood Education] in an administrative role and volunteered at The 519. He was also a teacher looking forward to working in the Toronto District School Board. My condolences to his family and friends, and also to the family and friends of actor and producer, Gloria Surage.

Celebrating family and friends is important to me, and today (Dec. 24) – my birthday – I’m using this space to celebrate life and friendships captured in these photos. Some of these friendships go as far back as when we were 7 or eight years old living next door to each other. Some are later and span over 20 years, and others are more recent. Thanking God for health and the ability to love and demonstrate caring for others.

Hanging out with my childhood friend, Shaun, in her backyard in Jamaica.

My friend, Jason, his sons and their friend, and an international student from China. Jason came with all of them to Shauntay Grant's book launch of "Africville" that I invited him to that morning at A Different Booklist.

My friend, Paul, and I decided to dress up for this event.

Karen Flynn's 50th birthday celebration, Part 2, yesterday at Broadview Lofts.

Gina and Karen. I reminded everyone that we travelled to Jamaica years ago and had lots of fun.

Sherldine (Dianne), Karen and Karen

Hanging out at my place with Paul, Keith, Kevin, Shavaun, Nigel, Alistair and Gary.

With high school friends, Hyacinth and Merrick, at an event featuring author, Marlon James, at the Toronto Reference LIbrary.

With Richard, Michael, Trevor and Steve at Zun Lee's exhibition at the Gladstone Hotel.

Jean-Paul and Jasminee at the opening night of the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival on College Street, Toronto.

Nikki, Karen and Clive at the opening night of the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival.

Claire and I went to the same high school.


After her performance at the Wolmer's Alumni Association Toronto concert, Belinda and I had this one taken.
Hanging out with Clive, Belinda, Michelle-Ann and Danae at The Diner's Corner.


I’m always aware that I’m part of a village and so I’ll continue to spread the word and support those who are working on various progressive projects and in various businesses in the Black community.

Here are a few:
Anne-Marie Woods’ “Jazzetry – A Night of Spoken Word, Vocalists and Live Music (Jan. 12)
Robert Ball’s new single “River” released recently
Andre Rose’s underwear brand “Steele” – his book will be published in 2019
Nadia L. Hohn’s new book “Harriet Tubman: Freedom Fighter on Jan. 22 at A Different Booklist
Trey Anthony’s show “OH NO! I’m becoming my mother and other fears of black women” during KUUMBA at the Harboufront Centre during Black History Month
Kevin Ormsby’s KasheDance performances
Jermaine Cowie, performer of Miss Lou’s poems
Ontario Black History Society
Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention
A Different Booklist
Knowledge Bookstore
The Diner’s Corner
ByBlacks.com
Black Business and Professional Association
United Achievers’ Club
Jamaican Canadian Association
PACE Canada

With Karen, Sailaja and Saira outside Ryerson University.

Celebrating my birthday with me at The Diner's Corner in 2017 were from left-right: Gary, Kevin, Jean-Paul, Frank, Chanel, Trevor, Paulton and Richard.

Hanging with these dynamic and creative friends, Pulga, Kevin, Aina-Nia and Debbie.



Sarah, Emily, Robert and Amani at the National Black Canadians Summit at the Toronto Reference Library in December 2017.

Kevin and Trevor have the same birthday so we celebrated at an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum before moving on to a home celebration.

Courtnay, Zun and I at Roger McTair's book launch at the Theatre Centre

With authors Itah Sadu, Sharon Draper and Nadia L. Hohn at A Different Booklist

Dylan showing off his work to his mom, Camille, and grandmother, Cecile, at OCAD University

They are gone but not forgotten. Remembering Maud Fuller and Rex Nettleford.

They are cousins and both are creative -- Kevin and Jermaine inside Miss Lou's Room at the Harboutfront Centre.

Maud Fuller, Eric Coverley(Mas Eric) and Louise Bennett Coverley (Miss Lou) at the convocation at York University where she was conferred with an honorary degree. There are major plans to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birthday in Jamaica in September 2019.

Sandra, Robin and Miguel at an anniversary celebration for A Different Booklist at the United Steelworkers Hall in Toronto.

We had to don masks at the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists gala so this was the one I chose-:)


Thank you for the great feedback you've shared after reading stories on my blog. There are many more to come in 2019.

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays! Wishing you a successful new year!

Thursday 20 December 2018

African Canadian University Professor Wins 2018 Equity Award


By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed      Dr. Annette Henry, David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia and winner of the 2018 Equity Award from the CAUT


A professor from the University of British Columbia is the winner of the 2018 Equity Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

Dr. Annette Henry holds the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

The award was established in 2010 “to recognize post-secondary academic staff who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to challenging exclusionary behaviours and practices such as racism and homophobia and by so doing have made post-secondary education in Canada more inclusive.”

Founded in 1951, CAUT is the national voice for academic staff representing 70,000 teachers, librarians, researchers, general staff and other academic professionals at some 123 universities and colleges across the country.

“Even now, in 2018, the contributions of Black Canadians are often not recognized.   Thus, it means a lot for our community. It allows for a vision of what’s possible for young people.  I’ve noticed the proud reactions of my students in particular,” says Professor Henry about the award.

She has been a professor since 1992, and a professor at UBC since 2010 in the Department of Language and Literacy Education. Henry is also cross-appointed to the Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice.

Her scholarship examines race, class, language, gender and culture in socio-cultural contexts of teaching and learning in the lives of Black students, Black oral histories, and Black women teachers’ practice in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean.

She has written extensively about equity in the academy, diverse feminisms and conceptual and methodological research issues especially in culture-specific contexts.

Professor Henry came to Canada from the U.K. at 9 years old in 1965 and completed all of her education here.

Her parents -- father from St. Mary and mother from St. Ann -- valued education, and having a sense of purpose in life. She said they both had a strong sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice.

“I didn’t see any positive images or histories of Black people throughout my Canadian education,” she says.

She had to rummage through the Robarts library at University of Toronto in her spare time, during her doctoral studies and found “a whole lot of research and literature about and by Black women of which I had been unaware, and that no teacher or professor had shared with us in my classes.”

Henry said the curriculum was very white and male and it has changed minimally. 

“I felt that the educational system had betrayed me and denied me a lot of meaningful (self)-knowledge.”

After living in the United States for 18 years, she returned to Canada and found that not much had changed.

“Canadians still had a difficult time acknowledging systemic racism and engaging in discussions on the topic.”

Since 2015, she initiated a “Race Literacies” series in which she invited Black Canadian scholars to the campus to share their research and ideas and engage in dialogue with the UBC community.

“The aim was to increase intersectional understandings of language, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class and encourage the development of new racial literacies for our contemporary times. I think Canadian universities do a better job of discussing gender and sexuality than race,” she says.


Professor Henry hosted these events with a group of transdisciplinary UBC black scholars and Professor David Chariandy from Simon Fraser University.

As the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, part of her mandate is to increase capacity in the Faculty of Education and the university.

To achieve this, she taught an innovative course in dub poetry, and focused on Canadian women dub poets. This fall, she hosted Jamaican Canadian dub poet, d’bi,young anitafrika, as the culmination of this course.

The event was open to the public. In April 2019, she will be hosting Black Feminist sociologist, Patricia Hill Collins, as part of her David Lam lecture series.

Asked whether she was hopeful or optimistic that the challenging of exclusionary structures and practices is leading to more inclusion in academia, Henry said, “Audre Lorde encouraged us to be ever vigilant for the smallest opportunity for change even without the certainty that we will see it come to fruition.  She wrote, “Each of us must find our work and do it.” We have to believe that change is possible.” 

To date, Canada only has one Black university president and vice-chancellor, Dr. Gervan Fearon of Brock University, who in 2014 was appointed the president and vice-chancellor of Brandon University in Manitoba. 

Regarding whether she foresees the day when there will be more black university presidents and vice-chancellors, especially Black women in those roles, Henry is doubtful.

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  Given what research tells us about Black women in higher education leadership, I do not see this happening soon.  Professor Malinda Smith ‘s research in the book, “The Equity Myth,” tells us that racialized women remain locked out of most top university leadership positions” and rarely crack the ‘concrete ceiling.’”

Professor Henry is currently working on a number of projects, including a chapter on Black women in leadership that should be published shortly, in an edited volume by Tamari Kitossa, Erica Lawson and Philip Howard. 

She is also involved in a research project with Dr. Loraine Cook from the University of West Indies, Mona campus. They are analyzing a lot of data that they have collected at a school over several years.

Locally, the National Congress of Black Women Foundation in Burnaby conducted over 50 interviews with members of the Black community about 12 years ago.

Henry is working with these interviews and hope to create an interactive digital archive that can be used as a curriculum resource for schools and communities. She will also work with the foundation to produce a book with these interviews. 

[This story was published in the North American Weekly Gleaner, Dec. 13-19, 2018.]

Saturday 8 December 2018

Black CAP Fundraises for its Emergency Financial Assistance Program


By Neil Armstrong

Photo credit: Black CAP     Shannon Thomas Ryan, executive director, Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention presents opening remarks at "Joyful Giving."

It was a night of live entertainment and solicitations at “Joyful Giving,” the annual cocktail fundraiser of the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP) that supports its Emergency Financial Assistance (EFA) program.

Decked in royal blue and gold, the auditorium of the United Steelworkers Hall in Toronto welcomed several patrons on November 16 to help raise much-needed funds for its clients.

“EFA provides important practical supports to our clients in times of financial hardship. Each year our EFA program provides more than $15,000 in assistance to our clients living with HIV and supports expenses such as winter clothes, transportation, childcare, immigration expenses, etc. The financial support the program provides has a big impact in the lives of the clients we support,” says Shannon Thomas Ryan, executive director of the organization.

He said for many of its clients, Black CAP is a home and also a family for people who don’t have family.

Board chair, Andrew Campbell, commended the agency for its strong leadership and strong followership. He emphasized the importance of supporting community.

“We have to support our own,” said Campbell, noting that 2019 will mark the 30th anniversary of Black CAP and that plans are already underway to celebrate the milestone.

The evening was complemented by performances of singers, Canadian Urban Music Award winner Ray Robinson, Julia Tynes and Aria Zenua, a silent auction, a raffle, and music by DJ Blackcat.

David Dk Soomarie, now a member of staff at Black CAP as MSM outreach coordinator, said he was once a client of the agency after he came visiting Toronto from Trinidad in August 2016 and eventually decided to stay.

He said it was because of the agency that he felt the need to stay and he was warmly greeted at the office by Ryan.

“As soon as I walked through the door I felt a distinct kind of energy – a community. I felt at home.”

Soomarie, who was involved in an NGO in Trinidad for six years, said he decided to stay after determining that he was going to be of value here.

Photo credit: Black CAP  Patrons, staff and volunteers enjoying "Joyful Giving."

Photo credit: Black CAP

Photo credit: Black CAP

Chris Leonard, program director, reminded patrons that their donations go solely to support clients with application fees, access to medication, winter clothing and help to ease the financial burden of clients.

Cecile Peterkin, vice chair of the board of directors, expressed her thanks at the end of the formalities. The host for the evening was Dewitt Lee.

Founded in 1989, the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention has worked for 29 years to curb the HIV epidemic in Toronto’s African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities.

It is the largest service provider of its kind in Canada and is guided by the motto, “Because All Black People’s Lives Are Important,” a reminder of the importance of its commitment to these communities. 

Its mission is to reduce the spread of HIV infection within Toronto’s Black communities and to enhance the quality of life of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

 “HIV/AIDS is spreading quickly in Toronto’s Black communities and we believe that our work is more important than ever,” notes the organization.

“At this time, ACB people account for almost one-third of all new HIV infections in Ontario; in the early nineties we made up only one-tenth of new HIV infections. Issues of HIV-related stigma and discrimination, homophobia, anti-Black racism, immigration, poverty, and barriers to social inclusion also continue to make our work harder,” says Black CAP.
The agency is a community of outreach experts, support specialists, and activists dedicated to improving health outcomes for ACB people who are living with, and affected by, HIV. 
[This story has been published in the North American Weekly Gleaner, Dec. 6-12, 2018.]


Tuesday 4 December 2018

Obaaberima is Insightful in its Powerful Storytelling

By Neil Armstrong
A Review

Photo credit: Jeremy Mimnagh  Tawiah Ben M'Carthy in the production Obaaberima at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto.


In the hands of Tawiah Ben M’Carthy, Obaaberima is a masterpiece drawing us into his powerful storytelling, superb acting, and the skillful interweaving of live music, lighting and set design in its execution.

The writer and performer uses his voice, movement and dance to transport us from the present into the past ( a flashback for us to understand the now), and to play not only the central character, Agyeman, but also the roles of multiple characters in Agyeman’s life.

Imprisoned in Canada for committing a violent crime, a young man from Ghana tells his cellmates a story on the eve of his release. While there is risk in sharing his tale, he must tell it to be truly free. Through storytelling, dance, and live music, Obaaberima chronicles a young African-Canadian’s journey across continents, gender, race, and sexuality.

M’Carthy’s theatricality on stage evokes the moods that enhance the story of Obaaberima – from the curtailment of cultural mores to fully express one’s self, to the acceptance of self and living authentically.

When translated from the Twi dialect in Ghana, obaaberima is a derogatory slang term which means girlboy or girly-boy.

While Agyeman enthralls us from a prison cell, his embodiment of all the characters from his childhood to his adulthood, in Ghana and in Canada, and grappling with gender, race, and sexuality underscores the mastery of M’Carthy’s performance.

Agyeman tries to understand the duality of his sexual identity and the roles or masks he wears to fit into places while hiding his ‘otherness.’

In Obaaberima, the main character notes that where he is from in Ghana when a child is born the child is kept indoors for seven days.

“If that child makes it through the first week, then the beginning of their life is marked by a ceremony called “outdooring”: a naming ceremony at which the child is brought out of the house, is introduced to family, friends, and the community,” says Agyeman in the opening of the play.

M’Carthy plays the roles of Opayin, a tailor, Sibongile (Agyeman’s female alter ego), and Nana Osei, a male schoolmate, both of whom he falls in love with but eventually loses in his deceitful efforts to be with both.

In Canada, he continues this dual role by loving Ayele, a Ghanaian woman and Elijah, a Canadian man from North Bay.

The cycle of deceit continues until Agyeman realizes that he has to do his own revelation and decides to reintroduce himself to the world as Sibongile.

“This is my outdooring. The doors are about to open, and I can no longer slide through. The doors are about to open, and I need to be seen. Watch me walk,” says Sibongile at the end.

Photo credit: Jeremy Mimnagh  Tawiah Ben M'Carthy in Obaaberima which runs until December 9, 2018 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto.


The live music of award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Kobèna Aquaa-Harrison complements the narrative aptly and the direction of Evalyn Parry expands the action within the restrictive to an expansive imagination of this journey.

The creativeness of set and costume designer Camellia Koo and lighting designer Michelle Ramsay adds to the dramatics that unfold onstage.

After its successful premiere in 2012 and winning three Dora Awards in 2013 for outstanding production, outstanding sound design/composition, and outstanding lighting design, it is fitting that Buddies in Bad Times Theatre chose to include Obaaberima in its 2018-19 season.

It’s a wonderful production worth seeing and M’Carthy deserves every accolade he has received since his creation hit the stage in 2012 and has toured across Canada.

Obaaberima, which was the first show to have been developed through Buddies residency program, runs until Sunday, December 9 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

It’s a must-see event in Toronto -- go see it before it ends. M’Carthy has chosen to chart his own course in this unique production. I can’t wait to see what next he’ll offer us in the future.