Dynamic Jamaican-Canadian Storyteller Adds YouTube Channel

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed        Sandra Whiting, storyteller, speaker and event host

Storytelling is at the heart of everything Sandra Whiting does and now she has added “Sandra Seh,” her new YouTube Channel where she shares her opinions on various matters.

 

The storyteller, speaker and event host says her mother was very good at storytelling when conversing with her during her childhood in Jamaica. On immigrating to Canada many years ago, Whiting met Dan Yashinsky, a well-known Canadian storyteller, author, and community organizer. 

 

It was while attending a festival he organized just to listen to the wordsmiths that she started falling in love with hearing stories again. 

 

“I had always been a reader. I can still remember the feel of those old books in the library and getting into the stories so it’s been a long time,” she says noting that, “From I learn to read and learn to hear words and learn to hear stories I’ve loved them.”

 

Her family required that everyone shared whatever they were experiencing so storytelling felt very natural to her.

 

Whiting says whenever she talks, people want to listen, and sometimes individuals remind her of things she told them twenty years ago.

 

For many years, Whiting has worked in arts and culture at the Harbourfront Centre, Obsidian Theatre, Factory Theatre, Jamaican Canadian Association and other diverse cultural organizations and events in Canada.  

 

“I get a huge kick out of it. I feel so pleased to be asked and my view of it, especially as an emcee, is that I want the audience to experience the best of what is being presented,” says the court interpreter for Jamaican Patois/Creole.

 

She conceived Kuumba — the longest  running Black History (African Heritage) programme at a major cultural institurion in the city.

 

While Zoom has made it more difficult to engage people, she still hears from participants that they felt warm like everyone was in the same room.

 

Whiting sat on many boards but has stepped back to allow others to fill those roles, however, she is still involved in things that pique her interest.

 

Having embraced social media and digital technology quite a while ago, she says pivoting during the COVID-19 pandemic was not unusual. 

 

“It just made me realize one must embrace what’s new. I don’t understand a lot of things but one thing I also know — find people who know and get them to help you because more people don’t understand things than we think.”

 

Whiting is pleased that she has the ability competent and patient young people to help her. While conscious of the fact that she can reach other people through these media, she wonders if they really hear.

 

During Black History Month, she launched “Sandra Seh” because the month inspires and showcases Black Canadians. Although well aware that Black History is to be supported 365 days a year, her view is that February is “our Christmas.”

 

She says “Sandra Seh” was on her bucket list for a while and she figured now was the time to do it. 

 

“It has reinvigorated me, honestly, amazingly,” says Whiting who thanks her friend, photographer Michael Chambers, for helping her set up a mini studio in her home and did the lighting and her make up.  He also recorded the sessions on her cell phone. Whiting wants people to subscribe to her channel and to share it with others. 

 

Using the Jamaican proverb, “Mout mek fi talk; story jump out!” — she says “our mouths are made to talk and we must share our stories.” Every time she sits down, she writes her thoughts and then records the various topics inspired by lived experiences. 

 

Recently, Whiting signed on with the Black Business and Professional Association to do a project with Toronto’s Little Jamaica in the summer. They will organize a food festival on the street on the Labour Day-long weekend in September. 

 

Their aim is to animate the street and Whiting is planning a clean up of the area on the Victoria Day-long weekend in May. She is inviting people from the community to come out and help to show that they are invested because the community has fallen on hard times. Many of the businesses have been affected by the construction of the Eglinton Light Rail Transit, which started in 2011, the reduction of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and regulations closing businesses for long periods during the COVID-19 pandemic.