Art Gallery of Ontario Exhibition Showcases the Caribbean and Its Complex History

By Neil Armstrong

Ebony G. Patterson. ...three kings weep..., 2018. three-channel digital colour video 

projection with sound, Running Time: 8 Minutes, 34 Seconds. Purchase, with funds 

from the Photography Curatorial Committee, 2020. © Ebony G. Patterson, courtesy Monique 

Meloche Gallery, Chicago. 2019/2469 

 

 

In 2019, when the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) acquired the Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs (1840-1940), I visited the museum to see some of these images of Caribbean life and history.

 

There was a promise of an exhibition in the future in which these photographs would be in dialogue with later works. That was fulfilled in September 2021 when Fragments of Epic Memory opened. It is curated by Julie Crooks, Curator of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, formerly the AGO’s Associate Curator of Photography. This is the first exhibition of the new Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora that was established in 2020.

 

On entering the AGO, one does not have to search for the exhibition as it declares itself with “Moko Jumbie,” a newly commissioned work by the British-Trinidadian visual artist, Zak Ové. The18-foot-high mixed media sculpture greets you in Walker Court, the AGO’s atrium.

 

Ové depicts a stilt-walking figure central to carnival celebrations in Trinidad and other Caribbean islands. “A guardian who travelled to the region to protect enslaved peoples from from evil, Moko Jumbie blends African diasporic mythologies in Central Africa, “Moko” refers to a healer, while “Jumbie” is a Caribbean term for spirits,” notes the description of the installation. 

 

In this work, Ové sees “a joyous freedom, hope for a better life, and the physical representation of walking tall toward a brighter future.”

 

This introduction is a big and warm welcome to the main exhibition on the fifth floor showcasing the Caribbean and its diaspora. 

 

Showcasing selections from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s recently acquired Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs, Fragments of Epic Memory presents works that trace the region’s history from the immediate post-emancipation period into the twentieth century.

 

“As photographic technology became more available during the late 1800s, the camera was quickly taken up as a primary tool of the colonial gaze. While these photographs offer a rare opportunity to bear witness to the conditions of Caribbean life in the colonial environment, they also present gaps, silences, and erasures.

 

“Works by modern and contemporary artists of Caribbean descent as well as studio and family photographs are displayed in dialogue with the colonial-era objects, often serving as a necessary counterpoint. This presentation reveals how historical narratives, representation, and notions of freedom are constantly revisited, reimagined, and reclaimed in different periods, underscoring the nuances that shape the work of artists from the Caribbean and its diaspora.”

 

Although these more than 30 artists of Caribbean descent are separated by time, geography, and language, “their works respond to conventional historical representations by presenting new perspectives on and from the region – its geography, its people, its culture, and its histories.”

 

Fragments of Epic Memory blends historical and contemporary narratives, presenting more than 200 photographs from the AGO's Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs alongside paintings, sculpture, and video works by modern and contemporary Caribbean artists that show how the region’s histories are constantly revisited and reimagined through artistic production over time.

“The story of the Caribbean, the diaspora and its artists aren’t one story, but a range of histories, media, voices and lived experiences, best understood through the interplay of them all,” says Crooks. “Toronto is also home to one of the world’s largest Caribbean communities, and the work of local artists like Sandra Brewster, Natalie Wood and Vancouver’s Charles Campbell is a significant part of the transnational story we’re telling.”

 

In “Sweet Sugarcane (Female Figure) and “Sweet Sugarcane (Male Figure), Leasho Johnson, a Jamaican visual artist, “blurs the boundaries of the taboo and the “traditional,” challenging conventions around self-expression in the contemporary Caribbean. His playful anime-styled figures engage with ideas around gender, sexuality, colonial violence, Jamaican dancehall culture, and consumerism in Jamaican society.”

 

“In the series, “Sweet Sugarcane,” the male and female figures use a cane stalk as a pole as they deploy titillating dancehall moves. These irreverent, provocative gestures establish the cane field as a place of pleasure and liberation and enable these figures to rupture their ties to slavery,” notes the description of the art.

 

“The Afflicted Yard” by the late Peter Dean Rickards, a self-described “media terrorist,” is included in a space where one can sit, watch and be captivated by the dance moves of the young men outdoors with big speakers in the foreground.

 

Rickards worked in various disciplines and, in the dial-up internet era, helped launch Kingston Signals, a radio show that broadcast live events featuring top dancehall artists. But Rickards’s most notorious accomplishment was “The Afflicted Yard,” an online gallery where he used his own provocative photographs and videos as a counterpoint to stereotypical touristic perceptions of Jamaica. 

 

 

Sandra Brewster’s “Feeding Trafalgar Square” was commissioned for the exhibition. It uses the lens of personal biography to expand the artist’s ongoing investigations into the period of the 1960s and 1970s. “This large-scale photo transfer features Brewster’s mother in the 1970s during a solo trip to London, England, capturing her utter joy in the performance of a universal tourist activity: feeding pigeons.”

 

Born in Toronto to Guyanese parents, Brewster makes multimedia artworks that explore migration and the global movements of Caribbean people. She often focuses on the Black presence in Canada, with a particular interest in the 1960s and 1970s, when the number of people arriving in the country from the Caribbean region more than doubled. 

Paul Anthony Smith.  Untitled, 7 Women, 2019. Unique picotage on inkjet print, colored pencil, spray paint on museum board, 101.6 × 127 cm. The Hott Collection, New York. © Paul Anthony Smith, Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery,          New York 

 

In “Midnight Blue,” Paul Anthony Smith depicts a female Blue Devil, an iconic character in Trinidadian carnival masquerade. 

 

“In the colonial Caribbean, such Black performance traditions were also a tool of cultural resistance that undermined the colonial authorities. While exploring dual identities and his own biography, Smith uses his work to highlight the retention of carnival traditions in the diaspora, boldly underscoring its subversive history while emphasizing the joy and celebration of the performance.” A further exploration of these themes can be seen in Smith’s “Untitled, 7 Women,” which is also in the exhibition.  

 

Using “picotage,” his signature technique, Smith meticulously picks up the emulsion of his pigment prints, obscuring his subjects with textural patterns and limiting the access of those looking from the outside in. 

 

 

Ebony G. Patterson’s “…three kings weep..,” is a multi-channel video installation featuring three tearful subjects in regal dress, and poses important questions about the lack of dignity and humanity with which Black men are so often viewed in our society.

 

Guyanese-born Sir Frank Bowling’s monumental painting Middle Passage, on loan from the National Gallery of Canada, situates faint map drawings of Africa and the Americas atop an abstract sea of yellow and red paint, reminiscent of the Guyanese flag. It has a commanding presence in the gallery.

 

“Maroonscape 1: Cockpit Archipelago,” by Jamaica-born, Victoria-based multidisciplinary artist Charles Campbell, a three-dimensional topographic map inspired by Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, is also included in the exhibition.

 

The exhibition is inspired by the writing of post-war Caribbean writers and poets such as Derek Walcott – who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 and whose Nobel Lecture was titled The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory -- Kamau Braithwaite, and others.

 

The Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs includes studio portraits, landscapes, scenes of bustling markets, labour, industry and tourist views. A small part of the Collection’s 3,500 images, these photographs highlight the work of a range of mainly European and American photographers who were drawn to the region. Shedding light on the monumental changes taking place in the region during the latter part of the 19^th century, these photographs are a visual archive of the colonial legacies inherited by modern and contemporary artists and their descendants. 

The Collection was in part donated by Patrick Montgomery, and in part purchased by the AGO with the generous support from 27 donors, many of whom are members of the Black and Caribbean communities.

 

Fragments of Epic Memory is designed to be immersive and invites visitors to experience the multiple ways of encountering the Caribbean and its diaspora, from the period following emancipation through to today. 

 

The exhibition, which opened on September 1, 2021, runs until February 22, 2022. 

 

It’s a good space to invite family and friends, and to have a conversation about the wonderful creations experienced.

 

 

 Paul Anthony Smith.

Untitled, 7 Women

, 2019.Unique picotage on inkjet print, colored pencil,

spray paint on museum board, 101.6 × 127 cm.

The Hott Collection, New

York. © Paul

Anthony

Smith, Image courtesy of the artist and Jack

Shainman Gallery

, New York

Kelly Sinnapah Mary

,

Notebook

Black and Caribbean Book Affair Celebrates Imagination

By Neil Armstrong

Photo credit: N. Affonso        Myriam J.A. Chancy, author of the novel, What Storm, What Thunder

When the pages of books featured at the 2021 Black and Caribbean Book Affair, October 14 to 17, are turned they will reveal works boldly discussing issues of colour, race, education, discrimination, identity, the COVID-19 pandemic, self empowerment and more at the virtual and hybrid event.

Hosted by A Different Booklist Cultural Centre: The People’s Residence (ADBCC) in Toronto, the annual festival will showcase the new books of 14 authors, 3 editors, lovers of literature, community advocates and a panel discussion to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection at the Toronto Public Library. All of the events will be live streamed on Facebook Live except a ticketed affair with award-winning author Myriam J.A. Chancy.

 

In 1973, Dr. Rita Cox pioneered the Black Heritage and West Indian Resource Collection at Parkdale Branch. It was subsequently established at three other branches: York Woods, 1984; Cedarbrae, 1989; Maria A. Shchuka, 2003.

 

The veteran librarian retired from the Toronto Public Library in 1995, having served as head of Parkdale for 21 years. In 1998, the important resource was renamed the Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection, and two years later renamed in honour of its founder. The Rita Cox Endowment Fund is established within the Toronto Public Library Foundation to support and enhance the growth of the Collection.

 

The Collection features more than 16,000 print and audiovisual materials for adults, children and teens about the Black and Caribbean experience with special emphasis on Canadian material. It is now available at the Parkdale, Maria A. Shchuka, Malvern and Downsview branches.

Photo credit: Neil Armstrong    Olive Senior signs a book for Cherita Girvan Campbell, president of Arts and Culture Jamaica Inc.

 

The Black and Caribbean Book Affair will kick off on the evening of October 14 with a toast to all the Black and Caribbean authors who won prizes this year.

 

In the first wave of the pandemic, Olive Senior, the renowned author of 18 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature and other published work, wrote poems that she shared on social media. They were subsequently published as Pandemic Poems: First Wave.

 

Senior was named Jamaica’s Poet Laureate for 2021 to 2024 on March 17, 2021. Her many awards include Canada’s Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. Her work has been taught internationally and is widely translated.  

 

Senior will discuss her new collection of poems at 7:00 p.m. that evening with Paula de Ronde, founder of Arts and Culture Jamaica Inc.

 

The panel discussion about the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection will happen from 12:00-1:00 p.m. on October 15 with co-moderator and Caribbean culture enthusiast Denise Herrera Jackson. 

 

Educator, arranger and author, Dr. Salah Wilson, will showcase Steelpan Playing With Theory, a steelpan textbook, and The Steelpan Teacher’s Manual on October 15, 3:00-4:00 p.m. in conversation with educator and musician, Ivor Picou.

 

Like Senior, Canute Lawrence, a language and literature teacher for more than three decades who has taught in Jamaica, USA and Canada, has written a collection of poems, Pathology of a Pandemic. Author Gayle Gonsalves will interview Lawrence from 4:30-5:00 p.m.

 

Carl James, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education at York University, is the author of several books, including the recent Colour Matters: Essays on the Experiences, Education, and Pursuits of Black Youth.

 

Photo contributed    Carl James, author of Colour Matters: Essays on the Experiences , Education, and Pursuits of Black Youth

“Based on research conducted in Black communities, along with over thirty years of teaching experience, Colour Matters presents a collection of essays that engages educators, youth workers, and policymakers to think about the ways in which race shapes the education, aspirations, and achievements of Black Canadians. Informed by the current socio-political Canadian landscape, Colour Matters covers topics relating to the lives of Black youth, with particular, though not exclusive, attention to young Black men in the Greater Toronto Area,” notes a synopsis of the book.

From 6:00-7:00 p.m., he will be in conversation with fellow educator, Nigel Barriffe, about the new book.

Myriam J. A. Chancy, Guggenheim Fellow & HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College, has written What Storm, What Thunder, a novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, published by Harper Collins Canada and Tin House in the USA. 

 

Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian/American writer born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and subsequently raised there and in Canada.  After obtaining her BA in English/Philosophy from the University of Manitoba (1989) and her MA in English Literature from Dalhousie University (1990), she completed her Ph. D. in English at the University of Iowa (1994).  

 

The author was awarded the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award for Best Fiction 2010 for her third novel, The Loneliness of Angels (Peepal Tree Press 2010; also shortlisted in the fiction category for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature), garnered a shortlisting for Best First Book, Canada/Caribbean region category, of the Commonwealth Prize in 2004 for her first novel, Spirit of Haiti (London: Mango Publications, 2003), and published a second novel, The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press 2005) to critical praise. All three of her novels are taught at universities and colleges in the US, Canada and the Caribbean.  The Loneliness of Angels was translated into Spanish by LaSiren Press in Colombia in 2020, and into Danish with Rebel With A Cause Press in Denmark, in 2019.

 

Chancy will share thoughts about her book with storyteller and author, Itah Sadu, 7:30-8:30 p.m. This is a ticketed event ($25, which includes a copy of the book) and the Zoom link will be sent to those who purchase tickets. 

 

On Saturday, October 16, programing will start at 10:00 a.m. for an hour with Tania Hernandez ‘Miss Tania Lou,’ author of One Pot: True Stories from Jamaica & Canada (Stories, Recipes, Poems).She will be in conversation with Gayle Gonsalves.

 

Ivelyn Harris is a Jamaican Maroon descendant and has been a traditional herbalist for over 40 years practising from her cottage in the foothills of the Blue and John Crow Mountains.

 

In Healing Herbs of Jamaica, Harris draws on her years of knowledge and experience as a herbalist to share how herbs can enhance health. She will talk about her new book from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

 

Children and their parents will be entertained between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. by authors Ayana Francis and Kodi Dill.

 

Francis’ new book is ABC Where are We? The West Indies and she will be interviewed by Nigel Barriffe from 1:00-1:30 p.m.

 

Follow along with Caiden and Idris as they explore the Caribbean countries and territories through their ABCs! They’ll take you on imaginary adventures - from building pink sandcastles in the Bahamas, hiking Jamaica’s Dunn’s River Falls, to falling in love with the rhythm of Trinidad and Tobago’s steel pan, notes a description of the book.

 

Kodi Dill, educator, spoken word artist and author of Welcome to the Cypher will share the story of his book with author Yolanda Marshall.

 

“Starting with beatboxes and fingersnaps, an exuberant narrator introduces kids in his community to the powerful possibilities of rap, from turning “a simple phrase/into imagery that soars” to proclaiming, “this is a voice that represents me!” As Khodi Dill’s rhymes heat up, the diverse crew of kids—illustrated in Awuradwoa Afful’s bold, energetic style—gain self-confidence and a sense of freedom in this wonderful picture book debut that is perfect for reading aloud,” says publisher Annick Press about the book that will be out in October.  

 

From 2:30 to 3:00 p.m., storyteller Gayle Gonsalves will showcase her new book My Stories Have No Endings with author Yolanda Marshall.

 

 Situated in Antigua, the novel centres around the life of Kai and the voices she hears when she dips her head into the wind that whisper stories from a forgotten past. Gonsalves enriches her narrative by evoking colours, textures and shapes with words. 

 

 

Co-editors Nicole Salmon, Camila Pereira and Nneka Allen will talk with Itah Sadu about Collecting Courage, an anthology of 14 Black fundraisers, from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.

 

“Collecting Courage is a powerful and moving collection of personal experiences written by Black fundraisers that chip away at the idea of an inherent goodness of the charitable sector,” says a synopsis of the book.

 

It notes that, “these personal testimonies document racism, survival and the preeminence of 14 accomplished Black North American fundraisers, 5 from the United States and 9 from Canada.”    

 

 

Rabin Ramah, author of I Only Make Love in Montreal, a collection of stories, will be in conversation with Gayle Gonsalves from 4:30-5:00 p.m.

 

“This stunning debut collection of stories draws heavily on the author’s memories of growing up in Trinidad and explores themes of family, faith, race, child abuse, sexuality, and otherness. 
​
“In one story, a young boy experiences his first signs of love for a man as sinful, terrifying, and evil, resulting in the end of his innocence. In another, a lonely schoolboy is whipped and shamed for soiling his pants, his only companion a cow he calls Mama. 
​
“Heartbreaking yet hopeful, funny yet wise, these stories are infused with the warmth and vibrancy of the Caribbean sun and the insight of a young man who was trying to find love amidst the violence of his childhood,” notes a description of the book.

Photo contributed  Author, poet and historian Afua Cooper

 

To close out Saturday’s programming, historian, poet, and author Afua Cooper, who has contributed to the new anthology Afrikan Wisdom: New Voices Talk Black Liberation, Buddhism, and Beyond (North Atlantic Books) and her daughter, Habiba Cooper Diallo, who has written #BlackInSchool (University of Regina Press) will participate in a book signing and sidewalk party at ADBCC from 5:15-6:15 p.m.

 

“Afrikan Wisdom represents an intersectional, cross-pollinated exploration of Black life–past, present, and future. Award-winning author and editor Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara)’s collection of 34 essays–written by an eclectic and inspirational group of Black thought leaders and teachers–reflects on the unique and multilayered experience of being Black in the world today.”

Photo contributed      Habiba Cooper Diallo, author of #BlackInSchool

 

#BlackInSchool is Habiba Cooper Diallo's high school journal, in which she documents, processes, and resists the systemic racism, microaggressions, stereotypes, and outright racism she experienced in Canada's education system.

 

On the closing day of the Book Affair, October 17, Aina-Nia Ayo’dele will launch her new book, Self: An Inner Journey to Re-Membering Your Power, at The Diner’s Corner, 678 Yonge Street in Toronto. This is a ticketed event with limited seating and those interested should RSVP at aina-nia.com. The event will be live streamed on Facebook Live.

 

The ancient wisdom teacher, leadership coach and spiritual liberation activist is on a mission “to influence individual and institutional change by inspiring everyone to Re-Member their Power.”

 

The first in her 5-part tablet series, the author says, “Self comes from my own journey to remembering my power and the wisdom I have shared with students and audiences across the globe.”

 

* I will be in conversation with Olive Senior, Ivelyn Harris, and will also be a co-moderator of the panel discussion celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection.

Unblind Tibbin Feels Good About His Chances in Federal Election

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed         Unblind Tibbin, candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Humber River - Black Creek, Ontario

With just a few days to go before Election Day, Unblind Tibbin, the Green Party of Canada’s candidate for Humber River – Black Creek, says he has been getting “lots of good support and endorsements” so he thinks things will turn out nicely for him and his campaign team on September 20.

In the 2011 federal election, he was the Greens candidate in York West (now Humber River – Black Creek) where the incumbent Liberal Judy Sgro has been the Member of Parliament since 1999.

 

The other candidates are Rinku Shah of the Conservative Party, Matias de Dovitiis of the NDP, and Raatib Anderson of the People’s Party of Canada.

 

“I think we’ve had 20 years of nothing. Judy has been there doing nothing, she has been misrepresenting the community and like Justin talking a good talk and doing nothing, says Tibbin who is the executive director of the Sierra Leone Union of Canada, and a youth services officer in the Ontario public service where he works with the most challenging youth in Toronto.

 

Tibbin says he wants to empower, especially the youth in the community, to know that they can do things and be engaged in issues that the Green Party is championing such as free tuition, a liveable wage, food security and sustainability, and electoral reform.

 

The equal rights, social justice, sustainable lifestyles and accessibility advocate is bilingual and cares deeply about environmental sustainability, youth and bilingualism. 

He has volunteered in several capacities with many organizations, such as the United Nations Association in Canada where he was the chair of the youth committee.

He is also concerned about childcare, senior care and a liveable wage for seniors, and plans to be engaged in conversations to “move the clock forward.”

Drawing on lessons learned from his campaign ten years ago, Tibbin says he has become more efficient and has a team of specialists with more autonomy to develop some of their ideas. 

 

While canvassing, Tibbin says he has heard from constituents that they are “sick and tired of what is going on and that the pandemic is affecting them negatively,” in terms of being able to afford their day-to-day expenses.

 

They have also complained about the poor state of housing and very little being done to resolve their problems. 

 

“I have lots of those complaints being levied against the landlords and against the system that is currently in place,” says Tibbin, also listing availability of jobs and students being indebted and concerned about how they will pay back the loans they are using to sustain themselves.

 

As a graduate of York University, he is also in touch with students there because the university has 6,000 voters and some of them may not cast their vote for various reasons.

 

For 15 years, the spoken word artist was the host of a radio show, “De Port Au Prince A Bamako,” at CHRY Radio at York University.

 

Tibbin grew up in Switzerland and in north Toronto and has a Masters degree in economics from York University. He went on to work as a French teacher for children, and as a Kwanzaa instructor in the joint Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP) and Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s Mate Maisie program. He is also a published writer, spoken word artist, and martial arts teacher.

He later worked as a program manager at Friends in Trouble where he provided anti-oppression training to Toronto Public Library staff. Tibbin has also worked for the Positive Alternative to Youth Gangs project in the Jane and Finch area where he was in charge of creating holistic self-betterment programs for at-risk youth, including workshops on urban farming, food security and ecological sustainability.

“We need to understand there’s an environmental crisis and we need to go into a carbon neutral society by 2030,” says the former manager of community engagement for the Learning Disabilities Association of Peel Region. 

 

He supports removing subsidies to fossil fuels and investing that money into renewable energy through channels such as incentives to buy electric cars. Tibbin notes that there are companies retrofitting their buildings so that they are more environmentally sound.

 

Lunch programs, accessibility to food, and food security are major concerns in Humber River – Black Creek, especially for young people.

 

“They’re not eating quality food and there are some repercussions from that, they’re suffering lots of ailments which could be proactively negotiated,” says Tibbin who was employed by CUSO International as a youth development worker and spent 18 months in Cameroon and Nigeria teaching and helping to create programs for disadvantaged youth.

 

With his experience working in many different organizations, Tibbin says this will enable him to represent the community well and to get a feel for its pulse when addressing any issues in parliament.

 

He and his team have been targeting community events and places where people gather, and also canvassing virtually.

 

As a Back candidate, Tibbin is encouraging members of the Black communities who might be hesitant to seek political leadership to just do it. 

 

“There is nothing to stop us from going anywhere we want to in this society and doing anything we want. If indeed we have the calling to represent the people and with ethical, sound, political objectives then we are best placed to do that.”

 

Regarding the recent internal leadership challenges faced by Green Party leader, Annamie Paul, he said based on the rule of law she is still the person who is governing the party and still the first Black person who is leading a major political party.

 

“As she’s been demonstrating with her arguments in the debates and with her presence, she’s a person of great value. She’s of course working to establish and make these values more permanent in the Green Party.”

 

Tibbin says the Green Party itself needs to evolve and he thinks Paul is the perfect leader to enable it to grow.

 

On September 12, several organizations collaborated to host the Black Community Federal Election Candidates Meet & Greet virtually.

 

It was an intimate opportunity for community members to engage directly with a number of party leaders and Black candidates from the GTA running in the upcoming election. 

 

“An opportunity to learn more about the various party platform highlights and their personal commitments and motivation for seeking office, working with, and serving the community.  Moreover, it will create an opportunity for community members to learn how they can support their candidate(s) of choice,” noted the promotional material.

 

The organizers were First Fridays, the Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA), the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (ONABSE), Canada's National Black History Month Expo, CAFCAN, Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce (CBCC), and the African-Canadian Entrepreneurs for Success (ACES). 

Two days earlier, on September 10, Operation Black Vote Canada in partnership with the Black Business and Professional Association (BBPA), Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), and Generation Chosen held a virtual Black Leaders Forum.

 

It featured Matthew Green, NDP candidate for Hamilton; Greg Fergus, Liberal candidate for Hull-Aylmer; and Adrian Currie, Green Party candidate for Davenport.

 

 

Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey Continues to Inspire 134 Years After His Birth

By Neil Armstrong

 

One hundred and thirty-four years after his birth and one hundred and seven years after the international organization he founded, Marcus Mosiah Garvey is still positively influencing the lives of many people worldwide.

 

Garvey, who was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica on August 17, 1887, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica. Three years later, he did the same in Harlem, New York.

 

His life and work are documented in books, plays, documentaries and films. A new docufilm, African Redemption: The Life and Legacy of Marcus Garvey, by Jamaica-born, American filmmaker Roy T. Anderson will be screened at upcoming film festivals. A Facebook post on August 15, 2021, noted that “an exclusive invitation-only preview screening of our film in front of a live audience” would be held on August 16 in New York City, a day before Garvey’s birthday. Anderson, director and producer of Black Star Line Films, is also the creator of the 2015 documentary film, Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess. It was co-created with history professor, Harcourt T. Fuller and “unearths and examine the mysterious figure that is Nanny of the Maroons; Jamaica's sole female National Hero, and one of the most celebrated, but least recognized heroines in the resistance history of the New World.”

A few months ago, Anderson allowed me to preview the film and told me that he was really proud of the Marcus Garvey film and had put his “blood, sweat and tears into it.” Garvey’s UNIA had chapters in many countries throughout the world and its work and influence, as well as its advocates, touched the lives of several Black leaders in Canada. The late Bromley Armstrong has included Garvey in his memoir, B. Denham Jolly tells the story of the Garveyite whose rooming house he lived in when he travelled to Toronto in his early years while on holiday breaks from the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, and Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society documents Garvey’s visits to Canada and his support of Emancipation Day events. Cheryl Thompson, an assistant professor in the School of Creative Industries, Ryerson University wrote “Garvey’s place in Toronto history” in Spacing magazine on August 17, 2018. Carla Marano has also written the article “We All Used to Meet at the Hall”: Assessing the Significance of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Toronto, 1900-1950” in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Volume 25, Issue 1, 2014.

In Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, published by The University of the West Indies Press in 2014, Olive Senior notes that while the UNIA was founded in Jamaica in 1914, it “had not really taken off until he established it in the United States in 1917.”

“By the mid-1920s, the UNIA had approximately eleven hundred branches in over forty countries and millions of followers, and Garvey’s message of black self-reliance and racial pride crossed cultural and linguistic barriers.”

Senior states that Garvey’s “strongest support came from expatriate West Indians in places like Panama and Costa Rica, and, later, in Cuba (where there were fifty-two branches), as well as throughout the West Indies.” She notes that from 1918 onwards, Garvey’s ideas “were channelled through his newspaper, the New York-based Negro World.” 

“The fact that it was declared banned literature by many of the colonial governments did not prevent its widespread circulation in the islands, carried there by black seamen. Garvey himself had begun his journey to political consciousness as an emigrant in Costa Rica between 1910 and 1912, working as a timekeeper for the Unite Fruit Company, and he would later return to Central America to empower the workers in these places with his ideas of racial pride,” writes Senior.

So, at age 27, Garvey started the UNIA with his wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey, and twenty-six years later in 1940 at age 52, he died in London, England. He was buried there until his remains would later be re-interred in Jamaica in 1964 at the National Heroes Park. He also became Jamaica’s first national hero in 1969. Much of Garvey’s work in the UNIA was done alongside his wives, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, who were also very involved in the leadership of the organization.

Armstrong, who passed away on August 17, 2018, notes in his 2000 memoir, Bromley, Tireless Champion for Just Causes, written with Sheldon Taylor that when he met community leader Donald Moore in 1950, he enjoyed their discussions.

“Though nearing sixty when I met him, he still professed a commitment to the radical politics of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA. In fact, the Toronto branch of that organization was founded in 1919 in his tailor shop when it was located on Spadina Avenue,” he writes in book published by Vitabu Publications in 2000.

Armstrong notes that Toronto’s only Black lawyer, B.J. Spencer Pitt, became the president of the UNIA in the late 1920s and that its survival “was the product of a small number of men and women who laboured intensely to keep it solvent.” The UNIA members bought the building at 355 College Street and it became “a community centre where Black adults and children went to socialize, attend debates, danced, and played music.”

When B. Denham Jolly arrived in Toronto from his studies in Guelph, Ontario, he sought out “a rooming house on Manning Avenue, near Queen Street, run by a Jamaican woman named Violet Williams (later Blackman, when she married a Barbadian railway engineer.)”

Speaking of Violet, who immigrated to Canada in 1920 as a nanny, he notes that she became a community leader in 1924 when Marcus Garvey visited Toronto to set up a branch of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

“Violet joined the movement and eventually worked her way up to female president. The Toronto chapter grew in importance in the 1930s when the U.S. banned Garvey from entry, and he held his annual UNIA conventions in Toronto in 1936, 1937, and 1938. During the 1937 conference, he conducted a summer school in African philosophy in Toronto, and visited Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. His influence in Canada was enormous,” writes Jolly in his memoir, In the Black: My Life published in 2017 by ECW Press.

Jolly notes that Garvey’s “torch was still burning bright when I arrived in Toronto in spring of 1956, sixteen years after his death; UNIA and Garvey’s philosophy were still thriving in the city, an very much so at Violet’s house on Manning Avenue.” In his search for a summer job, she sent him to meet Harry Gairey, a fellow Jamaican, who was a railway porter, one of Toronto’s leading Black activists, and a leader in the Garvey movement.

The chair that Marcus Garvey sat in at the UNIA Hall in Toronto, Canada, now housed at the Jamaican Canadian Association

Meanwhile, historian Natasha L. Henry in her book, Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada, published by Dundurn Press in 2010 and reprinted recently, notes that Garvey toured Canada, visiting several branches of the UNIA, “including branches in Sydney, Nova Scotia; Toronto; and Montreal. He also fuelled the establishment of new branches.”

Henry notes that the UNIA also participated in Emancipation Day celebrations in Canada, and Marcus Garvey himself was a supporter of Emancipation Day commemorations.

“The aim of the formation of the UNIA was to provide a space in which Blacks could work cohesively to improve their social, political, and economic conditions; to address matters of concern to them locally and globally; and to foster racial pride,” writes Henry. She notes that Bob Marley’s lyrics in Redemption Song originated from a speech delivered by Garvey in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1937, in which he says: “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind….”

In her doctoral thesis, “For the Freedom of the Black People”: Case Studies on the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Canada, 1900-1950, Carla Marano includes the voices of Garveyites such as Marjorie Lewsey, Gwen Johnston and Violet Blackman.

Referencing many sources, including No Burden to Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario 1920s to 1950s, edited by Dionne Brand and published by Women’s Press, Toronto, 1991, and interviews done by others, Marano ensures that the voices of several Garveyites are telling the story of the UNIA in this city.

A tile from 355 College Street, once home of the UNIA Hall, on display at A Different Booklist Cultural Centre. It is imprinted with the UNIA abbreviation.

Tony Martin, the late Trinidad and Tobago-born scholar of Africana Studies and professor and chairman of Black Studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, has several and written several books about Garvey. He wrote a new preface for Amy Jacques Garvey’s The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey or, Africans for the Africans. In Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy, by Marcus Garvey, edited by Martin and published in 1986 by The Majority Press, the professor notes that Garvey’s “years of all-encompassing triumph coincided with his sojourn in the United States, from 1916-1927.”

“The immediate purpose of The Course of African Philosophy was to train a cadre of UNIA leaders who would carry on the great work of the organization after Garvey’s death. Garvey designed the twenty-two lessons in London and took them to Canada, where, from August 24^th to 31^st 1937 he conducted a regional conference for North American members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” writes Martin. For most of September 1937, Garvey trained a select group of UNIA organizers from North America.

The final resting place of Marcus Mosiah Garvey at the National Heroes Park in Kingston, Jamaica

Today, there are many Black community leaders in Canada who follow the philosophy of Garvey and the UNIA in their organizing. There are also authors who continue to reference him in their work. One such is Ian Williams, the Giller Prize-winning author of Reproduction, who in his new book, Disorientation: Being Black in the World, notes the disagreement between Garvey and W. E.B. Du Bois over Pan-Africanism. Published by Random House Canada, the new book will be out on September 21, 2021.