By Sheldon Taylor
The death of Caribana embodies a wider set of losses African and Caribbean peoples now suffer and have experienced over the past five decades in major urban Canadian landscapes like Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. Gone are the days of Africville in Nova Scotia and a thriving Little Burgundy in Montreal where black people, mainly poor and working class, while raising their children remained hopeful about their tomorrows.
Under such conditions they celebrated their religious faiths and came to grips with how their lives were seriously affected by ruthless city brokers and commercial interests aided by boneheaded politicians who willingly hawked up and spat in their direction. Yet even when facing such deleterious circumstances many African Canadians found ways to rise above and certainly adapt to their situation.
The irreverence coming their way was not understood, but was tolerated, since like other poor and marginalized peoples in Canada, Blacks could do little to turn the disdain from the broader society into respect. While there were no longer spittoons and chamber pots for them to empty, nonetheless, remaining true to the belief of turning the other cheek, many Blacks suffered through untold horrors at the hands of the very people in whose houses they prepared meals, made beds, provided shoulders on which fragile wives shared secrets about miserly and disloyal husbands, and reared the children of these families who went on to achieve successes their own children would never experience.
The psychology of so much hurt and pain has left its mark in African-Canadian households where children see their parents’ struggles firsthand which by now should have ended. As such these children are ever present when the discussions turn to another can’t do. They attend schools where they sit in classrooms filled with peers from seemingly can-do homes. Why not us too thoughts have affected the black youth psyche in Canada. Mental illness is seldom spoken of in any Canadian home, least so in households where challenges and successive generations of age-old tribulations have turned discussions to a relative or a friend’s schizoid or manic depressive behaviour.
There is no need to quote any study or authority here to claim: “Mental illness is likely a factor in some, if not many’ African-Canadian homes. Social workers, educators and other professionals regularly come in contact with the resulting manifestations of this reality. Furthermore, while it is true racism is a causal factor in the number of Blacks who serve time in Canada’s prison systems, the high number of black detainees in the country’s prison population suggests other reasons including behavioural issues play a role in their incarceration. It is likely that there is a strong co-relationship between ability, potential, skills set and unfulfilled ambitions, (especially where failure to realize rising ambitions occur because of racial factors), and diminished identity and economic class.
Not long ago stories made the rounds in some black Toronto circles of sleeping car porters who were as talented as white colleagues with whom they had once been friendly. In their adult life these black men were passed over for opportunities they saw white men in particular gaining access to then using their privilege based on nature’s passport (skin colour) to their advantage. So apparent were the injustices that Blacks would speak of this or that white person getting a job on Bay Street while a black person with superior abilities ended up doing hard time cleaning railway cars or shining shoes on the railroad. “Remember so and so?” the conversation would advance. “Well, he read more books in the Toronto library than most people did, yet was forced to work for The Man for chump change. No one cared to reward him for his intelligence or capabilities. No wonder in the end he went nuts.” If not crazy, some of these individuals surely drowned their sorrows in drink and gambled their lives away.
Currently in Canada, the dead weight carried by black people with lives unfulfilled, accomplishments deferred and dreams that have turned into nightmares serve as a yoke around their necks. No matter how tirelessly they work in pursuit of unending ambitions, recognition for them is unregistered in the land of the Maple Leaf. Loss remains at the door, not just as a result of death and abandonment, but also because of what was worked hard for is then unachievable due to the hush-hush issues of race, class and skin colour. Making it in Canada, for other than those men and women with majority status, some people believe, requires one becoming a “honourary white.
It is a belief that has made its way into black youth discourse some of who equate doing well in school, with acting white. Only the other day after hearing this claim, a black educator who worked hard to earn a PhD stood in amazement, that if she had dentures they would have fallen out of her mouth. Such a circumstance means though existing in subtle forms, and increasingly even with the old stereotypes being challenged, especially by younger Whites and Blacks, a form of apartheid has existed and is still very present in a country thought of internationally as one of the best places in which to live.
England has become further mired in social strive with the summer 2011 disturbances and riots in some of its most culturally diverse cities. Some people on this side of the Atlantic thank God no such occurrences credited to hooliganism are happening here. But greed and you-don’t-matter are attitudes the Canadian ruling elites show as part of their contempt for everyone who is less privileged than the lotus eaters populating their in-group. The same sociological conditions apparent in English cities exist in many Canadian urban areas, such as: exploitation of the poor and working classes; inadequate housing; can’t hear you for seeing your blackness; employment based on whom one knows, and the historic denial that no racism exists in Canada.
Council homes are called social housing in Canada; ghettoes are referred to in Toronto as poorer areas of the city; mismanaged and ineffective schools are known as inner city schools and “them and us” are used to distinguish the poor from the rich. Also black is now a metaphor distinguishing a group of Canadians from their white counterparts. Since the mid-1990s, the crass political atmosphere created by white voter backlash has given some credence to the myth that blacks are welfare cheats.
In other words, sociological labeling caused an acute entrenchment that has helped to divide cities like Toronto where many Blacks are on the wrong side of power and influence. Marginalization has further diminished their status to the extent that many of them rather than fighting back have instead switched off and are refusing to come out of their corner. Having their voices absent from the discourse affecting their lives is disconcerting and dangerous. In the past, what has made a marked difference is a willingness by some Blacks to respond to how they were publically misrepresented. This loss of a public voice has resulted in many black people being afraid to speak out. Seeing themselves as vulnerable has added to the belief that publically expressing opinions would make them targets of their employers, media and colleagues.
Fortunately, other than minor dust ups like the so-called “Yonge Street Riots” (1992), and the Cole Harbour District High School disturbances (1997 and later) in Nova Scotia, riots are believed by the poor to be un-Canadian. Could be as well, as the 2010 G20 disturbances illustrated the swift reaction by law enforcement, the ability of fringe elements to high jack peaceful protests and the knee-jerk willingness of the public to support police tactics, rightly or wrongly, serve as a deterrent to any outpouring of dissent.
The frustration: bottled up anger brought on by social and economic exploitation and the stereotyping that exists may not manifest in dramatically public displays of overt aberrant behaviour; nonetheless, the results are similar. Mental disorders, school dropouts, failure to participate in the political system, limiting one’s self to distinctive neighbourhood boundaries; struggling to survive in communities with less than adequate social services, learned helplessness, and the lack of a strong publicly represented voices for example, are issues that dehumanize and cause immeasurable losses to Blacks in Canada. Not in the least being mortality rates that remain higher than the general Canadian population.
Lest we forget the historic struggles associated with black and or African survival were undertaken on the basis of every person’s right to live in freedom and justice. Later on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) recognized what black people had been demanding for generations, including, the, “equal inalienable rights of all men [and women] of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Black people’s struggles have not been limited to any defined battlefield. In Canada, their metaphoric Plains of Abraham remains soiled with dashed hopes and passions and is wet with their blood, sweat and tears.
The struggles associated with African freedom in North America have often been played out in spaces that with the passage of time are turned into battlefields: workspaces; public spaces; playgrounds and schools in which children of African descent are not recognized and validated by many of their teachers for example. But even when victory is realized, it comes with a cost. Viola Desmond’s battle against racism associated with second class seating for black people in Nova Scotia’s New Glasgow’s Roseland Theatre in 1946 is still being played out; only now under different circumstances.
For people of African descent in Canada are not openly barred from public places, but in being treated as second class citizens their financial circumstances quite often serve as a barrier to equal access under the law. The policy may no longer be openly “WHITES ONLY.” But those in charge make darn sure it becomes more of an effort for African Canadians to be accorded an equal welcome. After all, they have not been afforded the quasi luxury of being, “Honourary Whites.”
The idea of having to fight for what others take for granted, and once securing the victory struggling to keep it causes embitterment and often provokes neurotic behaviour. It is not enough for a black person to achieve a desired outcome since ownership may be questioned by any white person in authority. Before his death a distinguished surgeon owned a home with his wife and family in an upscale part of Toronto. His problem was that as a black man taking a stroll through the community his taxes helped to upkeep summoned the attention of the police.
Time and time again he had to prove his right to walk the streets of his neighbourhood. He would be driven back to his house to prove that he did live in the Lilly White and pristine community. One does not have to be a lawyer to understand how this man’s rights were being violated. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) enshrine as “fundamental” his right to peaceful assembly and freedom of movement. But in being stopped he was reminded it mattered who wished to exercise such a right in the area in which he lived. At any time his presence and movements in Toronto were not based on rights but a privilege that could easily be taken away.
In other words, at the whim of whomever he could suffer a loss of dignity and freedom. It is this vulnerability and sudden loss of status that cause people of African descent to feel both resentment and embitterment. Bitterness and mental anguish come about with this long ending struggle to achieve, and when the victory is realized the outcome takes on the scenario where the victor is likened to runner in the relay who thinks the baton has been properly passed to him only to discover he has been charged with a violation of some kind. This is why some people of African descent rationalize that abandoning the goal is easier than achieving it since the prize can be so easily nullified.
Nowhere is this damaging situation more apparent than with young people who are implored to stay in school, study diligently and achieve even in the face of devastating odds. But the classroom for many black students is not a welcoming space. Often educators do not effectively instruct them. Many black students find teachers who are only too willing to show them how inferior African-based cultures are. When visitors are brought into the school the African presence is invalidated with rude and negative references to their black youth identity. The sad part is: with all the black legal minds in cities like Toronto, negligent educators and boards of education have not as yet been seriously legally challenged as violators of the common trust and of poorly protecting black students’ right to receive effective measurable and equitable instructions in the classroom.
Rightwing public policies have further contributed to an undermining of black learner outcomes. For some time and until the mid-1990s, anti-racist education policies had been implemented and strongly supported by the Ontario government. With the advent of a fanatical rightwing political agenda in the province, among the first things to go was antiracist education. This meant many teacher education candidates and practicing teachers lessened or abandoned their commitment to antiracist education policies.
As the teaching ranks swelled with new teachers, many of who were newer immigrants, the void where such policies and instruction was concerned caused a reverting to the old teacher instruction method: implementation of the top down education approach.
Student-centred learning now had more to do with creating a pyramid strategy to curriculum interpretations and outcomes in the classroom. At the bottom were the harder to teach and supposedly difficult to learn students. At the top were students who excelled with a minimum of interaction and involvement from their teachers. This classroom method sorely affected many black students within the Toronto District School Board. The results are publicly known: poorer graduation, higher dropout rates and severe tensions between schools and black parents.
So it becomes easier for some black students to abandon the classroom for elsewhere. Soon, with all its entrapments, elsewhere, leads to a brush with the criminal justice system. The loss for these African-Canadian youth is multidimensional: loss of identity; loss of self-worth; loss of an education; loss of the ability to learn skills; greater likelihood of being part of riskier peer groups; entry into the workforce at a later stage in life, meaning: diminished earning power and loss of income, and once incarcerated the loss of personal freedom. All of which also colours one’s perspective and life experiences. The key word here again is loss.
Several years ago an African-Canadian entrepreneur returned to his old Toronto neighbourhood where he opened a family restaurant. To his surprise very few of his friends supported his new enterprise. One of them was heard to remark how after growing up there, and moving on, he couldn’t find any reason to return to what for him was a much hated location. He disdained his childhood and recollected being reared near rats and of smells he had to put behind him. So it was not possible to be a patron to his friend’s endeavour since going out to eat had to be a wholesome experience, and despite the restaurant’s enticing cuisine, all he could think of was his bad memories of the area.
The old neighbourhood had been a battleground for his family and for him. And after the struggle to leave, there was no urge to go back to that which he had fought so hard to escape from. It had been his prison from which a way out had to be found. Having done so it was easier to develop a sense of amnesia and distance from the neighbourhood in which he spent some of his formative years. This was a loss he could live with. Since for him there really wasn’t any joyful childhood home with sweet memories to go back to. There was no rhyme or reason to attempt to walk again in the same miseries he associated with that part of his youthful experience.
There is also another kind of loss. In this instance it often turns out to be based on a misguided desire to reclaim what Canada has not turned out to be. Some immigrants of African descent speak of permanently going to the land of their birth. If they make this dream a reality they are surprised by what awaits them when they arrive “back home.” It becomes clear that all they imagined had long ago disappeared; or never existed in the first place. This is the type of loss hastens their willingness to return to Canada and live in less than an idyll set of circumstances.
Earlier on the idea of loss was associated with Toronto’s Caribana festival with the new moniker, Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Toronto. The name change is more than a mouthful for many loyal supporters. Quite a lot of feedback suggests as entertaining and culturally rich as the newly named venture remains, it may be moribund; or is already extinct. Caribana did allow growing numbers of immigrants from 1967 onwards along with African Canadians, some of who shared Caribbean heritage and African Americans to experience carnival Caribbean style in Toronto streets. Caribana was a monument not only to the celebration of culture, but the festival embodied the coming together and the country’s embracement of multiculturalism.
The festival’s success however was soon measured in its ability to draw tourist dollars to the city. While the organizers and the creative impressionists, artists and entertainers gave unselfishly of their talent with little remuneration, as the revelers and onlookers grew in number, the money hoarders were busy finding the means to exploit one of the world’s most successful cultural ventures. Needless to say here that many of the people who looked to the annual event as a respite drifted away as commercial interests gutted Caribana. Now the festival is a shell of what it used to be. Although it is still said to be a Caribbean Carnival event, fact is: it is no longer so. One is justified in asking: Would such a loss be possible if a cultural group other than Blacks had such a strong identity with the festival?
The idea of loss both private and public has historically plagued African-Canadian communities. Africville is part of such a Canadian tragedy. Governmental forces in Nova Scotia, aided by urban planners and commercial interests destroyed that century old black community. This resulted by the early 1970s in Africville although living on in the minds of its former residents, being deliberately and wantonly destroyed. Being forced out and having to make way for urban development is not a new phenomenon for African Canadians. Having lived in spaces considered to be rundown and suited only for the poor and lower classes, then with the shifting sands of commercial opinion, Blacks have repeatedly found themselves on the wrong end of the moving cart, dump truck and builders’ wrecking ball.
Southwestern Ontario provides a case-in-point. It is in this area where many Blacks, most of who were or are descendents of fugitives from slavery took flight via the Underground Railroad and discovered how easily they could be moved or duped off the land their families had fought hard to secure. So perverse was the move to displace them from their communities where they had bought and paid for property that not even were their church congregations safe from the land syndicates whose principals wished to have their geographic locations for their avaricious uses. If while strolling down University Avenue you’re fortunate to be in the company of an old black Toronto resident, as stories are told of sites now filled with other people’s buildings, the extent of this Canada-wide displacement and loss becomes unimaginable.
Time and time again this pattern of settlement and removal, saving and sacrificing for, warding off the sheriff from foreclosure, meeting the city’s urge of the time: supporting city beautiful trends; rezoning; pavement expansion; building codes’ stipulation, etc., whatever they had to do, it was done in the name of investing in property and leaving a footprint. In the end however, the builders, moneyed interests and supposedly city fathers behaved like waves rushing against the sand and wiping the black footprint from Canada’s shores.
Nothing was safe and held sacred as long as it came with the prefix black: black-owned building; black-owned land; black-owned church, black-owned business. They were all up for grabs because part of owning something; “ownership:” is being able to protect it. And not having the law on their side black people when challenged often had to step aside. A black entrepreneur recollected, in the 1930s when he tried to set up a dry cleaning business in Toronto, his vulnerability was furthered by the city’s decision to send in the inspectors to shut him down. When that was not effective enough, a visit was paid to his creditors.
But as well, sometimes, black property owners have not been as astute as they could be in securing what they have worked hard for. The best example of this shortcoming is the one time Universal Improvement Association (UNIA) building located 355 College Street near Spadina Avenue in an area near where many black Toronto residents once lived and in some cases worked.
The building bought in the late 1920s became a landmark associated with the city’s black community. To most of those who went there it was more than an edifice. Many political deliberations were held within its walls and long before jazz musician Miles Davis walked its flight of stairs to jam with local musicians in the 1950s, when one said, “meet me at the hall” it had to be the 355 College Street that was being referred to. It was a community centre, a place where countless young boys and girls learned to play musical instruments and attend dances under adult supervision. The UNIA building was a meeting point in which Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey held his School of African Philosophy in 1937. However, later on the building’s financial status after its mortgage had already been paid off returned to dire financial circumstances resulting in its sale in 1980.
Having been bought for less than $20,000 in the 1920s, the almost $200,000 the building was sold for would seem on the surface to be a savvy business decision. The descendents of women like Mrs. Sobers, Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Kirkwood who kept the UNIA afloat in the 1940s and 1950s, and beyond could, if they were not gracious, say otherwise. Transferring the building to other than black ownership was both a physical and psychological loss for many black Torontonians.
The sale of the UNIA building meant the only other major building landmarks left that were associated with the prewar black Toronto community were the ones housing the British Methodist Church Episcopal Church located on Shaw Street and the African Methodist Church building on Soho Street. The latter was also sold. Although the black identified Home Service Association was established as a social welfare organization in the 1920s control of a building located at 941 Bathurst Street occurred after the Second World War.
The BME Church building was destroyed by fire under what some people say was “questionable circumstances.” As was the case of the UNIA, when the BME was no more the loss was not just of a building that ceased to be black-owned. As important, if not more so was the historical legacy that was destroyed with these losses. These buildings as had been the case with another earlier BME Church edifice on Chestnut Street served as testaments to the faith black people clutched in their bosoms and certified the hope which over many generations had helped to sustain them.
They were institutions built, bought and paid for with black, blood, sweat and tears. Yet in the end these properties slipped from black people’s hands with less than a whimper of sound from members of Toronto’s black community. Contrast this attitude with that of African Nova Scotians who have made sure their government not only remembers the tragedy of Africville, but responds to it by repairing some of the physical and psychological damage done in the name of wider public progress.
So it was a shame that after acquiring another building which in the 1990s housed the Marcus Garvey Centre 1990s, it too was lost. That building had been acquired with the assistance of educator and community worker Lennox Farrell and the City of Toronto’s support. But the centre was unable to be financially sustained by its membership. It was taken away some years later by City Hall. The building housing the old Home Service Association, a social welfare community run organization location at 941 Bathurst Street suffered a similar fate. So much of what embodies the black Canadian experience has been and continues to be lost, stolen or burnt.
While Toronto was no picnic for black people, those who were born here before the outbreak of the Second World War remember their parents’ struggles to stakeout and maintain a presence in a white sea of hostility. In those days the colour contrast was clearer between blacks and whites. The few others evident in “Toronto-the-Good” were seldom seen and usually not heard from. The internment of the Japanese during the Second World War in Canada did not help the situation any. So the silent minorities, some of the black old-timers claim to remember hearing them express under their breath, “thank God for the Negroes.”
Now it is the other way around. Blacks while they look on in amazement are the silent group, paying homage to the groundswell of gravitas some members of these other groups are displaying. This has affected the psyche of people of African descent. Loss of identity, voice and status has left many of them further disadvantaged.
The problem of loss also extends to the steady stream of young Blacks leaving cities like Winnipeg for supposedly greener pastures in Toronto. If as a consequence of outcomes precipitated by the Arab Spring Tunisian boat people after reaching Lampedusa Island off the coast of Italy are smart enough to call home and advise their friends and relatives that daring boat trip isn’t worth it, why are young Blacks not being advised to stay home?
Simply put, it is because staying in places like Winnipeg where the black identity has been marginalized is not an option. The choice for them is like the one taken by the individual mentioned before who loathed returning to his downtown community, let alone patronize his friend’s restaurant. Going elsewhere is akin to the 19th-century fugitives from American slavery who wished to start over by settling for anywhere but where they felt trapped and persecuted.
The irony is that young black adults who called Winnipeg home were at least psychologically forced to leave to validate themselves. In the case of the doctor who lived in the affluent neighbourhood who was asked to validate his presence, he had to be taking back home within his neighbourhood by the police to show he belonged there. However, it has become harder to find comfort in the space many Blacks call home in Canada. For home is not just a physical space. It is also psychological; social; it exists within boundary lines with signposts and comfort zones. But as these cardinal points are dismantled by powerful forces and interests who in the name of turning the black legacy on its head, there is an abiding impression in the wider community that less value exists in having a viable black presence in cities like Toronto.
The problem therefore for Blacks in Canada is situational and result in loss and confusion. There is no wondering therefore why the black Canadian identity as a consequence of loss is in crisis. The problem is compounded in Canada, a country where its idylls do not match its vision. As federal New Democratic Party leader, Jack Layton wrote before his untimely death in his final letter to Canadians: “Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world.” But then he reminds us, we are not there as yet: “We can be a better one,” he wrote. For our nation, Canada, needs to be “– a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity.” How will we live up to his dream? How will white Canadians be made to understand that African Canadians are Canadians too? When will the mounting tide of loss for African Canadians end?
© Sheldon Taylor September 2011
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