Note: This piece did not make for publication to Toronto Star, Metro News, Share News, Pride and Sway, so here you go...
As an African immigrant to the West Coast of Canada, I had always craved for the East Coast especially after being encouraged on several occasions to visit Toronto for
Caribana; if I wanted to experience Canada’s true cultural mosaic with respect to Caribbean arts and entertainment. As a prospective law student with much excitement, I eagerly went about asking questions about living in Toronto. On one beautiful evening sometime in July whilst walking through the woods in Victoria, BC; I remember designing disturbing images of Toronto in my mind’s eyes as a fellow Volksports walker narrates crime prevalence rates in Toronto to me. He said, “most crimes in Toronto occur in the Jane and Finch area which is separated by only a street from York University.” “Whatever you do try not to cross the line,” he admonished. And, “those crimes are mainly committed by Jamaicans…” Of course, being an old white British descend, I could not have expected otherwise. I nodded as a sign of respect.
It had being almost 7 years of wishful thinking; finally I am going to be a part of this historical international event that has existed since 1967. Whilst researching on Caribana, I found some very interesting information that has siphoned my critical thinking. Caribana is praised for being the largest international cultural festival in North America attracting about 1 .5 million attendees in 2008; in addition to pumping about $100 million in the local Toronto economy. Of the one million attendees 57% are females; 43% are males; 58% are between the ages of 16 to 29 years; 51% have house hold income of over 50,000; 40% have tertiary education, and 64% live in Toronto area. According to the Scotiabank Caribana Sponsorship Package 2009, “festival goers have a high disposable income, are tech savvy, influential and have shown a high propensity to buy brands that visibly support the festival.” Knowledge of these information inherently provokes some hard questioning especially knowing that the Afro-Caribbean community in Toronto is being denigrated to exhibiting relatively high rates pertinent to crimes, single parenthood, teenage pregnancy, secondary school drop out, low admittance to post-secondary institutions, low representations in public offices, amongst others.
The first question is why is Caribana called “Scotiabank” Caribana? According to Wikipedia, in early 2006 Toronto municipal government refused to renew funding for Caribana Cultural Committee due to recurring accounting problems. This explains (in part) the need to Scotiabank support, however, it also necessitate the relevance of conducting further investigations into the nature of the “recurring accounting problems” should the Caribbean community deem it expedient to take full ownership and leadership of Caribana. My research on festivals in Toronto failed to find any other ethno-cultural event that has used a bank or the City of Toronto in the same way that Caribana has; e.g. Scotiabank Chinese Festival. This implies, with some level of exactitude, that the Afro-Caribbean community has serious problems in taking full control of its community. It appears that there must be some external interference at all times to ensure transparency and accountability within Afro-Caribbean communities, which can later lead to exploitation and destruction of local community.
Second major question, how does the Caribbean/Black community benefit in the long-term from Caribana? Apart from the Caribana Arts Group/Yorkgate Mall Scholarship which granted 4 students a total of $3,000 dollars scholarship award in 2006, there appears to be no other support for community development from Caribana. One would imagine that for an event that has the capacity to raise over a million dollar, there would be a significant amount of plans to target local disparities and inequalities that adversely typify the Afro-Caribbean community in Toronto.
A glance at events lined up for Scotiabank Caribana, shows that guests are charged up to $150 to attend the Scotiabank Caribana Gala. Where do the proceeds of such event end up? Especially when the Festival’s website highlights such expensive events with no provision for including underprivileged children or youths in the community, or at least aspiring to recognize the fact that Caribana could offer some form of solution to the myriad of social demise that not only stereotypically characterized the Afro-Caribbean community in Toronto but also adversely stigmatized the community in so many ways.
In an attempt to challenge the Afro-Caribbean community not just in Toronto but all of Canada,
I look forward to the day when Caribana (and other local Afro-Caribbean groups) will move beyond just “entertainment,” “arts” and “cultural identity” toward setting annual trends like constructing multi-purpose community centres for underprivileged black communities, providing full scholarships to vulnerable young people, recognizing and supporting the efforts of innovative Afro-Caribbean individuals and organizations that are working assiduously to penetrate systemic racial and discriminatory barriers of Canada so-called cultural mosaic. For example the Afro Global TV which promises to be the first ever Black TV Station in Canada is one of such distinctive organization that has the potential to raise the profile of the Afro-Caribbean community in Canada but yet is being denied opportunity to broadcast in Canada.
