When I moved to Canada 50-plus years ago, a musical career was not on my radar. Like so many things in my life, it simply happened – I started studying music out of curiosity; answered an ad for musicians on a whim; and one year later, to my surprise and delight, I was earning a living playing music in a small downtown bar six nights a week. Largely propelled by circumstances, my musical career had begun
That small bar was the Bermuda Tavern, and it was the only place offering West Indian music in Toronto. It was owned by a Jewish family; several of the waiters were Macedonian, the two bartenders were born Canadians, the band was a Guyanese and two Trinidadians, and the clientele was a smorgasbord of Caribbean people, some European immigrants, and a sprinkling of intrigued Canadians. “I love the band, but what language are you singing? Spanish?”
We didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but the notion of multiculturalism, now a household word in Canada, was spreading its wings in those exchanges. To the three of us in the band (the other two were Trinis) the Canadian liquor regulations in the bars verged on the comical. It was against the law to order another beer if your glass was more than half full –waiters were fired for ignoring the rule – and during the week bars closed at midnight.
After that, live music had to be played in a restaurant setting, and patrons had to order food in order to be served alcohol; most places got around that by selling crackers and cheese that usually lay on the tables untouched while the glasses clinked. Weeknights in the Bermuda, we moved upstairs to the restaurant at midnight (grumbling at having to move the equipment) and played the final hour there. On Saturday, bars closed at 11:30pm, sharp; not one minute over. Caribbean people were in shock.
Back then, the handful of Caribbean immigrants to the city would have these weekend huddles in their apartments (this week, my place; next week, yours) often in vibrant parties that would rile neighbours and sometimes draw a “turn it down, fellas” from the stern Metro police. On the street, you would go weeks without seeing a black face, or even a brown one.
I remember the first time I encountered a fellow Guyanese on the Yonge Street subway. Both tall, we were shouting at each other over the heads of the other passengers; we got some stern looks and, I suspect, a few “what’s-this-country-coming-to“ musings. In such flashbacks, one can see the streams of influence the immigrants were generating.
Take the Bermuda Tavern. The law said you couldn’t dance in bars, but Caribbean people dance if you just knock two sticks together, so our followers would get up and dance. The Jewish owner would go berserk; he was afraid of being charged by the police.
He would rush to one group, get them to sit, move to quell some other dancers, and the first bunch would get up again. It was comical to watch this short man in a suit running frantically back and forth. We would have to stop playing, and appeal for decorum. “We’re in Canada, fellas; settle down.”
Back then, Caribbean migrants could only enjoy their native cuisine (green plantains; cassava; callaloo; garam masala; etc) when family flew in on a visit carrying such goodies, but in the late 60’s, as more immigrants kept coming, a Guyanese named Joe Gonsalves opened a West Indian food store downtown, and Caribbean people would come from miles away to patronize it.
The band I had started in the tiny Bermuda Tavern was the Tradewinds, and by 1970, with one of my calypsoes, “Honeymooning Couple”, a huge hit in the West Indies, we acquired our own club on Victoria Street. In the Caribbean dialects, the pronoun “we” is used to mean “our” as in “we car” or “we government”, so I named the club “We Place” and it became a mecca for people from the region.
We Place could accommodate about 200 people, and with immigration to Canada cranked up in the Pierre Trudeau years, patronage was good. It was open six nights a week, and on weekends, if you didn’t get there by 9pm you didn’t get in.
Tradewinds was the house band, and when we were on tour, somewhere in the West Indies or North America, other Toronto-based West Indian bands would fill in. It was the only place with Caribbean music six nights a week. On many occasions, West Indians arriving in Toronto, as visitors or new immigrants, would come straight from the airport at night to join the bacchanal in We Place.
It was an invigorating time with the cultural behaviours sometimes causing friction, occasionally delight, and always alterations. New ways of being were being exposed, and, although we didn’t always recognize it, the influencers were also being influenced.
I returned to Guyana to live three years ago, but I travel back to Canada often and can see the differences triggered by people like myself who had been accepted into the country. The liquor laws have long since been liberalized, and there are now West Indian specialty stores scattered all over the city offering products from the Caribbean. More significantly, even the mainstream Canadian supermarket shelves now offer such things as plantains and curry powder; the staff in such places no longer give you a puzzled “what‘s that?” if you ask for pigeon peas or ochroe. On the wider scale, Caribbean people are now prominent in business and political life in Canada, many of them heading large corporations, lecturing in universities, and even representing Canada in sport.
On the first Monday of August, each year, Toronto is known as the place for Caribana, 44 years old, and now the largest festival on the Canadian calendar offering every aspect of Caribbean culture – music, food, dance, costume, colour – in a Canadian setting for a multicultural Canada.
The experience and acceptance of that immigration surge changed both the immigrants, like me, as well as the country that so generously accepted us. Later this year, towards the end of August, I will be playing in a concert in Canada featuring a number of Caribbean artistes. The event is being billed as Caribbean North, and it’s being held at the Richmond Hill Center for the Performing Arts, a few miles outside Toronto.
When Richmond Hill, Ontario can calmly present something called Caribbean North, and nobody blinks, it’s the work of those streams of influence.
