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Clifton Josephs bittersweet look back at Caribana

Fifty years after they flew in coconut trees from the islands and replanted them on Olympic Island, its easy to forget the influence of Torontos first Caribana festival in 1967: its mile-long carnival procession of a thousand people in gaily-coloured costumes gyrating to the music of five calypso bands and its politics of Black liberation, social focus, independent financing and deep community connection and participation.

Before Caribana, the premiere event in Black Toronto was the annual Emancipation Day Parade, held every November in the west end. The parade was a military-style event started by the descendants of fugitive American slaves who escaped to Canada and settled in the rural communities of southern Ontario. In the 1950s, its main organizer was the Canadian Negro Womens Association, the group credited with starting the first Black History celebrations, and who, from 1952 until 1964, also produced yearly Caribbean carnivals, primarily as fundraisers for the scholarships they provided to Caribbean students and programs they ran for immigrants. One of the groups leaders, Verda Cook, was also a founding director of Caribana.

When the federal government encouraged the countrys multicultural communities to mount events in tribute to Canadas centennial celebrations, a Caribbean Centennial Committee was created that included Pan-Caribbean academics, students and professionals. On July 2, 1967, the group outlined the festival that would represent the cultures of the 10 main Caribbean islands, in addition to Bermuda and Guyana. They planned a parade of bands, (from Varsity Stadium along Bloor, down Yonge and west on Queen to City Hall), calypso and steel bands, films, ferry cruises, fashion shows, kids and adult carnivals, drama and musical performances, fruit and vegetable markets showcasing Caribbean produce and a water-skiing festival.

Echoing the Committees Caribbean bravado and bragadoccio, the Toronto Star reported that the event plans to blow the Centennial works in a whing-ding one week celebration designed to pale the 67 efforts of any other Metro ethnic community.

And that it did, with a kaleidoscopic fiesta of pan-Caribbean performers that included fire-eaters and packed the Toronto Islands for a week. What was then a small Caribbean population of 12,000 raised $46,000 of the total budget of $50,000.

City officials and media were effusive in their praise. Mayor William Dennison urged festival chair Sam Cole to make it a yearly event.

Notably, Caribana organizers balanced their books.

But, according to Jamaica-born Eric Lindsay, lawyer and founding director, they didnt do it alone. The West Indian governments were prepared to contribute artistic talent and pay for the transportation of artists from Trinidad, Jamaica, etc., he told the Star, adding that local businessmen, individuals and groups also gave unstintingly of their resources of time, money, expertise, products. We had good help, plenty of it, at little or no cost.

Caribana organizers were not just about party and jump up. They were also about politics. They pledged to acquire, maintain and operate a community centre and to achieve social development, economic empowerment and unity within the Black and Caribbean communities through the industrialization of the Caribbean Carnival Culture.

In the next few early years, the Caribana Cultural Committee (CCC) made good on some of its social initiatives, starting a steel band and drama group that presented plays from the Caribbean, sponsored interpretive dance class and presented lectures and seminars for new immigrants from the Caribbean.

But as time went on, these programs faded and Caribanas focus turned to the party and jump-up.

It didnt take long for in-fighting and concerns about the direction of the organization to follow. Many were dissatisfied when the promised community centre never materialized and criticized the CCC for not doing enough. The Black Students Union at the University of Toronto, boycotted Caribana in 1971 and, in a letter to Contrast newspaper, jammed Caribana up against the wall of accountability, writing that the organizers undermined any serious efforts to articulate grievances of Black people in Toronto. The people who continue to expose racism in all forms of discrimination in housing, lack of jobs, racism in education and police harassment seemed like the lunatic fringe, when every August the petite-Black bourgeoisie put on their show for white people…

Internal struggle between the different island groups about the ideological and cultural direction of Caribana also began to surface.

According to Frank E. Mannings 1983 academic article, non-Trinidadians wanted a pan-Caribbean festival like the one produced in 1967, with a focus on Black racial identity in which the calypso, steel band and carnival dimensions were only one component while the Trinidadians, especially the band leaders, wanted to pattern the festival after Trinidad and Tobagos carnival, with them in charge.

This latter group formed the rival Carnival Development Association (CDA), and started Carnival Extravaganza, a competing festival which copied Trinidads carnival elements.

As early as 1968, the city was jones-ing for a takeover of the festival. That year, Metro Council approved the creation of Carnival Toronto, aimed at rivaling New Orleans Mardi Gras. Grandiose as it was opportunistic and corny, Chairman John Fisher of the newly-formed Friends of the the Carnival, conceived the event as two million people expressing themselves in an organized week of gaity, frivolity and fun. This plan soon fizzled.

From the jump the three levels of government treated Caribana with stone-cold ambivalence: they welcomed its party splash and infusion of cultural flash, but dashed when it came to digging into their stash and putting up some cash. At the same time, they threw shade at Caribanas social thrusts.

In 1974, the provincial government turned down a request for $25,000. Strapped for cash, the CCCs directors signed personal loan guarantees to stage the festival. Two years later, the province decided to fund Caribanas rival, the CDA, with a grant of $20,000.

The festival existed hand-to-mouth with its future in doubt.

One of the main reasons given by the different levels of government for their lacklustre financial support was that the organizing committee didnt have any official figures to back up their claims of economic impact. In 1989, Caribana remedied that by hiring Pricewaterhouse and Decima Research to conduct two studies, which respectively showed that Caribana attracted over a million people yearly and generated $300 million in economic spin-offs for the city. But governments remained tight-fisted. Staff took 30 per cent pay cut. Its truly a wonder they were able to stage the festival that year in such chaos.

Before it started large-scale funding, the city would loan Caribana money that would be paid back through profits. But oftentimes there was no profit and Caribana accumulated a large debt.

When it finally started regularly funding the festival, the city would clawback charges for services like policing and garbage collection for the festival the left hand giveth and the right hand taketh away!

Longtime festival publicist Stephen Weir explained that it got to the point where you have to decide, should we give the mas bands their money, or should we get fences and porta-potties? Or do we pay the police because the police want to be paid in cash? All of these were decisions that meant some groups within the festival got screwed.

In 2010, Caribana Arts Group sued the FMC and Scotiabank (title sponsor of Caribana at the time). The case was settled in 2014 in favour of CAG, with a non-disclosure clause. Today, the FMC still runs the festival, with CAG vowing to step up its attempts to get back control.

Its a murky mess. Caribanas 50th anniversary leaves a bittersweet taste.

I marvel at the half century of dedication of volunteers who have been its backbone. This is, as it was when it started in 1967, essentially a community-run festival. And kudos are due.

But Im also disappointed that it was never given the resources, management and support to make it tangibly benefit the community and incensed that it has been dogged by decades of deficits and discord.

I expected better from Caribana. We were promised plenty, but it was never delivered. It has never, ever, really, lived up to its euphoric possibilities. And thats a damn shame.

Clifton Joseph is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and dub poet.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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