I’m writing this in Toronto a few hours after a concert at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, designed to help raise funds for the Burn Care Unit at our Georgetown Public Hospital. Entitled ‘Caribbean North,’ the event, now in its third year, was organized mainly by Harry and Pam Harakh, two Guyanese living in Toronto, who have been generating funds and training for the Burn Unit at the GPH for several years.
The show, with a $50 admission, featured a roster of Caribbean talent, including MC Bill Newman from Guyana (he also sings calypso as ‘The Crooner’); the very talented pop vocalist George St Kitts, a Mahaica boy; the comedy of Ken Corsbie; the Shak Shak band led by Bajan Roger Gibbs, and a limbo dance troupe. In my section, I closed the show doing some of the well-known Tradewinds songs, accompanied by guitarist Raymond ‘Chinny’ Lee-Own (former Guyana cycle racing champ), Brian Huntley from St Lucia on bass, and Phillip Crighton of St Vincent on drums.
The Richmond Hill Centre provided good acoustics and good audio in a comfortable and well-appointed theatre, and it would seem the show, virtually sold out, has once again succeeded in its cause of helping raise funds for the Georgetown Hospital. I donated my services, as I believe some other performers did, and it was a great night.
Although I now reside in Guyana, the occasion led me to reflect on how good Canada has been to Guyanese over time. It has been a long exercise, going back over 60 years, and as I travel back and forth to Canada (I have two grown children and many close relatives there) I am constantly aware of how much Canada has given to the hordes of immigrants who have come to its shores, and of my particular awareness of its generosity to Guyana.
In my case, Canada afforded me musical training and particularly the opportunity to play music professionally, six nights a week, in an environment that taught me the rudiments of professional entertainment.
It also gave me the opportunity to produce the early recordings of my songs (including ‘Honeymooning Couple’) that eventually led to the popularity of Tradewinds, and, in a few years, to owning the popular Tradewinds home base, ‘We Place,’ in downtown Toronto that cemented the band’s place among Caribbean people, and, indeed, Caribbean culture.
An idea, which has not yet jelled for me, is to write what would be more or less a “thanks Canada” kind of salute, and while we wait for that kind of personal response, it would be a signal idea for the Caribbean people, and the Guyanese community, in particular, in their new home to embrace the suggestion for an annual event predicated along those lines.
Many of us left Guyana with the clothes on our backs and all our possessions in a suitcase (my family and I were such) and ended up improving the material condition of our lives (owning car, apartment, house, etc) and benefiting from the programmes in education, health care, and technical training readily available to us.
Across the professions, Guyanese of all stripes have risen to the top tier of their specialties and become pillars of their communities in their new adopted home.
Many of us were able to migrate individually, and then more readily pave the way for other family members to follow us (in my case, 9 others). Aside from my immediate family, I reflect now on the persons in my circle – like Chinny, Walter Wailoo, Raymond Henriques, Terry Ferreira, Paul DaSilva, and many others – and the difference in their lives that came with their migration.
I believe that a “Canada-Caribbean” event, marketed specifically as a “thank you”, would generate significant volunteer support from that vast pool of migrant Caribbean talent in Canada and could become a very successful entertainment draw every year in such a city as Toronto.
I am confident it would get massive crowd support from all those migrants who now live better lives because of Canada.
Having said that, however, the decision to organize such a gathering should be predicated on the organizers putting the event in the hands of an experienced show producer who would ensure the show is structured, top to bottom, on very professional lines. Too many times in these kinds of community-driven entertainment efforts we end up having people, with no producer experience, stubbornly or naively tackling the difficult job of making a successful entertainment presentation. It is frequently the case that such shows are too long, not properly paced, and not properly balanced, and the overall result is simply not good theatrically, so that the effort ultimately comes to naught. Those pitfalls have to be avoided.
With those provisos in mind, however, it is a suggestion that I would like to see taken up somewhere in the Canadian diaspora (the most likely choice being Toronto). It would be a wonderful gesture that I am sure would be warmly received by the Canadians, and it would also be a platform for the Caribbean people to express their gratitude in a tangible and highly visible way. It is a gesture long overdue.
