Mankind in his/her various migrations ends up transforming the places where they settle without giving a thought to the changes, even in themselves, that result. They come to these new places, like North America, searching for jobs and a better life, but they remain the people of their origins; they come to those places in this search but many of them never abandon their original way of life and become fully Americanized in the process; the cultural hold remains no matter where in North America they settle.
When I lived in Toronto, in the suburbs just north of the city, it was fascinating for me to travel to the western side of the city, downtown, where Italian immigrants had settled decades earlier, bringing with them that robust European culture with its distinctive cuisine. In that area, everything, except perhaps in the design of the buildings, was Italian. The shops, the restaurants, the sidewalk vendors, the young men in modern dress liming on the sidewalks, the outdoor drinking spots in the summer, were all straight out of Italy. Walking by one was continually hearing the strong Italian language, and seeing its flamboyant gestures from these new citizens of Canada living and working in the area – all of this in one of the most “Canadian” cities in North America. It was like a shot in the arm to go down there; you were in a different Toronto from the conventional one in the Willowdale suburbs where I had my house. In that downtown “Little Italy”, as it was known, the Italian culture was out in full flower – even the barber shops were that way – as was the garrulous flavour of just casual conversation, especially among the males, confronting you on every corner.
Similarly, in another part of downtown, to the west of Little Italy, one could find a similar combination of homes, shops, outdoor shoppers and services, but this one all totally Chinese – not one Italian face or voice in the lot. Known as Chinatown, this area reflected the Chinese culture down to such small details as the hand-painted cups and saucers in the Chinese restaurants in the area. The Tradewinds guys would often end up in Chinatown after the bars on Yonge Street, just to the east, had closed, drawn there by the excellent Chinese menu and copious free parking. In a city the size of Toronto, there were two areas with that “Chinee food” appeal – one to the east in the Scarborough area, and the one downtown on Dundas Street.
When I was writing the song “Wong Ping” about the famous “Chinee brush” we have in the Caribbean, I recall asking one of the Chinese waiters, in our favourite restaurant called Golden City, to translate the phrase, “If you wanna get a very good brush, better make sure it’s a Chinee brush” into Chinese to make a very Oriental chorus. Probably suspecting I was making fun of him, the waiter brushed me off, leaving me to settle for the English only, but it was in the course of that exchange with him that I first learned that this bottle of black liquid, with an application tab, used as a sexual aide by Caribbean males, was actually a potion for easing toothache pain – hence the tab for application to the cavity in a tooth. The Chinese brought their tooth potion here and we found a new use for it.
This condition of immigrants from one culture exerting influence on another is a regular occurrence in Western cultures and the absorption is so complete that it becomes an accepted part of life in that different environment in scores of ways. This week, for example, my daughter Luana from my first marriage, living in Toronto, but very familiar with Caribbean culture (she has visited often Grand Cayman, Guyana and Barbados) in an online conversation with me here, referred to the distinctive smell of the apartment building where my sister Imelda lived in Toronto. The smell she referred to was in the building, not just my sister’s apartment, and it was the consequence of folks from Pakistan and India, immigrants to Toronto, who were doing their cooking with those pungent Indo ingredients – achar; curry powder, geera, garlic, turmeric, coriander, pepper. etc. that drifted out into the halls. I recall one apartment, on the some floor as my sister’s that had a particularly powerful smell of that Indian cooking as you passed. Come to think of it, it may have been to a lesser degree, but obviously what was coming from my sister’s kitchen was adding to the bouquet. I’m sure some folks living in the building weren’t happy about it, but for the ones in our family it was kind of comforting with its message of “home”. As my mother would have put it, “Eh eh. Curry boy.”
Having lived in four different countries, I have often been struck by this pellucid contrast of culture A finding itself in country B and seamlessly making a difference in this new existence, making an alteration without a ripple. Another example of it in Toronto is the emergence of a full-fledged carnival, as we know it in Trinidad, of the Toronto event Caribana, which is now the biggest Caribbean carnival in North America….all of it a direct consequence of thousands of Caribbean migrants finding a new home in the city. As a writer of music with cultural Caribbean themes, I am fascinated by this process of one culture having such a dramatic impact on the fabric of another culture, and of how easily entrenched these new habits become a part of the new home. Particularly interesting to me in this modification is how easily the new culture absorbs the old one, virtually without change, but obviously propelled by the masses from the old, as in Toronto, living among the new, and delivering these old traditions intact.
Mas in Toronto, for example, is the same creature, only on a somewhat smaller scale and stage, as the one in the fatherland, Trinidad. Pepperpot, as we know it in Guyana, or roti, or butter flap, or mauby, is exactly the same when we buy it from a vendor in Toronto, or New York, or Miami.
Similarly, the two Italian men, cruise visitors to Cayman, I saw in a heated argument on a downtown street are carrying Italy with them. Arms flailing, faces red, aggressive body language, and shouting at high volume, are uncommon in Cayman, but to the two Italians, to hell with the location, it is business as usual. Cultures travel, often doing so wholesale, with no hesitation, apologizing to no one. Migrants, be they Pakistani, Italian, Chinese or Caribbean, leave a mark.
