From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Caribbean Peoples/Frances Henry
The Caribbean community in Canada has developed a variety of boundary-defining mechanisms. These not only serve to maintain their ethnic and cultural identity but are adaptive responses to the forces of racism directed against this immigrant group.
The process of institutional completeness has already proceeded to a considerable extent within the large Caribbean community centred in Toronto. A wide variety of services operated by or for Caribbean people are available. These range from small shops to professional services in areas such as medicine, accountancy, and finance. Currently, more than 500 services and products are being advertised in Share (Toronto, 1978– ), the main newspaper serving the Caribbean community in Toronto. Government-funded community services, Caribbean travel agencies, freight and cargo-handling agencies, food products, and personal services such as hairdressing and tailoring and dressmaking are readily available.
Like other immigrant groups, the Caribbean community has created areas of residential concentration. In Toronto, for example, these now include residential zones at Eglinton Avenue and Vaughan Road and in the Bathurst and Bloor area. As these areas have become crowded, people have begun to move into certain sections of Scarborough, Mississauga, and Brampton.
The Caribbean community in Toronto also has branches of a large number of organizations, including the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Trinidad and Tobago Association, and the Grenada Association. Island associations play an important role in bringing Caribbean immigrants together in a variety of social, cultural, and athletic events that give people a chance to reaffirm their ethnic origins and enjoy aspects of their culture. This is particularly important in the ever-changing world of popular music since many new styles emerge regularly from the Caribbean. Such events provide opportunities for the maintenance of Caribbean culture and identity in Canada.
Increasingly, the Caribbean community is developing associations and groups whose primary mandate is to combat racism or to promote and develop Caribbean and black interests. Some of them also provide services, such as business advice, personal and family counselling, and legal counsel. In addition, these groups also ensure the survival of new immigrants by helping them to implement strategies to cope with the migration experience. Of particular importance are associations that promote economic and business development. Recognizing that racism and economic disadvantages keep many members of the community from developing their talents, organizations like the Black Business and Professional Association, the Black Chamber of Commerce, and, most recently, Black Pages have been created. Black Pages encourages the development of black businesses and publishes a directory of Caribbean, African, and Canadian businesses, professionals, organizations, and associations. Of particular help to the Caribbean community in its efforts to integrate with mainstream Canadian society has been the establishment of organizations that provide counselling and educational services to families, youth, and others in need of aid.
Other groups concentrating on different aspects of the life of Caribbean people in Canada also have been formed. For example, in the sphere of art, drama, and music, there are groups specifically for the development and growth of black music and drama (such as Black Artists in Action, a group of black actors drawn from Actors’ Equity and the Canadian Artists Network). The artistic life of the Caribbean community is largely focused on the performing arts, and there is a growing number of musicians and poets, particularly those writing and performing “dub” poetry. There are now several annual carnival celebrations in major cities across Canada. The first and by far the largest of them, Caribana, which is held in Toronto every year at the beginning of August, attracts as many as one million residents and visitors from Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean region itself. A strong, but temporary, integrative force within the immigrant community, Caribana is organized by the Carnival Development Committee, one of the most influential groups among the Caribbean peoples.
There have been several attempts to establish a pan-Caribbean organization or umbrella group to represent and articulate the views of all peoples of Caribbean origin in Canada. So far these efforts have largely been unsuccessful, in part because of the relatively recent arrival of many immigrants in the group, but primarily because of considerable segmentation in terms of countries of origin and especially social class within the group.
Members of the Caribbean community have, as we have seen, developed a number of strategies or coping mechanisms in order to make their lives in Canada more comfortable and to deal with the ever-present realities of racism. For the most part, Caribbean people in Canada, while always aware of racism, try not to allow its negative and deleterious impact to deflect them from achieving the educational and economic goals which originally led them to migrate to Canada. Despite the humiliations imposed by racism, the majority of Caribbean immigrants are relatively satisfied with life in Canada, and most say they would make the same decision to migrate again.
