Intergroup Relations, Group Maintenance, and Ethnic Commitment

Jamaican Canadians interact closely with other peoples of the Caribbean Regional Community (CARICOM), with whom they are linked by common colonial history and destiny, family and kinship ties, and alumni links at all educational levels. Jamaican ethnocultural associations also interact with many island and other ethnocultural associations, some of which have emulated the JCA’s model of provincial and national associations. The other communities tend not to be contented, however, when they are grouped with Jamaicans or when a Jamaican social problem is generalized to be a Caribbean or black problem.

Jamaican Canadians also have joined coalitions involving other visible and/or mainstream minorities that share concerns about fairness and justice. Jamaicans, for instance, not only helped to found the influential Urban Alliance on Race Relations in Toronto but have provided leadership. Jamaican-Canadian women helped found the Congress of Black Women and have continued to provide leadership. Jamaican-Canadian community leaders have supported Jewish organizations in efforts to contain the propagation of hate literature. Increasingly also in the professions and business, Jamaicans are playing influential roles in mainstream organizations. Lincoln Alexander, who has one Jamaican-born parent, was Canada’s first black lieutenant governor.

Jamaican immigrants and their children feel strong attachment to their homeland. Yet, although most appear satisfied with their lives in Canada, many hope to retire to Jamaica. Many make regular visits to the island and/or invest in real estate there. There is continual two-way air traffic between Canada and Jamaica. As well, Canada granted 11,071 student authorizations to Jamaicans between 1978 and 1991 and between 1985 and 1991 another 11,010 visas for a stay of one year or more in Canada. The shared loyalty, or sojourner relationship, between native and adopted land, characteristic of a diaspora, is particularly evident in the multiplicity of organizations and institutions and individuals sponsoring or supporting projects in Jamaica, especially in social services and health. This extensive involvement in projects in Jamaica, however, serves to diffuse the energies of Jamaican Canadians and makes it difficult for ethnocultural associations to sustain the membership and financial support needed to give them the representation they should have in the Canadian context.

Institutional linkages have been forged with Jamaican schools, colleges, and universities, through alumni associations and other special-interest organizations; with hospitals and health-care clinics/institutes, through occupational groups/associations and Caribbean-Canadian charitable and non-profit organizations; and with religious and other community-service organizations, through their counterparts in Canada.

For instance, the Alliance of Jamaican Alumni Associations (Toronto), founded in 1988, brings together thirty-eight alumni associations with about 5,000 members, all of which independently raise and make donations in cash and kind to alma maters in various parts of the island homeland. In Toronto, the alliance, in collaboration with chartered banks and educational authorities, has launched a job-shadowing program under which Jamaican and other schoolchildren observe role models on the job. The alliance also holds special graduation ceremonies for students of Jamaican origin, to emphasize the importance of completing studies.

The School-a-Child Project has, for over a decade, raised money to provide school supplies and equipment for primary schools in rural Jamaica. In Toronto the project contributes to memorial scholarships and a school-feeding program for primary and junior high school students. Similarly, Women for PACE (Canada) – the Project for the Advancement of Childhood Education– has, since 1987, promoted pre-school (aged three to five years), community-based education and, in collaboration with the Jamaican Ministry of Education, the University of the West Indies, and school principals, has provided classroom materials for schools adopted by PACE.

Medical alumni, nurses, other health-care professionals, and concerned individuals periodically undertake special projects, including volunteer medical services, financial support for health-care education and training facilities, and shipment of medical supplies and equipment to hospitals and clinics.

More sustained assistance is provided by such nongovernmental organizations as the Doctor Daphne DaCosta Memorial Foundation, founded in 1979, which also assists with delivery of health care in Jamaica. The foundation has assisted indigent cancer patients and their families, as well as established rural cancer clinics operated by the Jamaica Cancer Society, and is currently sponsoring and funding a public awareness program for early detection of cervical and breast cancer. Special projects in Jamaica have included immunization of almost 25,000 children in a depressed area in West Kingston, with the participation of final-year medical students from McMaster University.

Jamaicans in Canada are served and linked together by the Daily Gleaner, an influential and conservative-oriented daily newspaper published in Jamaica since 1834. A special weekly, overseas edition is prepared and distributed in Canada and regularly includes features on Jamaican communities written by correspondents in Canada. The weekly Share (Toronto, 1978– ), which claims to be the largest ethnic newspaper in Canada, serves the West Indian and black communities in metropolitan Toronto.

The attachment of Jamaicans in Canada to their native land and the importance of their remittances to their families have resulted in close ties between the government of Jamaica and Jamaican communities, through the high commission in Ottawa and the consulate general in Toronto. Senior diplomatic staff support Jamaican ethnocultural organizations and facilitate interaction with government and business in Jamaica and Canada. Receptions hosted by Jamaica’s consular corps provide a forum for visiting dignitaries and business persons from Jamaica, bring together Jamaicans of all colours and walks of life, and reinforce a sense of common identity and shared destiny.