THINGS THAT MATTER

ABC: The Amazing Barbados Canada connection

Canada has just celebrated 150 years of confederation. Did you know that in 1884 the then powerful Barbados Agricultural Society put forward a proposal for Barbados to join the Canadian confederation? I didn’t know that until the Canadian High Commissioner mentioned it in her address at the celebration of the anniversary on Canada Day, July 1st. Imagine how differently our love affair might have evolved if the proposal had been accepted!

The close relationship between the giant Canada and tiny Barbados goes all the way back several centuries to the earliest days of trade, with sugar, molasses and rum going North and salt fish (salted cod), lumber and ice coming South. Barbadians have traded with Canada, settled in Canada, been educated in Canada, hosted and entertained Canadians and benefit today from major Canadian investment. High Commissioner Marie Legault highlighted many of these things in her speech, Books have been written, and many more could be, about our many connections.

In 2010, a splendid book about the stars of our Diaspora in Canada was published: Some Barbadian Canadians – A Biographical Dictionary, with an editorial committee headed by our then High Commissioner in Ottawa, His Excellency Evelyn Greaves, and distinguished historian Professor Keith Sandiford as Editor-in-Chief. It told much of our close relationship with Canada over generations – partnership, friendship and kinship! There is also Passport to the Heart: Reflections on Canada Caribbean Relations, by Sir Trevor Carmichael, and a more recent, absolutely splendid book is Beyond Rum and Salt Fish, by Barbara Trieloff-Dean and a team of contributors.

The story of the Diaspora could be said to have begun with Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Moody, born at St. Ann’s Garrison in Barbados 200 years ago, on February 13, 1813. He became Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia and Port Moody was named after him. Our next Bajan Canadian hero was Seraphim “Joe” Fortes, Vancouver’s first lifeguard, who was declared Vancouver’s Citizen of the Century in 1986. Allegedly born in Trinidad in 1863 but, growing up in Barbados, he became a legendary lifeguard at English Bay, saving the lives of scores of people and teaching thousands of children to swim. A monument in a park by the beach commemorates him, as well as a library, a stamp issue, and the magnificent Joe Fortes restaurant, where I’ve had a memorable meal with West Indian medical friends; no visit to Vancouver is complete without paying homage to Joe there. Canada has now brought out postage stamps commemorating Joe Fortes as well as the famous jazz pianist Oliver Jones, son of Bajan parents in Toronto.

And we can go on: Professor Charles Bourne of McGill University, Senator Ann Cools, champion jockeys Patrick Husbands and Rickey Walcott, cancer researcher, Dr. Juliet Daniel; many other leading physicians, such as Dr. Edward Hutson, Dr. Karl Massiah, Professor Tony Fields, Professor Victor Blanchette, Professor Paul Steinbok and Professor Winston Gittens, my brother John Fraser, risk management and internal audit guru and on and on.

However, whenever I think of the connection I think of the Merrymen, Barbados’ greatest ambassadors for 40 years, who performed in Toronto so often that both Barbados and Canada should honour them for being just as important as the rum and salt fish trade!

The High Commissioner spoke proudly of the many Canadian inventions – “peanut butter, trivial pursuit, basketball, and of course, as you can imagine, a lot of things that have to do with ice and snow, such as snowmobiles, ice hockey, goalie hockey mask… but also insulin and wheelchair-accessible buses, Peace Keeping Missions and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights”.

And she spoke of many developmental roles Canada has played. Not only have we had Canadian banks for more than a hundred years, but we all benefited hugely from the generous Canadian gift to the ill-fated Federation of the West Indies of the two ships The Federal Maple and the Federal Palm. They played a huge role in bonding the disparate English speaking Caribbean communities, and it was great tragedy that Barbados did not have the vision to buy them and continue their role.

However, the High Commissioner told a most moving story of the little town of Gander. When the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and airports in the USA closed, “over 240 flights were re-routed to Canada. 53 of those, carrying about 10 500 passengers ended up in Gander, Newfoundland, a tiny municipality of 10 400 people and with hotel capacity of about 550 rooms. The people of Gander and surrounding fishing villages filled their schools, community rooms and churches with cots for the stranded passengers or ‘plane people’ as they became known. The town’s bus drivers, who were on strike that day, walked off their picket lines and went back to work. Bakeries went into overdrive production, hospitals staffed up, and many of the townspeople opened their homes and offered their beds to the plane people. They even found a way to care for the 17 dogs and cats and even the two great apes that were aboard the planes”.

This amazing story of compassion and generosity had another happy outcome. A passenger on a flight leaving a few days later called for donations which led to a Trust Fund, which has raised two million dollars to fund 135 students’ university education. And HC Legault concluded with the words: “This is what Canada is all about – kindness, compassion and comfort, whether to the 2001 plane people, or to the more than 40 000 refugees that have found shelter in Canada in the last two years. More and more on social media, in articles, even as the title of a book, we hear that the world needs more Canada.”

And I couldn’t agree with her more! Long may our connections, our relationship, our partnership, our brotherhood, our love affair – however you put it – continue and grow stronger and richer.

(Professor Fraser is Past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. Website: profhenryfraser.com)

Barbados Advocate

Mailing Address:
Advocate Publishers (2000) Inc
Fontabelle, St. Michael, Barbados

Phone: (246) 467-2000
Fax: (246) 434-2020 / (246) 434-1000