The history and legacy of Caribana must be preserved

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Camille Hernández-Ramdwar is a writer and scholar who divides her time between Toronto and Trinidad and Tobago. Her latest book is Suite as Sugar and Other Stories.

This year the Toronto Caribbean Carnival (still fondly referred to as Caribana by many) turns 56 years old. It has undeniably been a major cultural institution not only for Toronto, but for the entire country. Within Caribbean communities in Canada, it has been a central fixture for generations.

At the same time, many in our communities have bemoaned the watering-down of the festival, believing that today’s Toronto Caribbean Carnival (TCC) has lost much of its original flavour, its connection to community, and its preservation of Caribbean roots. That it is less about protecting and maintaining a specific cultural heritage and more about promoting a Canadian street party where everyone is invited. The story of the festival underlines one of the contradictions of multiculturalism: are immigrants and their descendants supposed to hold onto and preserve their culture, protecting it as one would a family heirloom, carefully passing it down from generation to generation, ensuring that it remains with the community’s stewardship? Or are we supposed to share our culture with everyone in the host country as a sign of generosity and goodwill, so as to appear non-threatening and malleable, so that ultimately we, in effect, lose control of and claim to our own culture? Can we do both simultaneously? Should we?

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In 2019, UNESCO recognized the festival as a Cultural Heritage Property. TCC is considered an intangible heritage, which means it is a living dynamic entity, subject to change and transformation over time (unlike an archeological site or monument). Therefore a documented history of such a heritage is essential, not only for future generations of Caribbean Canadians to understand their legacy, but also to observe and understand how and why certain changes happen and whether or not these changes are sustainable and beneficial to the cultural heritage property in the long term.

At present there are no Caribana archives, no proper records, no serious scholarly books or anthologies of fiction on the subject; we have no Carnival Arts Centre, nor do we have a definitive documentary film or even a solid published economic study on the financial contributions the festival has brought to the province and city for over five decades. There continues to be a general lack of knowledge among the Canadian public – and even generations of second-, third- and fourth-generation Caribbean Canadians – of the roots of Caribbean carnivals (including diasporic ones like TCC), why they exist, and what they originally meant for emancipated African Caribbean people and the other colonized groups (such as Indians and Chinese) who were brought to the Caribbean to replace the freed Africans. Increasing corporate involvement in the festival since 2011 (when Caribana became Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Toronto), a changing demographic of participants (with many more non-Caribbean masqueraders), and a persistent lack of financial sustainability have arguably contributed to the cultural erosion of the festival.

Let’s compare TCC’s current status with two other major Caribbean diasporic Carnivals: Brooklyn’s annual West Indian Day Parade attracts similar numbers of attendees as TCC, and its origins date back to the 1920s when indoor Carnival events were held by Caribbean immigrants in Harlem. Today, the West Indian American Day Carnival Association organizes the parade each Labour Day, but it also provides year-round programming to the Caribbean community, including workshops on the Carnival arts of wire-bending and stilt-walking, children’s reading programs, art exhibits and community outreach for elders. In addition, there is a West Indian Carnival Documentation Project initiated by the Brooklyn Historical Society, which includes photos, oral histories, publications, research and other artifacts.

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Meanwhile, in Britain, London’s Notting Hill Carnival (in existence since 1966, a year before Toronto’s first Caribana) is the most popular and well-attended Caribbean Carnival, but there are additional Carnivals that take place throughout the country. The George Padmore Institute in London has a Carnival Material Collection, whilst Leeds Beckett University has a Caribbean Carnival Cultures unit at their Centre for Culture and the Arts, and in the town of Luton we find the UK Centre for Carnival Arts. Why is there nothing even remotely equivalent in Ontario? Why is there no Carnival Arts Unit in any academic institution in Toronto, or Canada as a whole? (Side note: as the de-facto head of Caribbean Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University for many years, I’ve repeatedly raised the idea of a Carnival/Caribana archives, a unit, an institute, anything – all of which has fallen on deaf ears. No one felt such an initiative had any scholarly or economic value.)

Hopefully, the status of the TCC as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage Property will soon result in the essential and long overdue archiving and documentation of Caribana materials. This is urgent as a number of the festival’s originators have already passed on. For an event that attracts more than 1.2 million spectators and participants each year, and generates estimated revenues of more than $338-million annually, it is unacceptable that there has been no concerted and unified effort to ensure that the legacy of Caribana is preserved and passed on to future generations, particularly those of Caribbean descent. To fail to do so ensures that specific Carnival arts and heritage will no longer be in the hands of Caribbean people – and this has already begun to happen. Diasporic Caribbean Carnivals are not just darker versions of Coachella or a Victoria’s Secret runway show. They are creolized festivals, arising out of particular historical circumstances (slavery, indentureship, colonialism) and combinations of the many cultural influences that persist in the Caribbean.

As a former professor of Caribbean Studies in Toronto for more than two decades, I can attest to the fact that far too many young Caribbean people do not know their history, their culture or their legacy. Too many now identify solely and amorphously as “Black,” which lumps them in with both African Americans and continental Africans. While a shared history of anti-Black racism may unite people who may resemble each other phenotypically, identifying solely on the basis of race can also divide communities of people who do not look alike but share a common cultural heritage. Caribbean Carnivals did not migrate wholesale with enslaved Africans during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It is important to state this in a climate where emphasis is now being placed on addressing anti-Black racism without asking how Black populations may be distinctly different with unique needs.

Government funding and structural policies that focus on Black populations and Black organizations erase the complexity of Caribbean populations. For example, there has been a recent trend in Canadian universities (following on the heels of American universities) to fund Black Studies and expunge Caribbean Studies. Black Studies is deeply embedded in U.S. constructs of race, with multiple connections to African-American Studies, academics and scholarship. But the story of Black people in Canada has been (until recently) that of Caribbean migrants and their descendants. Meanwhile, the fastest-growing Black population in Canada currently is West African. How will blanket funding for Black organizations affect the future of cultural (not racial) festivals such as TCC? To be Black in Canada is no longer automatically synonymous with being Caribbean (or more colloquially, Jamaican).

The TCC is unequivocally a Caribbean cultural heritage property. It is based on a cultural, not a racial, heritage. Having said all this, one has to wonder if the reason we are still without a Caribana archives (which should be government-funded, full-stop), a Carnival Cultural Centre (housed in a public institution such as a university or library), or books and films documenting Caribana’s history (again, publicly funded through arts and scholarly grants) – all elements that would preserve and protect the legacy of Caribana – could be due to the same old tired anti-Black racism that Caribbean people, regardless of hue or hair texture, have endured in this country for generations.