The-melting pot - Toronto and Caribana

Toronto and Mas -- growing together

It is illustrative of the awkward fit between Toronto and the culture of
Carnival that it took many, many years for Toronto and the organizers of
this northern Carnival to settle on a route.

        The Toronto of 1967 was not the Toronto of today....It was in 1967 that Canada
introduced a point system that would allow would be immigrants from the Caribbean,
India and China... to be admitted on the basis of skill, rather than race.
         The Caribbean community in Toronto in 1967 was made up of largely students
although there were workers who had manage to slip by Canada's White immigration
policy....

        Given the racial and ethnic composition of the 1960s, it must have been taken an
incredible leap of imagination and overwhelming self-confidence for the small but
broad based group of Caribbean Immigrants to propose a cultural project to cele-
brate Canada's centennial year.

         It was 1967, the year of Expo'67' even in dour Toronto citizens were loosening up.
Still nothing could have prepared main stream Toronto for the first Carnival parade
down Yonge street.

         It was a small group of masqueraders who I think had great courage back then to
wear their gaudy costumes to and from the parade. But they did. That occasion was
the start of today's enormously popular carnival that has put Toronto on the tourist
map and made it a major tourist event, if not the biggest summer event in North-
America.

Adjustments on both sides
        The period from 1967 to today has seen adjustments on both sides. Official and
non-official Toronto weren't always happy with this tropical efflorescence that took to
the streets the first Saturday of every August. There were complaints at City Council
that the money -- the little money -- given to the Carnival organizers could have gone to
more worthwhile municipal causes. There was talk of lack of accountability . There
was talk of...ah...misbehavior on the day of the parade. There was talk of imbibing of
...ah...cane based potables on the street. This was Toronto, after all -- New York ran
by Presbyterians, if not Calvinist.

         Let's just say the idea of an unabashed street Carnival was something alien to
Toronto while the idea of Carnival confined to one street was alien to early partici-
pants in the parade.

     ....So city council was faced with a tropical fete and growing numbers of spectators.
The question for many councilors (or Aldermen as they were called back then) was :
"How do we fit this phenomenon into our city?"

         By then two ideas had taken root. This street carnival was not going away and it
brought buckets of money into the city.

        Obviously, the parade and the festivities were here to stay. Obviously young
Canadians too, had begun to see the festivities as theirs....

Fusion inevitable
        Hindsight makes me think it was inevitable. It didn't seem so over the years. The
Carnival seems temporary. The people who presented it's bands and the people
who were passionate about the Carnival were insecure. There were always rumors
that City Hall wouldn't let it happen 'this year'....

        The physical incorporation of the Carnival in the streets of Toronto was one with
which the city Councilors and the organizers had to wrestle. Although the discussions
were always about the best routes for the parade, I like to think that the subtext was
about how to integrate a foreign cultural concept into a staid city.
        ... So continuous were the changes that now I can hardly remember where most
of the routes ended.

Adapting to each other
        The continuous changing of the routes was important. I see that as an attempt by
the city and the Carnival to adapt to each other. Toronto couldn't get the measure
of a parade that wasn't modeled on the Santa Claus Parade. The Carnival culture
couldn't get accustomed to a city that restricted it to one measly day and one measly
route.
     ...Finally, it all came to land on the Lakeshore. On that route the band leaders finally
got an extended distance to show off their creativity.
        The search for an appropriate route was part of the process of integration. I know
it all sounds terrible symbolic, but once an acceptable route was establish the culture
of Carnival and the culture of the city found confluence....

This piece is from a Share publication special "Toronto International Carnival 2002" .

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