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More than 2 million people are expected to converge on Toronto’s lakeshore this weekend for North America’s largest street festival: the 49-year-old Caribbean Carnival, known colloquially as Caribana.
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What began as the West Indian community’s modest tribute to Canada’s centennial is today a prized emblem of racial diversity, with glittering parades, jerk chicken, and rhythm-less politicians dancing badly to dueling bands.
But for all its multicultural elan, its platitudes and jubilation, there is a Potemkin village quality to Caribana, which concludes August 1, on the anniversary of the British Commonwealth’s emancipation of all enslaved Africans in its territories.
Through a perfect storm of underfunding cultural and economic exploitation, fear-mongering and repressive over-policing, Caribana, ironically enough, mirrors the city’s historic marginalization of its Black population.
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The issues of finances and community control over Caribana remain a key narrative which unfurls year after year. While the festival brought in $438 million in revenue in 2014, the city of Toronto budgeted a paltry $625,000 to the organizers of the festival. As a result, Caribana has perpetually relied on a thankless army of volunteer laborers, often working year-round to prepare the elaborate costumes and steel pan routines which are central to the festivities.
From 2011 until 2015, the festival’s financial troubles led to a controversial deal in which Scotiabank became one of the largest donors, albeit for a conservative $250,000 over the first two years, renaming the festival the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival.
The symbolism of the corporate takeover was significant, as Scotiabank accumulated a bad reputation in the Caribbean.
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The historian Peter Hudson wrote, “During the 1970 Black Power Revolution in Trinidad ... the Bank of Nova Scotia, along with the Royal Bank of Commerce and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, were singled out as agents of empire, as exploitative, foreign institutions transferring wealth from the Caribbean to Canada while contributing little to the local economy.” Furthermore, Scotiabank had been accused of racial profiling, wrongfully suspecting Black customers of fraud.
On the matter of race, the differential treatment of Caribana and its patrons is problematic when compared with other popular Toronto festivals, such as Nuit Blanche. Nuit Blanche is an overnight public art exhibit and has been plagued by a higher rate of violent incidents recently, including several murders, numerous stabbings, fights and an incident last year in which police officers were pelted with bottles by drunken patrons of the arts.
Despite the rash of violent incidents year after year, Nuit Blanche is accompanied by a 4 a.m. "last call" at bars, something that has never been offered to Caribana.
The long August weekend is also known as the unofficial summer weekend of white flight, as columnist Christopher Stuart Taylor highlighted, at the same time there is an influx of Black visitors to the city, many white residents “flee the city in their birkenstocks every Caribana weekend as the Lakeshore in Toronto becomes a police state."
Heading down to the isolated lakeshore venue it quickly becomes clear that this parade is perceived differently than the others as a result of an overwhelming police presence and a police policy of containment. A recent Globe and Mail article reported that “In 2012, police added 456 officers downtown during the three-day carnival and a further 350 during the parade, in response to heightened concerns about gun violence.
That year was also the first time police searched bags. While most parades have small four foot barriers, Caribana has the distinction of having 8 to 14 foot barriers lining the parade route to separate the crowd from the parade.
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Ajamu Nangwaya, an educator and community activist says that “the Afrikan body is seen as a marker of danger and chaos. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Caribana is treated like a threat to national security.”
What Caribana also highlights is that the matter of total emancipation is still not finished. There are important questions of reforming the current model that Caribana operates under so that it can act as an engine for community economic development and justice.
Nangwaya notes that “African and Caribbean peoples, the creators of the Caribana festival, are minor economic beneficiaries. But their countless volunteer hours are indispensable to the enormous income that goes into the Canadian economy.
"It is high time that Caribana be given millions of dollars in annual operational and project funding so as to enable it to operate as a year-round cultural institution. Further, this festival should contribute to the economic and social vitality of the African and Caribbean community. It is high time for Caribana to not be treated as an economic resource that is exploited for the benefit of the corporate interests and the government.”
Serious discussion about the dual need for community control and the capturing of a meaningful portion of Caribana’s revenue by those that are responsible for its creation and annual success must occur. This may come in a mild form of a temporary weekend-only hotel room tax that is specifically dedicated to supporting scholarship funds, employment programs and grassroots community organizations working in the Black community. Or it may be a broader, sustained campaign for community investment and self-determination, either way, the status quo cannot continue in the current climate of anti-Black racism.
Carnival and Caribana were born out of struggles to recognize the humanity of Caribbean peoples. To carry on with a depoliticized and increasingly corporate festival is to passively and problematically accept that this struggle is over, when we have far too many reminders that clearly show that it is not.
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