Jamaica punches above its weight
Jamaica is more than sun, sand and sea
Randy Risling / Toronto Star Order
Jamaica is a paradise thousands of Canadians pay attention to only when the winter winds howl down Bay St. and University Ave. Even then, they see only the sun, sand, seas and cold alcoholic drinks with fruit and tiny umbrellas stuck in them.
But Jamaica is far more than a fun-filled beach haunt.
Jamaicans have known for centuries that their apparently featherweight island, has the heart and punch of a super heavyweight.
Jamaica is one of the world’s longest-standing democracies, maintaining this state as larger neighbours in the Caribbean and Latin America have been torn apart by revolution and civil war.
Jamaica has produced world leaders in politics; world renowned intellectuals and artists, and supplied millions of immigrants to build “developed” countries all over the world.
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It is the third largest island in the Caribbean, behind Cuba and Hispaniola (this island that consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
Jamaica was the first country to impose economic sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa; it was was the founder of the International Bauxite Association and spearheaded the International Seabed Authority, which both now have their headquarters in Kingston. The authority organizes and controls all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, an area underlying most of the world’s oceans.
Jamaica is the first country to sign a grant agreement on a global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Apart from the United States, which has more than 300 million people, the island nation has won the most world and olympic sporting medals.
The global spotlight has been on Jamaica for a long time and this started soon after Jamaica was settled.
In 1688, Jamaica was the first British colonial territory to establish a postal service. Black River in St. Elizabeth, then an extremely important port, got electricity in 1893, before New York.
Part of the the island nation’s impact comes from the large number of Jamaicans who have gone to other parts of the world. More or less twice as many Jamaicans live outside Jamaica than reside in their native land. The official count is 2.7 million residents on the island, and it is estimated the Jamaican diaspora is estimated to be between 3 million and 5 million people.
These are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, living mainly in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, but also, in increasing numbers, in other parts of Europe and in Africa.
The island’s population is ethnically divers. According to the University of the West Indies, Jamaica’s ethnic make-up consists of 76.3 per cent of people of African descent, 15.1 per cent Afro-European, 3.4 per cent East Indian and Afro-East-Indian, 3.2 per cent caucasian, 1.2 per cent Chinese.
There are some 424,000 Jamaicans of Jewish ancestry, and Jews were among the first immigrants from Europe to Jamaica, arriving with Christopher Columbus from Portugal and Spain, as they fled the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s.
Jamaican workers helped to build the Panama Canal. They worked in the sugar cane fields of Cuba, the apple orchards of America and Canada and hastened Britain’s post World War II recovery in rebuilding the public transport system and the health sector.
The impact of Jamaicans in Canada has been tremendous. Politicians, nurses, doctors, teachers, manual workers, farm workers — the list of Jamaicans who have made Canada their home contains every profession and trade that helped build this country.
If your child has surgery at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, it may well be performed, either by a Jamaican or a doctor trained by a Jamaican who is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto.
Immigration from Jamaica to Canada started in 1796 and has continued ever since. Most recent estimates of the number of Jamaicans in Canada are as high as 300,000 people.
Jamaicans first “immigrated” to Canada in 1796, when 600 or so Jamaican Maroons (the decendants of escaped slaves) were deported from Jamaica to Nova Scotia following their rebellion against the British.
In the last three decades, three ministers in the Ontario cabinet have been Jamaicans.
Jamaican-born Alvin Curling, born in Jamaica, was Minister of Housing, then Minister of Skills Development, and the first black man to be Speaker of the House and finally the first black man to be Ambassador to the Dominican Republic. (He is now retired.)
Mary Anne Chambers, born in Jamaica, and a former senior vice-president of Scotiabank, was the Liberal Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities and, later, Minister of Children and Youth Services. In 2007, she retired.
Margarett Best is Minister of Consumer Services.
Links between Jamaica and Canada go the other way, too.
The Bank of Nova Scotia was established in Jamaica in 1889, before it came to Toronto. It was the first foreign operation of a Canadian bank outside of the U.S. or the U.K.
The impact of Jamaicans on other countries is just as profound.
In Britain, Diane Abbott was the first black woman elected to that country’s House of Commons, as a Labour Party MP. She was born in London to Jamaican immigrants in London in 1953. Her father was a welder and her mother a nurse.
In the U.S., General Colin Powell, eventually the first black man appointed U.S. Secretary of State, was born in New York to Jamaican immigrant parents. He was also the first black man to be U.S. National Security Adviser and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the American Armed Forces at age 52, the youngest person ever to hold the position.
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