Recently, Sheila went on a free Little Jamaica Toronto Black Music Tour – and she raved about it. It is an initiative of the Canada Black Music Archives.

This morning, I headed for the Eglinton/Dufferin area with my buddy Stagg for today’s tour. It was a blustery day with on again off again showers, but that did not matter. The tour was excellent. our hosts, Phil Vessel, the primary speaker, DJ Donna providing the tunes, and Kenya, with additional research and photos.

The tour began at the Baptist Church on the NE corner of Dufferin and Eglinton – I hadn’t expected to be talking about gospel music. The tour moved east to several well-planned stops.

We saw a number of murals by Adrian Hayles, who also painted the 70m tall music history mural on Yonge Street.

We continued east to Marlee, making several stops. For instance, in front of a now closed storefront, Monica’s Cosmetics. It was a place Black women could get the kind of hair products they wanted but could not get elsewhere. Meanwhile, her husband was George the Record Man downstairs. A lot of great music came out of basements and businesses along this stretch of Eglinton. One basement even served as an after-school reggae school for young musicians. How cool is that?

Phil is advocating for some plaques on key buildings pointing out the cultural history of the area. It’s important to do this now. If you don’t think it is possible for a neighbourhood to change completely, just look at Ossington Ave between Dundas and Queen. Let’s honour the cultural anchors of this community now, while this community is still rocking. The murals are a good start. And the tours! Did you know that between the 60s and the 80s, Toronto became the second largest producer of Reggae outside of Jamaica? The area has endured some struggles, not the least of which is the never-ending Metrolinx construction, but it has endured and the community remains vibrant.

I think Phil and Donna and Kenya are doing important work – not just for their community, but for the whole city.

There is one more tour scheduled for September and it is full up. If you are interested in this tour let the organizers know through the CBMA website. I think word is just getting out. If there is continued demand, it’s a measure of the success of this initiative, and hopefully they will consider running more of these tours.

I knew bits and pieces of this history going in. The tour filled in so many gaps for me. I felt our hosts could have talked all day. Their love and respect for their community shines.

If you haven’t checked out my Caribana video as part of my Rediscovering my Toronto project, you can watch it below. (Oops I mean Toronto Caribbean Carnival). I’m also going to go back to Eglinton this week and create a video walk through the area, which I’ll link to this blog post. Hopefully that will give readers a fuller idea of the vibe of this area.

If you like my Toronto videos, it’s helpful to me if you like & subscribe on the YouTube machine.

Finally, here is my video walk through part of Little Jamaica.