Isme Bennie

The city’s ethnic diversity was reflected in an annual event known as Caravan which began in 1969. Multiculturalism was the buzz word of the times. Canada, unlike the US, was not a melting pot, we were a mosaic! Caravan was a week-long party during which various ethnic communities showcased their foods and culture. Each ethnic group had its own pavilion, in a church basement, or community centre. We went around with a $2 “passport” trying to sample each one.  Caravan eventually vanished, perhaps because almost every national cuisine is now readily available in the city, perhaps because though we love our diversity, the concept of multiculturalism doesn’t carry the same weight, perhaps because various ethnic groups spread from the city centre to the suburbs.

I had found it hard leaving New York, feeling that I was selling myself short by giving up my career in television – a green young South African who was making it in the big apple, strange for someone who hadn’t seen tv until London in the early 60’s, the South Africa government for so many years not wanting the black underclass to view the good white life.

Educational television was about to be launched here and I was able to secure work in Toronto based on my New York experience, a huge plus in those days. The job was not very clearly defined, and making television programs was what I ended up doing for a while. I “produced” a multicultural cooking series called “The World in Your Kitchen,” an appreciation of Toronto’s wide range of culinary experiences. Because of the ‘educational’ mandate of the broadcaster, we were called educational supervisors, not producers, and debates ensued as to whether televising Shakespearean plays or dramatized classic novels was indeed educational!

We went ice-skating on Sundays. I bought boots at Canadian Tire, like Eaton’s, another iconic Canadian retailer. I would join friends at the neighborhood rink, clinging to its wire barrier. I never ever let go, and so I ended up finally making hot chocolate for apres skating. Wine making was an activity shared by a half-a-dozen or so neighbours. We bought huge containers of grape juice from a supplier, put the juice through various stages and ended up with a whole lot of wine. Everyone’s wine tasted the same, and the supply never seemed to diminish. I had some for years after, even after we had moved from our rental to a home we bought four years after arriving in Toronto.

It was possible to buy a house, something that we could never have achieved in New York City. Gentrification was beginning in older downtown neighborhoods, we were about the first “white painters” in ours, among the first to take down walls to make it fashionably open-plan. The locals came to stare through the windows. I remember some ex-pat South Africans coming down from the newer northern suburbs and ringing our doorbell to show friends “how people lived downtown”, and the fact we had window blinds, not drapes, was another talking point.

The South Africans who came to Toronto in the 60s and 70s were largely academics and professionals who were unable to tolerate the apartheid system. One day I looked up from squeezing the tomatoes in the St Lawrence Market and in front of me was one of my English teachers from the University of the Witwatersrand! The architect Jack Diamond was already here, and one of the accents heard quite often on CBC radio was that of psychiatrist Dr. Vivian Rakoff, a popular lecturer. Cousins of mine dribbled in, but the large ex-pat South African population took a while to establish itself, as political and economic factors increasingly drove them to make the move. They settled in north Toronto enclaves, in what we now call 905. South Africans came with their worldly goods, no need to visit Honest Ed’s! I know of only one friend from my youth who ended up here. She and her family were apparently helped by an “underground railroad” set up to assist South African Jewish families immigrate.

My parents came to visit shortly after I settled here. My father wanted to go to a synagogue on Rosh Ha Shana, the Jewish New Year. I wasn’t familiar with Jewish Toronto, but took advice and got him a seat at Holy Blossom Temple. He wouldn’t go, thought it sounded Catholic or something. In South Africa synagogues were simply called by town or street names. I tried a few more synagogues, until he ended up happily at one in the Kensington Market. He was looking for roots. Our next task, using the Yellow Pages, was to find him a bridge club. No internet then. Every afternoon for the three weeks of his visit I drove him to Bathurst and Wilson to play, while I did touristy things with my mother.

The big issues of my early Toronto years were: fighting development in Ramsden Park; fighting the Spadina Expressway which threatened to destroy residential areas including the Annex, parks, and the University campus; and Henry Morganthaler’s abortion clinics.

It felt easier to try to fight the system, or change things, in Toronto than it had been in New York. Civil liberty seemed a given.

Almost five years to the day I arrived in Canada, I went to apply for citizenship. I felt privileged to be a Canadian. I still believe it’s one of the best countries in the world. I had even started to learn French, believing also in bilingualism. Because South Africa was no longer in the Commonwealth at that time, the Canadian immigration authorities had a problem about how to handle South Africans, so they chose to consider us British. I had imagined I would have to go away to study the premiers of the provinces, and other Canadian facts, pass a test, and then arrive at a ceremony, complete with white gloves, to be awarded my citizenship. But no, I was taken into an office, asked a few details, told I was now a Canadian citizen, and asked to swear allegiance, if I was uncomfortable with the bible, on a cookbook. I was in.

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