JAMAICA'S CONSUL General to Toronto, Vivia Betton, has praised Jamaica's Ambassador of Culture, Louise Bennett-Coverley, for her "titanic and enormous contribution" to Jamaica.
"Miss Lou started the movement for a people to communicate to others in their native tongue. She made it fashionable, respectable and acceptable," said Miss Betton. "She gave our patois potent that thousands of ordinary Jamaicans could feel confident to speak of their dreams, aspirations, fears and hopes with passion in a language of our own."
The Consul General's comments were made at the recent "Boonoonoonoos Brunch & Brawta" organised by the Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA) in Toronto, Canada.
MISS LOU'S IMPACT
'Miss Lou' could have lived with the status quo and ignored the national movement which "sought to make our people free in every way," said Miss Betton.
Instead, the cultural icon contributed to every Jamaican's "consciousness and the emancipation of our minds," she said, adding that generations to come owe her a huge debt of gratitude.
Miss Lou who has lived in Canada since 1987 was a special guest at the event organised by the largest Jamaican organisation in Canada and held under the patronage of the Consul General.
Each year "celebrities" from various professions, including law, entertainment, media, business and sports are invited to take part.
A celebrity sits at each table and leads the group in answering a wide variety of questions on Jamaica's history and culture.
JAMAICA REPRESENTED
Jamaicans were well represented in the list of celebrities who participated. They included Consul General Betton; Speaker of the Ontario Legislature, Alvin Curling, the first black to be appointed Speaker in Ontario; former Citizenship Court judge Pamela Appelt, who was the first black woman to be appointed a Citizenship Court judge in Canada; and Jennifer Holness and David Sutherland, the husband and wife filmmaking team whose first feature-length movie "Love, Sex and Eating the Bones" was voted best Canadian first feature at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival.
The movie is scheduled for general release in March.
Jamaican-born Ashante Infantry, a reporter with the Toronto Star, and her group did a moving version of Claude McKay's poem, If We Must Die. Proceeds from the event will finance the mortgage of the building the association acquired in 1996, when it became the first Jamaican group in Canada to own a building of that size.
