Family Time

One of the bands at Caribana 2018

For years, I envied my ex husband, as he had such a large family and although I became extremely close to all of them and remained so even after the divorce, somehow not having my own large family still left me feeling a bit isolated. You see, I have only one brother and two cousins who grew up with me but each time we got together, we seemed so few as opposed to his family.

A section of the Caribana parade 2018

Well I am now discovering that it is not that I have a small family, my problem is I just never knew many of them!

The largest unknown segment of my family is from my paternal grandfather's side. I had met him only once and was dead scared of him as he was blind so wore dark glasses. I had never before seen anyone in dark glasses. Besides, he had a large grey beard so to me, a young kid of probably six years old in the days before television was invented thus exposing us to different looking folks, that was a very scary picture! I remember running away from him on that occasion, although his wife, my grandmother was my greatest hero.

 I guess it was because I never knew him why I never knew anything about his family either and never considered asking. It is only recently that I discovered he was one of 14 children and their descendants are spread out throughout the world.

Some of my Cuban kin

I therefore was most excited to meet a cousin from Canada who had a wealth of  information about that side of the family.

First, I learnt that I had cousins in Cuba and having traveled there three times already from my home in Jamaica which is only 90 miles away, had no problem jumping on a plane to find them in 2014.

It was a great pleasure meeting them and learning a bit about their family.

Our relationship stems from their late matriarch who was a sister to that grandfather. 

In the early 1900's, numerous Jamaicans migrated to Cuba in search of employment as then that country then had a thriving economy. That grandaunt of mine was among those who migrated there, she got married, had three daughters and she ended up seeing eleven grandchildren before she died at age one hundred and seven.

I was extremely happy to make a

Some of us bonded immediately

link with those descendants and am now in regular communication with the eldest who is the only one who speaks English. She has always said her greatest dream is to visit Jamaica, the country of her ancestors.

More link-up was to come as the same Canadian cousin who is my source of information, told me she was arranging a small reunion of some relatives who live there plus sisters who live in Seattle, Washington.

She was smart enough to arrange the reunion to coincide with Caribana. We had a lovely get- together at the Event's room at her condo and got to know all about each other and some of our late relatives all over the world.

Get together in Toronto

I bonded immediately with most of my newly met family and some of us toured together, first at Caribana and also on a boat tour of the harbor front of the vast, busy Lake Ontario.

Caribana is a cultural festival of Caribbean people and traditions which has been held each summer since the late sixties, in the city of Toronto. 

This has been billed as North America's largest street festival and it is frequented by over 2 million visitors each year. It was first held on Centre Island, one of the Toronto islands, but quickly outgrew that venue so was transferred to the streets of Exhibition Place and Lakeshore Blvd. downtown. 

The man-made lake on Centre Island in which we overturned 

When l lived in Canada many decades ago, I remember attending the carnival at Centre island and vividly recall renting a canoe and overturning, spilling all our belongings including even a radio which never played again.

I was therefore happy that I could go to the family reunion and take in the carnival at the new venue, along with the Seattle based sisters who spent a few more days in Toronto.

We all had a wonderful time there viewing the costumes and tasting the various foods and in general, just hanging out.

I must admit that each time I meet new members of the family, it certainly brings me a great sense of belonging and I look forward to many such events in the future.

An Inuit sculpture on Lakeshore Blvd.