We are thrilled to host our next Plots & Pandemic Series event! Join us on Sunday, July 12, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. EDT. Guests can interact with Dorothy and with each other. We will begin with a short reading followed by a group discussion and Q & A.
Register for this exclusive free event by emailing us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca. Spacing is limited to 12 guests.
Dorothy is a mom, disabled senior writer, accessibility advocate, adoptee, retired high school Drama teacher, improv coach and union activist. Her recent memoir, Falling for Myself, (Wolsak and Wynn 2019) examines how disability and adoption combined to help her become an activist and find her birthparents. Reviewed in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and Quill and Quire, it has been heralded as both funny and whip smart. Her first novel, When Fenelon Falls, (Coach House, 2010), features a disabled teen protagonist in the Woodstock-Moonwalk summer of 1969. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in both literary and disability journals: REFUSE, Readers Digest, Broadview Magazine, Wordgathering, Canthius, Alt-Minds, All Lit Up, Little Fiction Big Truths, 49th Shelf, and Open Book. She serves on the Accessibility Advisory Committee for FOLD and the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO). She is a graduate of Western University and did her teacher training at Simon Fraser University.
One of the biggest benefits of a book club (book clubs) is that you don’t get to always pick the books, other people do. Now, let me tell you, as a teacher and librarian it’s not easy giving up that control or the power, but if you do, when you do, you may discover some happy surprises.
The books I have read because I have had to as a reviewer, or as a book club member, are too many to list. As a reader, my tastes lean to historical fiction, literary fiction, Canadian fiction and memoir. I tend to really favour female protagonists. As a secondary school librarian, I read social justice (diverse literature) and YA. For my beloved SUCCESS program at school I also include picture books. I read widely. And here is the rub, even after all these books and all this time, I still get it wrong.
For example, when I joined The Authors’ Book Club, David Albertyn, our co-founder, sent me a copy of his novel Undercard as a thank you. He even wrote a lovely dedication inside. I read the blurb and the synopsis, thought, “that’s nice” and filed it on my book shelf. To be fair, I did think I would show it to my husband or middle son, because it might appeal to them. I mean boxing? Vegas? A thriller? Not exactly my cup of tea.
And here we are. Six months later, a global pandemic, David’s U.S. release and an Authors’ Book Club event where I am moderating. I can’t exactly show up when I haven’t read the book. And you know what? I love it. It is a story of friendship, intrigue, passion, history, boxing, racism, policing, military and so many other issues all woven in. Mostly though, it is a well-paced story with likeable characters who you want to follow on their journey. And really, isn’t that it? Characters we care about, on a journey we can relate to. Isn’t that the essence of good storytelling and what readers want in a book?
I don’t like boxing. I have never been to Las Vegas. I am not a supporter of the police, or the military, and on the surface that is what this book is about. But dig beneath the surface and it is a fast paced, rewarding read with relatable, interesting characters, and that is what readers want.
So, if someone in your book club picks a book that doesn’t appeal. Or, if you get a book as a gift that you would never pick for yourself, take a chance, dive in and actually read it. Take it from me, a seasoned reader, it could be worth the chance. Just read.
Fiona Ross is teacher librarian and book club consultant with The Authors’ Book Club. From the time she read her first novel, Bimbo and Topsy by Enid Blyton at age 6, she was hooked on fiction. Fiona is an avid reader, a teacher librarian, a current member of two book clubs and past chair of the Secondary Fiction Review Committee at the Peel District School Board. She also serves on the planning committee at the Festival of Literary Diversity, (FOLD). Although her job demands lots of YA she occasionally tries to read a book aimed at adult readers.
We’re delighted to kick off our Plots & Pandemic Series with our co-founder David Albertyn. Join us on Saturday, June 20, 2020 to engage in a virtual face-to-face event where guests can interact with David and each other. We will begin with a short reading followed by a group discussion and Q & A.
Register for this exclusive free event by emailing us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca. Spacing is limited to 12 guests.
Born in Durban, South Africa in 1983, David immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1993. A graduate of Queen’s University and the Humber School for Writers – where he received a Letter of Distinction – he has been writing stories since the age of six. A tennis coach who has competed extensively in both tennis and track and field, David’s goal is to write visceral novels that are both thrilling and meaningful. The result of all David’s interests, influences and efforts is Undercard (2019), which is infused with scrupulous research and the pulse of the times we live in. It immediately resonated with David’s Canadian publisher, House of Anansi, and went on to resonate with his international publishers, HarperCollins Germany and HarperCollins France, his World English audiobook publisher, Dreamscape Media, and the award-winning production company that optioned the film/TV rights, Shaftesbury.
The vision behind The Authors’ Book Club is to bring authors and readers together. Our initiative, launched on January 1, 2020, started out strong. By our third month, the three of us – author David Albertyn, who co-founded this initiative, and Fiona Ross, our book club representative and I – had our goal and objectives firmly established. Fifty emerging and established writers from across Canada, from big, mid, and multinational publishers had joined us. We couldn’t be happier.
Then COVID-19 happened. While having a good book to talk about is very important, most book clubs served another function: the opportunity for like-minded people to get together in a social setting, often over food and drinks. Readers typically wanted to invite authors to their book clubs to meet them face-to-face, get their books signed, and to take photos with them. But none of that was suddenly possible.
My mother taught me early on the value of seeing advantage in every opportunity, good or bad. To that end, we encouraged virtual book club meetings. But we wanted to do more. A conversation with Tali Voron from The Soap Box Press and Coach House Books led to the virtual book launch of Patti M. Hall’s debut novel, Loving Large, published by Dundurn Press. Patti’s book launch was supposed to have been at Ben McNally Books in Toronto. We were thrilled when Patti enthusiastically accepted our invitation to hold the event online.
After considering several virtual platforms, we settled on Zoom. Learning to navigate it proved to be an adventure. Unfortunately on the night of the event, we ran into technical problems with the closed captioning third-party. My heart sank knowing that we were unable to provide that for our attendees. Luckily, my daughter, who at 20-years old is able to figure out most tech-related challenges, told me to hit the ‘record’ button minutes into the event otherwise that too would have been lost.
Thanks to Tali, we were also able to partner with an incredible Canadian publisher, Coach House Press. For the entire month of May 2020, we featured one of their books and its author in what became The Authors’ Book Club Spotlight Series. As a result, we have a wonderful collection of twenty blog posts!
Looking ahead, we want to continue The Authors’ Book Club Spotlight Series into the summer with different programming. Fiona suggested we call it “The Spotlight Series: Plots & Pandemic”. We’re thinking of hosting an interactive Author and Reader “meet & greet”. All participants would be in a virtual space with their cameras and mics on so that they could interact with each other and the author. The number of participants would be kept low to encourage engagement. More details on this to come.
In the meanwhile, thanks to my daughter, I’ve just learned to create a YouTube channel for The Authors’ Book Club. Yay! But after four hours, the file finally uploaded, more time is needed to process it. The video of Patti’s book launch will be available in a day or two. The transcribed notes will also be available to accompany it.
Three months ago, I had never even heard of Zoom; nor had I imagined the number of days I’d be spending in front of a computer learning new programs and relying on online communities and YouTube videos to problem-solve. Yet, here I am at 52-years old, learning new skills. I’m confident that my experience mirrors that of many others during these uncertain times. While none of this is extraordinary, it still feels damn good.
Ann Y.K. Choi‘s debut novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, was a Toronto Book Awards finalist and One of CBC Books 12 Best Canadian Debut Novels of 2016. Most recently, the Korean Canadian Heritage Awards committee recognized her for promoting Korean culture within Canada. Ann is the co-founder of The Authors’ Book Club.
From Homer to Starbucks, a look at sirens and mermaids and feminism and consumerism. What started as a small sequence of poems about the Starbucks logo grew to monstrous proportions after the poet fell under a siren spell herself. All Day I Dream About Sirens is both an ancient reverie and a screen-induced stupor as these poems reckon with the enduring cultural fascination with siren and mermaid narratives as they span geographies, economies, and generations, chronicling and reconfiguring the male-centered epic and women’s bodies and subjectivities.
Dive into All Day I Dream About Sirens through the excerpt below, followed by Domenica’s thoughts on the piece.
*
*
“Miraculous Catch” is named after the bible story “The Miraculous Catch of Fish” in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 5:1–11). In the story, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee are having tough luck until Jesus shows up. He tells them to let down their nets and they are rewarded with a great catch. The speaker of my poem, observing these men-turned-disciples, is truly something miraculous: a “maid of many bloods,” a mermaid.
My initiation into the world of myth, metaphor, and symbolism was through Christianity. I attended a Catholic elementary and middle school and felt creatively invigorated by all my religion classes. The apostles seemed like one big awesome friend group, complete with fluctuating loyalties, dramas, and disagreements. Someone like Saint Veronica, risking it all to wipe Jesus’s bloody face with her veil, resonated with me. She was a badass rebel! It made sense, in myth logic, that she’d be rewarded with a magical cloth that could cure blindness and raise the dead. Though instead of magic (heathen!), I was taught to say miracle (holy).
My interest in Christian myth was pure and un-academic and tinged with the eccentricities and superstitions of my Italian family. It’s only natural that Christian symbols and stories began mingling with the other mythological explorations in my writing.
I let myself have fun transposing the mermaids that already lived and frolicked in All Day I Dream about Sirens into these stories: what if the miracle of Jesus walking on water was a trick of a devoted mermaid, guiding his feet beneath the waves? What if Mary Magdalene, Christianity’s OG siren, was a mermaid? Would that explain all the multiplying fish and watery baptisms and fish bumper stickers on the back of mini-vans? In my imagination, yes.
To continue reading, purchase All Day I Dream About Sirens here!
Domenica Martinello holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Poetry.
The poems of Anatomic have emerged from biomonitoring and microbiome testing on the author’s body to examine the way the outside writes the inside, whether we like it or not. Adam Dickinson drew blood, collected urine, swabbed bacteria, and tested his feces to measure the precise chemical and microbial diversity of his body.
Structured like the hormones some of these synthetic chemicals mimic in our bodies, this sequence of poems links the author’s biographical details (diet, lifestyle, geography) with historical details (spills, poisonings, military applications) to show how permeable our bodies are to the environment. As Dickinson becomes obsessed with limiting the rampant contamination of his own biochemistry, he turns this chemical-microbial autobiography into an anxious plea for us to consider what we’re doing to our world—and to our own bodies.
Discover Anatomic and enjoy the poem below, followed by Adam’s thoughts on the piece.
The umbrella is the starting point for a larger obfuscation. A constant mist of tiny particles rains upward, like neck hair at the cicada sex of a smoke alarm. Children outgrow the behaviours of cats, but for many years they are derelicts of skin flakes, stair runners, and upholstery. The average carpet smokes three packs a day. The glassy bits scratching your throat are leftover deterrents to predators. Dust is a conversation happening just out of earshot, it’s the street talk of the Endocrine and Alderaan systems, a vector for the invectives of misdirection. Dust is a bunch of nickels your uncle gives you to get him another Goldschläger. My thoughts, like every other coagulation cascade, are made of melted lint and move around with the chirality of lost oven mitts. In the dusty barns of Michigan, the wrong bag of pale grit was mixed into cow feed. Nine million people ate Firemaster. My limbs tingle just out of broadcast range. Here come the industry standards to burn down the roofs of our mouths.
*
Anatomic is a book that responds to chemical and microbial tests on my body. In conceiving of the book, my intention was to look at how the “outside” environment, writes the “inside” of our bodies. Consequently, over a period of several years, I worked with laboratories and scientists to measure levels of various pollutants in my blood and urine, including pesticides, heavy metals, flame retardants, PCBs, and phthalates. I also sequenced my microbiome through stool samples and swabbed parts of my body to measure the abundance of microbes living on and in me. How did these chemicals and microbes get into me? How are they biologically active? What are their stories in the context of industrial, political, cultural, and evolutionary history? I decided to respond to these chemicals and microbes through poetry because their capacity to affect the metabolism of our bodies constitutes, in my view, a form of writing at the limits of writing—they interfere with or otherwise influence the exchange of hormonal messages in the body.
We are currently in the midst of a global pandemic. At this point it is fair to say that the spread of the novel coronavirus disease via transnational travel and shipping corridors is as much a product of global metabolism as it is a product of human metabolic susceptibility. We write our environment as our environment writes us. I hope my book inspires people to think about the kinds of energy systems we surround ourselves with and the kinds of materials, foods, and supply chains we produce from these systems, especially as we begin to transition away from oil. As it stands, I can peer into my blood and see the signature of multinational corporations such as Monsanto. “A Bromide” responds to the presence of Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in my body. The poem’s epigraph indicates the precise level of the chemical in my serum. These chemicals belong to a class of compounds known as brominated flame retardants. PBDEs leach from common consumer products like TVs and carpets. Household dust is believed to be the greatest source of contamination for humans.
Adam Dickinson’s poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and internationally. He has published three books of poetry. His most recent book, The Polymers, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the ReLit Award. His work has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, and Polish. He has been featured at international literary festivals such as Poetry International in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Oslo International Poetry Festival in Norway. He teaches poetics and creative writing at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Midday at the Super-Kamiokande is part existentialist cry, part close encounters of the other kind. Think Kierkegaard in a spacesuit, Kubrik in a Left Bank café. Like the neutrino observatory of its title, Midday at the Super-Kamiokande seeks “glimpses of the obscure” to carve out meaning, alternately a resistance to rationalism and its champion.
It aims to tear through abstraction with the concrete, either catastrophic – road accidents, nuclear explosions, floods, extinction, eviction, suicide – or quotidian, finding threads of love, empathy, and belief within the fray. These are poems with no middle. These are poems of beginnings, and of ends.
Enjoy the title poem from the collection, followed by Matthew’s thoughts on the piece.
*
*
Midday at the Super-Kamiokande comprises 52 poems like this one, the title poem. So, it’s short. The stanzas with their clean enjambments offer closure, whole thoughts, while the leaps between stanzas eschew narrative, letting the temporal connection dangle, alighting on a seemingly dissociated image or idea. The white space between is charged, I like to think, with neural crackle.
In fact, the stanza order could conceivably shift and the poem would still be the poem, only phrased differently, the way a melody is still the melody even after variation. Try it. Each of the stanzas in this title poem would work as a beginning or an end. The poem exhibits “shufflability,” to use a highly technical literary term. Or, as the cover copy says, “These are poems with no middle; they are poems of beginnings, and of ends.” The nub, though, is that’s what poems are. As the incomparable Dean Young says, “You want middles, read novels.”
My editor noticed two recurring motifs throughout the book; neither were planned with anything like high-level intent. One was the instances of doubling: doppelgängers and twins but also images, reflections, reversals, paradoxes and puns. Midnights and middays, as it were. The second was the proliferation of suns. The sun has, throughout Western philosophy, represented knowledge, the “light of reason,” and for some, like Aquinas, a way to God. Unlike the moon, which is a mercurial, slant light, the sun is fixed and direct. “Every sun is a full sun.” Yet the suns in Midday tend to be compromised, either setting, failing or strangely immaterial.
This more philosophical approach, mixing metaphysics with my materialism, was a pivot from my previous books, which took their cues from science. What if “reason isn’t reasonable,” I thought—or read and then thought. Maybe it’s in the darkness, in the shadows, we find the truth. The Super-Kamiokande, a neutrino observatory in Japan, is probing the mystery that is dark matter. But will finding the answer get us closer to the “something from nothing” that is the inescapable, unrelenting presentation of our universe?
I say no. FWIW.
Matthew Tierney
To continue reading, purchase Midday at the Super-Kamiokande here!
Matthew Tierney is the author of four books of poetry; the most recent is Midday at the Super-Kamiokande. His previous book, Probably Inevitable, won the 2013 Trillium Book Award for Poetry in English. He is also a recipient of the K. M. Hunter Award and the P.K. Page Founders’ Award. He lives in the east end of Toronto with his wife and son.
In 1934, Gertrude Stein asked “What is poetry and if you know what poetry is what is prose.” Throaty Wipes answers this question and many more! How does broadband work? Does “chuffed” mean pleased or displeased? What if the generations of Adam had mothers? Through her signature fusion of formal innovation and lyricism, Holbrook delivers what we’ve been waiting for.
Read on to enjoy several poems from Throaty Wipes and Susan’s thoughts on the selected pieces
*
As an excerpt of Throaty Wipes (Coach House 2016) I’ve chosen four of the constraint-based poems from that work. It seemed appropriate in these days of physical constraint!
“What is Poetry” offers multiple answers to the titular question via anagrams of it. “Without You” was composed without the letter U. “Calculogue” was composed on a Canon LS-863TG handheld calculator – remember doing this in junior high? “Tonsillitis” was written using only the letters in “tonsillitis.”
American poet Harry Mathews explains the energy of constraint-based writing as arising out of the fact that “being unable to say what you normally would, you must say what you normally wouldn’t.” This forced mobility of expression yields more than aesthetic novelty, however; Mathews’ observation speaks to the revelatory effect of constraints. What would we normally not say? What knowledges are obscured through normative discourses? Perhaps writing constraints paradoxically allow for freedom of expression, for honesty, a way for us to, as Emily Dickinson suggested, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
In his “Prefatory Sonnet,” Wordsworth wrote about the freedom he experienced writing in the constraint of the sonnet form. The fifth poem I included in your excerpt is new, and takes its title from lines 5-7 of Wordsworth’s poem:
[…] Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells
You’ll see that my “Foxglove Bells Manifesto” uses only the letters in the word “constraints,” and argues for appreciating the generative power of choosing to be hemmed in. I hope readers will want to murmur in foxglove bells, to find out what they might hear from themselves.
Susan Holbrook is a poet and fiction writer whose first book, misled, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephen J. Stephensson Award. Her chapbook Good Egg Bad Seed was published by Nomados in 2004. She teaches North American literatures and creative writing at the University of Windsor. She recently co-edited The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (forthcoming from Oxford University Press, 2009).
Grappling with queerness and trauma from Alberta to Brooklyn, powering through body, sex, and gender to hit free open roads, in Vulgar Mechanics, K. B. Thors seeks to invent new strategies for survival through the two most basic tools available to the speaker: language and the body. The poems celebrate the body as a vehicle of excavation and self-determination in a world in which there may be no such a thing as a safe word.
Discover Vulgar Mechanics through the excerpt below and read K.B. Thors’ thoughts on the passage.
*
All the Rage
(The following excerpt is the final portion of the poem, which is the last poem in the book)
*
“All the rage” is a funny expression. I often wonder about the tells in our language and the origins of phrases — I figure they must give something away about human nature and personality. The idea of rage as fashionable or of the moment was a way for me to poke fun at the forces in the book, the heavy grief and love and anger. The book’s closing poems reflects that finding-our-footing that eventually comes after loss, the insistence of joy and adventure, despite and because of life’s mess. This poem always felt like it should be the last one in the book, a reflection on what just happened.
There are no pat endings in poetry, but this poem is an arrival in a place I hope others recognize. You know those moments where it feels like you understand yourself even a smidge better? The human animal has always loved and lost. We hurt, we get confused, we grow stronger. Sometimes you gotta kick a rock just to get moving—I’m a big fan of how these bodies we’re in help us process. Unhinging here felt bodily and emotional, a dismantling of my understanding of myself in the gendered, violent, gorgeous world, and a coming back around on my own terms. I got thrown for a loop, and used my legs to keep swinging to get to a more nuanced, stable vantage point. I might still be off kilter, but through these poems I was able to see beauty I hadn’t before, that had been there all along.
K. B. Thors
To continue reading, purchase Vulgar Mechanics here!
K.B. Thors is a poet, translator, and educator from rural Alberta, Canada. Her translation of Stormwarning (Phoneme, 2018) by Icelandic poet Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir won the American Scandinavian Foundation’s Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize and is currently nominated for the PEN Literary Award for Poetry in Translation. She is also the Spanish-English translator of Chintungo: The Story of Someone Else by Soledad Marambio (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2018). Her poems, essays and literary criticism have appeared around the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Teaching Fellow in Poetry.
In Any Night of the Week, Jonny Dovercourt shares the history of how Toronto became a music mecca from 1957-2001. Any Night of the Week takes readers from Yonge Street to Yorkville to Queen West to College, the neighbourhoods that housed Toronto’s music scenes, and features Syrinx, Rough Trade, Martha and the Muffins, Fifth Column, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Rheostatics, Ghetto Concept, LAL, Broken Social Scene, and more!
Catch Jonny Dovercourt and Kevin Drew, from the Broken Social Scene, for a live chat on Instagram (@brokensocialscene) at 5PM EDT on Friday, May 22nd as they talk about Any Night of the Week.
And, on Friday, May 22nd, for one day only, get your copy of Any Night of the Week for 25% off when you use the promo code ANOTW here.
In the meantime, learn more about Toronto’s DIY music history in the excerpt below and read Jonny’s thoughts on the passage.
*
JAMAICA TO TORONTO 1967–75
The birth of Canadian reggae in Toronto – and Mississauga.
August 13, 1967, was a record-breaking day for the Toronto Island Ferries. Thirty-five thousand people made the journey across the inner harbour to attend the final day of a brand-new festival called Caribana. Nine months in planning, the week-long festival, modelled on Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival, was Toronto’s growing Caribbean community’s contribution to Canada’s centennial celebrations. Montreal might have had the futuristic marvels of Expo 67, but we had a real party: calypso steel bands, sunshine, dancing, spicy food, colourful costumes, and, of course, a parade. It was a success beyond all expectations, and Caribana ’67 started an annual tradition that has defined the August long weekend in Toronto ever since.
Live music at the first Caribana included Trinidadian calypso titans Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow, as well as a local band, the Cougars, fronted by Jay Douglas, who had moved to Toronto from Montego Bay, Jamaica, in ’63. They were one of several bands with members who’d been ‘drafted’ to come play in Toronto’s proliferating Jamaican clubs. Though at first these groups played Black American–style r&b to appeal to the expectations of Toronto audiences, they started to slip in some of the new sounds emanating from the studios and sound systems of Jamaica.
Canada had become an attractive destination for many Jamaicans fleeing political violence and economic uncertainty. racist immigration policies started to become a thing of the past in the mid-fifties, at first to allow more Caribbean women to come to Canada as domestic workers. The 1962 Immi- gration Act, which focused on skills and education over race, helped liberalize entry, as did the point system, adopted in ’67. Prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s policy of official multiculturalism made the country look progressive and welcoming. People steered clear of the US to avoid the draft. And there was work here, especially for musicians.
Karl Mullings was one of the organizers of Caribana ’67 and the booker of the wif (West Indies Federation Club) at Brunswick and College. He was also a talent scout and manager who coaxed Jamaican musicians to make the flight north to Toronto. The Cougars were the wif house band, while the Sheiks held it steady at Club Jamaica on yonge Street.
Reggae, ska, and rocksteady were almost completely unfamiliar to white Canadian audiences. Little did Torontonians know they were in the presence of greatness: this exodus included some of the real innovators of the Jamaican sound.
Jackie Mittoo was a musical genius, an astonishingly talented keyboardist and organist who had been a member of the Skatalites and the musical direc- tor at groundbreaking Studio One, the label/studio considered the ‘Motown of Jamaica.’ In 1969, he moved to Toronto. Despite his accomplishments in his native land, he worked some pretty thankless gigs. He was a solo enter- tainer at Fran’s restaurant in the early seventies, performing seven hours a day (!) all by himself. Later on, he moved over to Dr. Livingstone’s lounge at the Bristol Place Hotel, out by the airport. But he also got to open for Barry White at Massey Hall.
Another talented Jamaican musician didn’t have such a happy experience. Wayne McGhie was a singer/guitarist and, unlike many of his contemporaries, also a songwriter. In 1969, with the help of many of his Jamaican friends, he recorded an incredible album of stirring soul music that may be Canada’s finest contribution to the genre. Wayne McGhie & The Sounds of Joy was released the following year by Scarborough-based Birchmount records, but it was poorly promoted and didn’t make much impact on its release. To make matters worse, a warehouse fire destroyed all of the remaining copies.
Beset by mental health challenges, McGhie dropped out of music and out of sight, ultimately cared for by his sister. Meanwhile, Sounds of Joy became coveted by crate-diggers and hip-hop artists. In 2004, it was reissued by Seattle record label Light in the Attic as part of a series called ‘Jamaica to Toronto.’ In 2006, the series made waves with the titular compilation, Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk & Reggae 1967–74.
Reggae music in Toronto was crucially diy, driven by the passion of its creators and fans, who had to build much of the industry infrastructure themselves. By the early eighties, Jamaican-Canadian music was one of the city’s most important forms of musical expression, and reggae’s influ- ence on everything from post-punk to hip-hop can’t be overstated. And it began in just a few clubs, booked by Jamaican musicians, who booked Jamaican musicians.
In 1974, Jamaican-Canadian music would get its first studio, the first Black-owned studio in the country. reggae fan Jerry Brown moved to Toronto in 1968 and got a job in an auto body shop. He bought a house out near the airport, amidst the sterile sprawl of Mississauga. And he built a studio in the basement. His wife suggested the name Summer Sounds.
A community of musicians developed around Summer. People liked the vibe, that you could smoke weed inside, that Brown wasn’t afraid to push his gear into the red to get that big bass sound. Jackie Mittoo became Summer’s unofficial musical director, and a house band developed, named Earth, roots and Water. Like Studio One, it became a label as well. The first Summer records release was a roots-reggae single by Johnny Osbourne in 1974. Brown sold it by taking it around to the several Jamaican-owned record shops that had begun to crop up on Bathurst and Eglinton West, a district becoming known as Little Jamaica.
But people weren’t that interested in Canadian-made reggae. To get the records to sell, he had to add a sticker that said ‘Made in Jamaica.’
*
One of my aims when I set out to write Any Night of the Week was to build more widespread appreciation for homegrown Toronto music. It’s really a story about the local bands that made up the music scene, and steers away from talking about all the famous visitors that have performed here over the years. But even when it comes to homegrown talent, it’s often our famous exports who steal the limelight: Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and The Band all got their start in Yorkville’s coffeehouses and Yonge Street’s bars in the ‘60s, but they didn’t become household names until after they packed up and moved to the USA.
Any Night of the Week instead shines a light on the many uncelebrated musical pioneers who called Toronto home – many of whom were forced to go “DIY” (do it yourself) and remain independent, either by circumstance or design, due to lack of support from the Canadian music industry. And no scene or genre fits this description better than reggae music, which got its start in Jamaica in the ‘60s, but quickly established Toronto as one of the key locations of its musical diaspora. In part thanks to Pierre Trudeau opening up Canada to a wave of newcomers, Caribbean immigrants made a huge impact on the cultural life of Toronto, which until then had been overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and uptight. The Caribana festival came to define the August long weekend in the City, and Toronto hip-hop has set itself apart from its American cousins through incorporating Jamaican patois.
I first learned about the early years of reggae in my hometown, when I heard a compilation CD in 2006 called Jamaica to Toronto. It was incredible to discover artists like JoJo Bennett, Wayne McGhie, and Jay Douglas & the Cougars, who had recorded world-class reggae, soul, and R&B in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – and also to find out that internationally renowned artists like Jackie Mittoo had lived here – and lived fairly humble existences. Mittoo played solo in hotel lounges and helped build a recording studio, Summer Sounds, out in the drab suburban sprawl of Mississauga. The scrappy, DIY spirit of the early reggae scene inspired the punk rockers of Queen Street, who in turn laid the groundwork for the indie music scene that we now know and love.
Jonny Dovercourt
To continue reading, purchase Any Night of the Weekhere!
Jonny Dovercourt (aka Jonathan Bunce) is a veteran Toronto indie musician/writer and the co-founder and Artistic Director of Wavelength Music, the influential nonprofit independent music organization and concert series. Visit Jonny’s website. Connect with him on Twitter.
