Written by Adrian Harewood
This article was originally published by Ricochet and is republished here with permission.
It called itself “the eyes, ears and voice of the community.”
And for 23 years it largely fulfilled that promise.
CONTRAST wasn’t the first Black newspaper in Canadian history.
That was The Voice of the Fugitive, founded in 1851 by two leading abolitionists, the formerly enslaved Kentucky-born orator and writer Henry Bibb, and his Free Black Rhode Island-born wife Mary Bibb, an educator and institution builder.
CONTRAST wasn’t the longest running Black newspaper in Canadian history.
That was The Dawn of Tomorrow, founded in London, Ontario in 1923 by the Georgia-born, James Jenkins -father of the renowned Black Canadian social activist and broadcaster Kay Livingstone. The paper was in circulation for nearly 90 years.
But CONTRAST was arguably the most influential Black newspaper in Canadian history.
The paper punched above its weight
It had guts.
It challenged power
It was loud.
It was self-assured.
It had swagger.
It was proudly and unapologetically Black.
No Black Canadian newspaper before or since has had a bigger impact on the political discourse and the media landscape in Canada than CONTRAST.
No Black Canadian newspaper has been as engaged with its readership as Contrast was.
No Black Canadian newspaper has meant more to its community than CONTRAST did.
CONTRAST was, in fact, much more than a Black Canadian newspaper.
It was the Black community’s compass.
It’s conscience.
It’s heartbeat.
It’s champion.
Emerging at the tail-end of the Civil Rights Movement and at the height of the Black Power Movement, CONTRAST was founded by the “sweet talking,” charismatic and suave Alvin “Al” W. Hamilton.
Al Hamilton was a pipe-smoking, mustachioed, debonair, maverick Black businessman from Alberta with a colourful past. In the 1950s he’d been a porter on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) until he allegedly “punched out” someone who’d called him a “Nigger.” He lost the job. Hamilton had spent time in prison, but the details as to how he’d got there were always sketchy. Upon his release though he seemed to have undergone a transformation and sought to pursue a straighter path. He later served as the managing editor of The West Indian News Observer from 1967 to 1969.
Hamilton became CONTRAST’s publisher and indefatigable cheerleader. In CONTRAST’s early days Hamilton worked alongside his co-founder, a preternaturally wise and dynamic young Jamaica-born woman in her early 20s named Olivia “Babsy” Grange. Grange, whose younger brother Hamlin (Grange) would serve as editor of CONTRAST for a time, would eventually return to her native Jamaica and become a successful politician. She currently serves as Jamaica’s Minister of Culture.
From the late 1960s to the 1990s, CONTRAST told stories about Black life in Canada that mainstream broadsheets like the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Telegram, and the then rabidly anti-Black Toronto Sun often ignored or downplayed. The paper had its offices in a building located at 28 Lennox Street in the Bathurst and Bloor corridor. In the 1970s, he edifice would become a hub of Toronto’s burgeoning Black community. The West Indian scholas Walter Rodney, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and Horace Campbell, author of Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney both made pilgrimages to CONTRAST’s headquarters.
CONTRAST launched with a bang on February 9, 1969. On its front page was the story of the largest campus protest in Canadian history, the Sir George Williams Affair. For 13 days, beginning on January 29, 1969, about 400 Black, White and Brown students peacefully occupied the computer centre in the Henry F. Hall Building on the campus of Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University, in downtown Montreal. They were protesting allegations of blatant anti-Black racial discrimination in the classroom. After a police raid, the centre went up in flames causing millions of dollars of damage. Many students trying to escape the blaze were brutally beaten by police. As the centre burned, a group of onlookers in the city’s streets could be heard shouting “Let the Niggers burn! Let the Niggers burn!” The phrase later became the title of a seminal book written about the historic event. The incident was debated on the floor of Canada’s House of Commons. In the end, 97 students were arrested, including 42 black students. One of the students who was detained was Joey F. Jagan, son of Guyana’s then former Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan- his mother Janet would later serve as Guyana’s president. While in police custody the students were separated by race.
In 1971 Contrast marked the two-year anniversary of the Sir George Williams incident in this way:
“Let us therefore brighten the future of our people by continuing with revolutionary conviction and undeterred fortitude to complete the very difficult, selfless task we have undertaken. We must engage ourselves in the struggle… Now.”
CONTRAST’s attitude reflected the prevailing Black revolutionary zeitgeist of the early 1970s. The paper vigorously covered the campaign to free the Black American activist and academic Angela Davis, who faced murder and conspiracy charges which could have resulted in the death penalty. In 1972 she was acquitted of all charges.
CONTRAST covered African Liberation Day marches, and demonstrations protesting police brutality.
The paper provided a detailed accounting of high-profile stories like the coroner’s inquest into the August 9,1978 Toronto police shooting death of 24-year-old Black man Buddy Evans by a White constable.
It captured the Black community’s horror and outrage in the wake of the August 26, 1979 fatal Toronto police shooting of Albert Johnson, a 35-year-old father and Jamaican immigrant.
It discussed the way forward for the fractious National Black Coalition of Canada (NBCC), Canada’s version of the NAACP, and the myriad challenges it faced trying to bind a culturally and regionally diverse organization together.
The paper commented frequently on the state of federal politics and multiculturalism.
CONTRAST published articles about the pioneering Jamaican-born Black Canadian politician and feminist Rosemary Brown, who in 1975 came a close second to Ed Broadbent in the race for the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party.
The paper chronicled the efforts of the Black activist and foreign national Rosie Douglas and his legion of supporters, to remain in Canada and avoid deportation following his conviction for mischief. Douglas was one of the central figures in the 1969 Sir George Williams Affair and had been identified by the Canadian state as a ring leader of the calamitous protests. He served 18 months in jail. Douglas was eventually forced to leave the country and return to his homeland of Dominica in the Caribbean in 1976. In 2000 he became Dominica’s Prime Minister.
It focused on municipal politics in Toronto and featured articles about Toronto mayors, David Crombie and John Sewell, both known for their socially progressive views.
The paper tracked anti-colonial liberation struggles in Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), along with global anti-apartheid protests against the White supremacist National Party government in South Africa. CONTRAST charted the development of the New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop, who for a time when living in Toronto had worked at CONTRAST, that would mount a revolution and overthrow the authoritarian regime of Eric Gairy in 1979. Bishop became Grenada’s prime minister.
CONTRAST featured articles on Black visual artist from across the African diaspora. It shone a spotlight on Black Canadian musicians like Oscar Peterson, Tiki Mercury Clarke, and Dan Hill, along with international superstars like Hugh Masekela, Aretha Franklin, Miriam Makeba, Stevie Wonder, Joan Armatrading, Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley.
CONTRAST covered sports at the amateur and professional levels. Whether it was highlighting the successes of the world-beating West Indies men’s cricket teams of the 1970s and 1980s, the championship bouts of the Nova Scotian welterweight Clyde Gray, the triumphs of Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon and the US Open, the wizardry of Pele, the brilliance of Canadian superstar basketball player Sylvia Sweeney, CFL quarterbacks Warren Moon, Condredge Holloway and Chuck Ealey, New York Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson, The Greatest Muhammad Ali, NBA superstar Julius “Dr. J.” Erving, and NFL running back OJ Simpson. The paper also showcased local soccer tournaments like the Contrast Cup and covered high school basketball and track and field.
The paper had a remarkable track record of providing talented emerging Black journalists with opportunities they couldn’t get in Canada’s mainstream media. CONTRAST became a launching pad for some of Canada’s most writers, many of whom would go on to have illustrious careers: Austin Clarke would become one of Canada most celebrated novelists, wining the Giller Prize in 2002 for his magnum opus, The Polished Hoe. Harold Hoyte became the founding publisher and editor of Barbados’ leading newspaper The Nation; Cecil Foster would write for the Globe and Mail and become an award winning novelist and academic; Jojo Chintoh became a beloved reporter for City TV; Hamlin Grange became a reporter for CBC, a diversity consultant and recipient of the Order of Canada; Royson James would become an acclaimed urban affairs columnist for the Toronto Star;Lorna Simms, CONTRAST’s last editor, went on to launch a paper of her own, DAWN.
The Trinidadian born Arnold Auguste arrived in Canada in 1970 and spent a few years writing for CONTRAST before leaving and striking out on his own. In 1978 he launched his own weekly Black newspaper, SHARE. Share remains the longest running Black Canadian newspaper still in existence.
Norman “Otis” Richmond, a prolific and uncompromising radical journalist/broadcaster in mainstream and community media, a veritable musical and political encyclopedia, and community activist, whose career now spans nearly 60 years, worked for CONTRAST for 9 years. He went on to influence generations of aspiring journalists, like me. In fact, for four years I had a weekly segment on his radio show, Saturday Morning Live, on the now defunct CKLN 88.1FM which had been the campus community radio station at the old Ryerson University.
Cameron Bailey also wrote for CONTRAST. He became a prominent film critic and is currently the CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
CONTRAST featured the work of talented Black photographers like Jules Elder, Diane Liverpool and Al Peabody who chronicled the many weekly happenings in Black Canadian communities. Their work foregrounded Black joy, beauty and showed the range of the community’s creative expression presented in the form of fashion shows, pageants and carnival celebrations.
Full disclosure, my own parents, John and Hyacinth Harewood were both national columnist for CONTRAST for nearly a decade.
CONTRAST was a paper for all seasons.
Its legacy can be found in the stories of the people who remember it most fondly. The folks who faithfully read the paper and those who worked there.
CONTRAST’s legacy manifests itself when Black Canadian journalists, unlike their forebears, are able to enter the newsrooms of mainstream media outlets across Canada and be respected.
CONTRAST’s legacy is revealed every day in journalist who exhibit courage, compassion and creativity.
It is found in the journalists who cover the world with critical, empathetic eyes but who are also committed to changing it.
https://ricochet.media/media/the-newspaper-that-broke-ground-for-black-canadians/