Chris in the News: Strong roots and a bright future

SCENE AND HEARD

Jeff Mahoney
The Hamilton Spectator

There's always a lot of talk at the John C. Holland Awards, and rightly so, of standing on the shoulders of the past. The 2010 gala was no different.

Every year it is one of the highlight celebrations, not just of Black History Month but of the entire social calendar, but this year's John C. Holland gala, held Saturday night, might have been the best ever.

And when they talk in the future of the shoulders of the past, they may well point to this year's awards as a new plateau for the recognition of black achievement in this city and beyond.

Guests packed the Michelangelo Banquet Centre - I don't think there have ever been more people out for the awards. And they were as rich and representative a cross-section not just of this city's black community (from people with backgrounds in Haiti and Somalia to those with roots going back to the Underground Railroad) but of Hamilton's entire ethnocultural makeup as has ever assembled in one place.

There was Lloyd Turner of It's Your Festival fame (also of the Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association). Artist/educator Roger Ferreira, with his Trinidadian origins. Evelyn Myrie -- her background is Jamaican - was an organizational dynamo during the course of the evening. She was one among a committee of volunteers who came together to produce a spectacular show.

Those volunteers included cochairs Matthew Green (athlete/businessman) and Normal Rockwood (community services) as well as Vince Morgan, Dr. Fred Ofosu, Marlene Thomas, Bashir Kurfundi and Michael Highgate.

Highgate was there with his daughter Ciera and his mother Ruby Highgate, descended from American slaves.

Legendary Hamilton singer Harrison Kennedy gave a sterling performance (he always does), as did his accompanist on guitar Brian Griffiths, who did a special musical tribute to Jackie Washington, lost to us this last year. Griffiths also played Miles Davis's Kind of Blue on guitar. Fantastic. It was that kind of night. Other performers included Jean Assamoa with a rousing drumming intro to the evening and Aisha Nicholson.

The memories of Jackie Washington and also of Haydain Neale, a phenomenal Hamilton singer tragically felled last year by lung cancer just as he was recovering from a motorcycle accident, were very much in people's hearts and minds, as were thoughts of those in Haiti. Haydain's mother, Geneva Neale, was there on Saturday, as were many from the Haitian community.

Hamilton's Dr. Alezandre Dauphin was at the awards, having just returned from Haiti, and he is scheduled to be back there this week. He won a John C. Holland Award for his life-saving international medical outreach work.

"The people and the government of Haiti are so aware of Hamilton," Dr. Dauphin, who has been filing reports to The Hamilton Spectator, told me. "There is a special connection between Hamilton and Haiti, and they are so thankful that there is a place like Hamilton where they care so much."

Too many people to mention everyone, but some others of note who were there: media personality Nerene Virgin; Hamilton author Kayla Perrin (published by St. Martin's Press and Harlequin, new books coming out soon); Terry Cooke, new CEO of Hamilton Foundation; Renee Wetselaar and Deirdre Pike of Social Planning and Research Council; Anne Pollard, activist for Haiti, and lawyer John Abrams; Spectator publisher Dana Robbins and wife Catherine; new Hamilton police chief Glenn De Caire; several politicians including Mayor Fred Eisenberger and Hamilton Mountain MP Chris Charlton; Judith Bishop, former head of the Hamilton public school board; Kelly McGiffin, CEO of First Ontario; playwright Catherine Silverglen; former mayor Bob Morrow; and Jessica Brennan, chair of the board of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.