Interview with Lannois Carroll-Woolery

Transcript

Jermal Jones
This is an interview with Lannois Carroll-Woolery
for the Oral History Hub Project Phase 2.
The interviewer is Jermal Jones.
Welcome, Lannois.
How are you?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I'm doing well.
I'm doing well.
It's been a topsy-turvy last four months, but I'm hoping
that we're on an upswing.
And by we, I mean myself and my wife and my family.
So, challenges as always, that's not a surprise.
So, yeah, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other
and hoping for the best and working as hard as you can, so.
Jermal Jones
Well, wishing all the best for you
and hopefully we can have a great conversation today.
So first, can you please begin
by describing a little bit about your family?
So where you were born, where'd you grow up,
what about your parents and their professions?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Sure.
I was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1971.
And my father's side of the family was from Montego Bay.
My mother's side of the family is from St. Thomas,
Jamaica which is, relatively speaking,
underdeveloped in Jamaica.
So, I was raised primarily by my mom in Kingston
after having been born in Montego Bay.
And Kingston is the capital city, financial hub,
all that good stuff, close to a million people right now
in the greater Kingston area.
So it is a very urban center.
And many of my childhood holidays were spent
with my grandparents in the rural area
in Jamaica, St. Thomas.
And I mentioned that because I got both these I guess very
countryfied upbringing
and at the same time a very urban upbringing
which really shaped my perspective and on
so many things, right?
So, but born and raised in Jamaica
which is a Commonwealth country, English is the primary language.
And, you know, the queen and the king and all of that good stuff,
we're all a part of it.
And yeah, I guess I'll start there.
I don't know if there are any additional comments you want me
to make about my upbringing.
Jermal Jones
What are some of your fondest memories
of being in the countryside?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Jamaica has no wild animals
that can, you know, kill you, right?
No rattlesnakes or boa constrictors or, I don't know,
elephants or whatever like that.
So, if you're coming from an urban setting like Kingston
which is a concrete jungle and you are able to roam barefoot
through the, you know, the forest, the rainforest
and you're able to, you know, climb mango trees
and eat coconuts and sugar cane and roam and explore, you know,
you can be an explorer kind of thing,
it's a whole different experience
from being in the city.
So, as a child, I remember bathing in the rivers,
using pit latrines or pit toilets as we call them.
Eating from the land, right?
I mean, we make such a big deal about buying
and eating organic food right now.
We didn't have a choice but to eat organic food,
you know, that kind of thing.
You know, getting food from the rivers, river shrimp,
crayfish, that kind of thing.
You know, planting dasheens and yams and eating bananas
and sugar cane and plantains.
I mean, at the time, it didn't seem cool.
In hindsight, oh my gosh, that was wonderful.
So that was, you know, like very vivid memories.
And of course, you're playing a lot.
You're playing with your cousins, cricket,
football, that kind of thing.
Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up, a different world.
Jermal Jones
Mm-hmm.
And so around campus, I've heard your name
pronounced differently.
Lannois, Lannois, Lannois.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Ah, yeah.
Jermal Jones
So, for the audience,
can you tell me how you pronounce your name?
What's the story behind your name?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
So, my mom tells me that Lannois, as my name is spelled
with two Ns, it's Lannoism it's an English name.
If it's spelled with one N, it's Lanois, it's French.
Well, mine's two Ns so it should be Lannois.
But how things got really mixed up was I was always Lanois
in Jamaica, English-speaking country.
At some point in high school, at about age 13 maybe,
I took French for the first time.
And immediately, the French teacher looked
at the name and said Lannois.
And immediately, that became a nickname.
Nicknames are a big thing in Jamaica.
So immediately, my classmates started calling me Lannois.
And I enjoyed French.
I love French.
It was really cool.
And eventually, I came to Canada for university
through a little bit of a roundabout method.
And honestly, when I handed my Jamaican passport
to the immigration person, you know, getting off the plane
from Kingston, the person said, "Oh, bonjour, Lannois."
And immediately assumed I could, you know, speak French.
I continued to flip between Lannois and Lannois.
So, you know, depending on who you talk to, I'm Lannois
or Lannois, depending on how long you've known me.
And I really put my foot in my mouth, so to speak,
when I took French classes at the University of Waterloo.
And as part of that French class, wanting to learn French,
you know, of course all the French students immediately saw
the name and said Lannois, the French teacher said Lannois.
I eventually got my French certificate
from the University of Waterloo.
And then the dilemma started
because all the persons I was associated
with academically pronounced me Lannois.
And by the way and of course, I was a staff member
at the time taking advantage of the free tuition
and anybody I worked with in the non-academic department
said Lannois.
And I suddenly found myself with people going, "Wait a minute,
did I pronounce that wrong?"
Did it -- you know, what should I do when everybody was
like feeling so anxious about it?
And I said, "Oh, my gosh."
So, my wife, my children say -- well, they don't call me Lannois
or Lannois, it's dad or whatever.
So, I've really put myself into --
I guess painted myself into a corner here, right?
The funny part of it is people who know me personally,
close family, friends don't use Lannois or Lannois.
I have a Jamaican nickname and it's Boyd.
So, and I've been known as Boyd since, you know, I could walk.
So, the whole argument about Lannois or Lannois is becomes --
is actually, you know, kind of a moot point
because nobody who's close to me calls me that anyway,
either of those names.
So, I'll have to keep navigating the three names for the rest
of my life, all my fault and telling people that it's OK.
You don't have to be offended.
You don't have to think that you did something wrong
or anything like that.
You know, it's all my fault.
So yeah, that's the longish version of the story, sorry.
Jermal Jones
That's OK.
I appreciate the long version of stories in this format.
I was going to ask about other nicknames
and you said it was Boyd.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yup.
Jermal Jones
B-O-Y-D?
That's how you would spell it.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yup.
Jermal Jones
OK.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I am Boyd.
Jermal Jones
What's the story?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
It's been with me since -- you know, before I could walk
and talk, it's been Boyd.
And, you know, when I first -- my then girlfriend,
soon to be my wife, when she was introduced to my family
and we were at dinner together, of course,
all my family just kept referring
to me as Boyd, Boyd, Boyd.
And afterwards, she admitted that she was completely confused
because she could not follow the conversation.
And it was about two-thirds of the way through the evening
that she finally connected Boyd and Lannois as she knew me then.
And, you know, when she finally figured it out,
then everybody started laughing
because they had just assumed that she knew.
And then, she said to me at the time,
"Is it OK if I call you Boyd?"
And I gave a foolish answer.
I said no, because I was so used to her calling me Lannois
that it sounded weird when she said Boyd.
Anyway, she was not happy with me because I think she took
that to mean, "Oh, so, you know,
the tight people call you Boyd but I'm Lannois."
But it just sounded so weird coming from her at the time
because we met on the University of Waterloo campus, right?
That's where we met.
So, she was used to calling me Lannois
and I'd never heard the term Boyd before.
I think now, if this becomes public, I want to say, "Anandi,
it's OK to call me Boyd.
You know, I don't mind.
Yes, it was wrong of me to say
that you should have used Lannois.
My bad, I apologize."
Jermal Jones
And I'm sure that she will hear this
and maybe get into it a little bit before that as well.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
But just sticking
with your childhood a little bit, you said growing
up with playing cricket and such with cousins.
Did you have -- do you have siblings?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I have four half-siblings.
My dad has two daughters who were born before I was born.
My mom has two daughters with my stepfather
who were born after I was born.
So, I have four half-siblings, sisters,
all sisters obviously and so no brothers.
But when I was young, my mother asked two of my cousins to live
with us and they were both male and we were about the same age
like only like a year difference between us.
And we -- I consider them my brothers because we grew
up together in the same house experiencing the same discipline
and guidance.
And we all now live in Canada together.
We've all moved from Jamaica to Canada.
And so, I consider them my de facto brothers.
And, you know, if somebody has to --
if I've got to pick some people to walk with my casket,
pallbearers, whatever, they would be number one
and number two on my list.
So yeah, in a funny way, I have two brothers I guess,
but I'm very close to each of my four sisters.
And one of the weird things that goes along with being close
to your four sisters is I definitely have an interesting
perspective on women's issues as a male, right?
As a male, I've been drilled in women's issues from a young age.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing
but it's definitely an interesting thing, so.
Jermal Jones
Maybe it's provided you some perspective.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah, yeah.
Definitely not very macho, for better or for worse, for good
or poor -- I mean, it is, yeah, I play sports and all
that good stuff and stuff but definitely
from a young age, I had there.
There's a quick call coming in from my manager.
Do you mind if I take it briefly?
Jermal Jones
Yeah, let's pause this
and then we'll get going.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Pretty much all.
So at an early age --
Jermal Jones
I'm sorry, can I start?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yup.
Jermal Jones
Were there any subjects
that you were good at an early age?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I had good grades
in all subjects at an early age.
I was fortunate that way.
I had the unique privilege of having a teacher for a mother.
So I was reading before I started school.
And my mother would check my work before it was handed in,
you know, up until about high school.
No, even during high school,
she would check the work before it was handed in.
She was a very good student herself or had been or was
and she was a high school teacher so she,
very high standards from very early.
And fortunately, I was good at numerical analysis,
stuff like that so I ended up majoring in STEM subjects,
physics, chemistry, math, biology.
But like I said, I had a lot of fun
with Spanish and French as well.
As a matter of fact and believe it or not --
and I specialized in those subjects
because the hardest program to get into in Jamaica
at the university was medicine.
So I ended up applying for medicine.
But to be honest, my favorite subject was geography.
And my high school teacher was not happy
when I dropped geography in favor of the STEM subjects when,
you know, the time for specialization came along.
And I do regret that now in hindsight because, you know,
the pressure to perform and to do this and to do that.
And in hindsight, I wish my mom had allowed me
to even pick one favorite subject to continue along with.
And I, you know, I didn't like dropping Spanish and French too
and you can tell because I ended up taking French courses
at Waterloo, you know, later on when I was an adult.
But it is, you know, it was what it was, a lot of pressure
to succeed at an early age.
It's a very competitive environment.
My mom was a school teacher.
She checked all the work.
So she pretty much guided my academic development.
Unfortunately, I was good at test-taking, academic work
so I won scholarships and awards and stuff like that.
So, that's basically how it went.
Jermal Jones
And then I guess like can you tell me
about your journey then to Waterloo because it sounded
like you attended school in Jamaica.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yup.
Jermal Jones
And yeah.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
So in Jamaica, I guess for the purposes of this discussion,
I went to one of or considered the top secondary school,
high school in the island.
Did very well there, won scholarships and awards,
ended up being valedictorian of the high school.
Also was involved in -- I mean, just a very busy time.
The quick version of the story is I got into medical school,
was feeling the pressure of the expectations and other pressures
as well around my Christian development,
development in the spirit, if you're familiar with that term.
And it took -- I had one opportunity to leave Jamaica
and that was a scholarship awarded by a school
in Massachusetts, College of the Holy Cross
in Worcester, Massachusetts.
And I jumped all over it.
And that meant putting off -- so in the British system,
you go to med school right after high school.
It's not like the Canadian-US system where you have
to do an undergrad degree first.
I was not excited about medical school.
It had never been my first choice but, you know,
pressure from mother, high expectations.
I had the grades.
I had this scholarship to go to med school.
And when they -- I was also having some,
what do you call it?
Teenage angst issues around fitting in
and belonging and stuff like that.
And I was also having challenges in terms
of my spiritual development expectations.
I was baptized at 15.
I was raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
So, the issues I was having with my spiritual development,
the issues I was having, you know, fighting with my mom
around where to go for career and stuff like that,
my mom had the dream that as I --
after I became a medical doctor, I would go back to the community
where she had been raised up in that country region
in St. Thomas and I would provide free medical care
to the persons there, that kind of thing.
Teenage angst, you know, dealing with teenage years, girlfriends,
fitting in, peer pressure, all that kind of stuff.
When I got that scholarship to go overseas, I was all over it,
you know, like a dog on a bone
because it just allowed me to escape.
Of course, in hindsight, you know,
wherever you go, there you are.
But I didn't know that at 18.
And it was a prestigious scholarship, free tuition,
two return airline tickets a year, something, something.
Yeah. And I love to travel and I love geography.
I mean, what could go wrong?
So I ended up in Worcester, Massachusetts at age 18 or 19
on a part scholarship, on a prestigious scholarship.
And yeah, my mom was not happy
that I didn't take the med school scholarship.
In hindsight, you know, maybe I should have.
I didn't know enough at the time.
I didn't understand the different career paths
in medicine and you could do research.
I didn't understand any of that.
I was 18 and I had been raised to be, you know,
a medical doctor and I didn't want to do it so I ran.
Yeah. And I've had many, many years to rethink
that decision, you know, but.
And one, I mean, somewhat funny, somewhat sad story.
At one point, I was talking to my three children
about the choices I had and the choices that I'd made
and if I could go back and, you know, do them again.
And my middle child became very angry at me and she's very upset
and I couldn't figure out why she was upset.
And then she said, "You're wishing that we didn't exist.
That's what you're wishing."
I'm like, "No."
But anyway, it was a whole new perspective on, you know,
where your choices take you and, you know, rolling with the flow
and not -- never telling your children that, "You know,
I could have done this
and I should have done that and I wish."
And I think what I meant was I'm really open
to you guys choosing your path, you know, with influence
and guidance from your parents as opposed to, you know,
us imposing what we want, you know.
But anyway, it came out all wrong but whatever.
But that's -- so yeah, so good academic success.
I was athletic.
I played sports.
Yeah. My mom was a very good mom -- is a very good mom.
Leadership, guidance, training, broughtupsy as we say
in Jamaica, that's a Jamaican word meaning being raised right,
Christian upbringing, good food, prestigious schools.
Yeah. I was quite privileged as a child to have a mom like I did
on the environment that I grew up in.
And yeah, and I, you know, I grew up in Kingston,
spent holidays in the country,
best of both worlds kind of thing.
So, I was good.
It was good.
It's fun.
Jermal Jones
So from Massachusetts to Waterloo,
tell me about that transition.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Very briefly, the scholarship paid
for tuition at a private Jesuit college, good school.
My parents had to pay room and board.
So, my mother and father who were not together,
I had a stepfather and two younger daughters,
they agreed to split the cost of the room and board
and then everything would be good.
One thing led to another.
There were lots of, you know, who's paying for this
and who's paying for that.
You should pay for this.
You promised that, blah, blah, blah.
And at the same time that that was happening, at the same time
that they were having trouble meeting the room and board
which had to be paid, of course, in the US dollars
and they were using Jamaican dollars, the exchange rate
for Jamaican to US went from 6 to 1 to 12
to 1 in less than a year.
Not a good move.
And neither of them were wealthy.
None of my parents were wealthy.
We were a middle-class family when I was growing up
and that's middle-class Jamaican style, not middle-class Canada.
So we had an old car.
We rented a house kind of thing.
Anyway, the school eventually called me
after numerous non-payments and said, "Pay up or get out."
And I had been working in Canada over the summer to try and make
up any shortfalls that my parents couldn't make up.
Just so happened at the time, there was a recession
that would have been about 1990, 1991, somewhere around there.
There was a recession which nobody remembers anymore
since the 2008, you know, incident,
depression, recession, whatever.
But at the time, it was huge and I could find no work.
So I got kicked out of the school in the States
and I was a resident of Canada
or a permanent resident at the time.
My parents had been applying since years back
to immigrate to Canada.
So instead of returning to Jamaica when I got kicked
out of Holy Cross, I came north to Canada, met them here
and then my mom investigated
which schools were the right schools to go to.
And I eventually ended up at the University of Waterloo again
because of her research and initiative
into what the best schools were.
So I started at University of Waterloo in 1992.
I couldn't transfer most of my credits
from the Liberal Arts College in Massachusetts
because I did engineering, mechanical engineering.
And so, I effectively started over after two years
of university in the States.
So I just started over in year one
at the University of Waterloo.
I was not happy.
Jermal Jones
I can imagine.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I was not happy, yeah.
Jermal Jones
But your time at Waterloo is sort
of one that's built around school, around --
your story I guess you'd say is around school,
around love, around family.
Can you explain your undergraduate experience?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Well, I'll start by saying
when I left Jamaica, I was quite naive.
My mom protected me from a lot
of let's just call it negative influences.
And, you know, I was raised in the church
and all that good stuff.
So, in the States, I got exposed for the first time
to things like racism.
It wasn't intellectual anymore.
It wasn't something in a book.
It was actual experiences of African American persons.
And I hung out with the black students there.
They thought I was naive and idiotic
because I couldn't get it.
And I would argue back at them that, you know,
they were using certain terms and ways of speaking and ways
of interacting that didn't tell people
to get to know them better.
Yeah, you probably know what I'm -- what's not being said here.
Jermal Jones
Mm-hmm.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Anyway, by the time I left there
after two years, I'd had a change of heart
and I was let's just say a little bit bitter, angry,
bewildered, puzzled, just getting used
to what racism means, you know, and moving from a position of --
or a situation of privilege in Jamaica to being, you know,
considered bottom of the barrel.
I didn't take it well.
So I started Waterloo with an attitude.
Of course it didn't help that I'd lost my friends
in the States and, you know, everybody was
down there having fun and going
on March break without me, you know.
And it was a nice school.
And it just so happened
that I was doing the same subjects again
for the third time because Jamaica has what they call
advanced level certificates run by the British,
whatever, education system.
So I did university-level courses in high school.
Then I did university-level courses
at College of Holy Cross.
And then I was doing university-level courses first
year again at Waterloo.
I stopped going to class.
I was hanging out.
I was angry.
I was whatever.
I was passing the courses anyway without even trying.
I mean, like -- anyway, one thing led to another,
idiotic move on my part and girlfriend,
my girlfriend ended up getting pregnant.
She's -- we're married now and I'm not saying that's right
or wrong or good or bad but she got pregnant.
Ended up dropping out of school for a year, both of us.
Luckily, we're both in co-op programs
and we were both going on co-op work terms.
And basically the dropping out coincided with both
of us getting jobs in Ottawa.
Thanks to the man upstairs.
We worked like crazy and, you know, it was a cold shower.
It was a shock to the system.
It was every negative story you can think of,
of describing that experience.
I had never been in trouble before and I was
in deep you know what all of a sudden.
Life-changing, it was -- I mean, it had so many impacts.
I went from being golden child to being scum of the bucket.
I went from being, "Yeah, I can pass these courses in my sleep,"
to, "I needed to work all night just to get passing grades."
So the rest of undergrad was just murder.
We eventually got to school and we eventually finished.
It took me an extra year to finish.
Engineering is not an easy program.
To finish it with kids is not easy.
My wife was in school as well.
She's also brilliant.
She eventually finished her math degree,
but it was absolutely brutal emotionally, physically,
mentally, financially, every way you can think of.
So we -- well, the good news is we both graduated eventually
and we both have, you know, our math degrees
and our engineering degrees, but the rest
of undergrad was just murder, murder,
you know, in terms of stress.
Arguing, whatever, whatever you want to say.
We got it done but it came at a cost.
And if you're thinking of, you know,
having kids while you're going through school,
I strongly advise you not to do it.
But anyway, here we are, 30 years later,
we just had our 30th anniversary a few weeks ago.
Jermal Jones
Congratulations.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah, we made it through.
It was tough.
And I guess you could argue that, you know,
without my mother's guidance, I did dumb things.
However you want to argue it.
It was a life experience that I do not wish,
I would not wish on my biggest enemy.
I'd be like -- yeah?
Jermal Jones
I would ask
like what do you think what community supports
or what supports helped you both get through sort
of navigating a difficult time?
But obviously, you're building on education
but like what are the things were you involved in to kind
of help you get through?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Church, I obviously --
we use the Christian term backsliding to talk about,
you know, not doing the things that you know you're supposed
to be doing as per the Judeo-Christian ethic.
So I definitely got back into church
and re-centered myself, if you will.
You know, letting go of anger,
letting go of other negative emotions and attitudes.
Recognizing that racism is just one of those things
that the human race struggles with, right?
We struggle with sexism.
We struggle with class privileges.
We struggle with, you know, being unkind to disabled persons
and persons of other religious heritages, people, right?
You know, favoring the rich, scorning the poor.
I mean, there's this whole range of things
that we're just prejudiced with people about.
So getting back into the church and re-centering myself
and looking for friends and mentors who would encourage us
as we were trying to finish school
and raise a family at the same time.
All of that stuff helped.
Of course, there were family members who helped, you know.
Cash infusions, giving us food to put
in that Tupperware container to go in the freezer
so you wouldn't have to cook, you know, in the week ahead,
all that stuff played a part as well.
But I would say we really missed out on whatever
that development stage is where you're in your, you know,
late teens, early 20s, you know.
And you got your buddies, your pals, your -- that whole stage,
we kind of just skipped because we had diapers
to change and stuff like that.
And anyway, so that's the I guess a quick synopsis of it.
I could go into details but it took a while, it took a while
to finish school and it was very hard.
My wife was a scholarship student as well.
And yeah, it became very hard just to pass courses.
So unfortunately, you know.
Jermal Jones
Yeah.
But it sounds like there was at least some support there,
some level of community.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
And one of the things that I was reading,
you know, I did some research about you in order to be able
to ask some of these questions, but you were connected
to the Association of Caribbean Students during your time here.
So, can you explain a little bit about the importance
of that aspect of when it comes to your life at UW?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
I had -- I started at Waterloo the year before my now wife,
then girlfriend started.
So, I had actually joined the Association
of Caribbean Students before I knew she existed.
And she's from Trinidad.
I think for me, it had become very clear to me just
from my time in the States the importance of community,
the importance of being with people who support who you are
and can recognize who you are and celebrate
who you are and stuff like that.
So I think I was very intentional
about joining the Association of Caribbean Students.
And it was interesting because the --
in the States, the black students union that I was a part
of that I hung out with and stuff like that,
they were more let's say angry, frustrated,
bitter about how things played out for their lives
in the American system.
And I've adopted some of that frustration,
whatever you want to call it.
When I came to Waterloo and I tried to bring that perspective
to the Association of Caribbean Students, it fell on deaf ears.
And that's because most of those Association
of Caribbean Students, like maybe 90%,
95% were international students,
and they were actually privileged students like myself
that had come up from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad.
They were used to being the elite where they came from.
They were on scholarships.
They were actual students and engineers and whatever.
So, from their perspective, "Problem?
What problem?"
You know, "Life is good."
But unlike the black students in the States,
they could relate to me culturally.
So they knew all about soca and reggae and Dominoes
and All Fours and all of that stuff, right?
So, socially, it was a much better fit for me.
From an activist perspective,
it was really just really the opposite
of what I've done in the States.
Anyway, I hung out with them.
Of course, I wasn't going to class because work was too easy
or so I thought at the time.
It turned out that the course is zigged while I zagged
and then I had to work like crazy, but anyway.
So, I joined them.
The social life was good.
I was making friends.
I knew the importance of having, you know, what we call
in Jamaica partners in your corner, right, your posse,
whatever terms you want to use.
So I really tried to cultivate those friendships.
And then Anandi, my wife, joined a year later.
And I met her through the Association
of Caribbean Students.
And then by the time we dropped out of school and so on,
our involvement with the Caribbean Association
essentially dropped to zero, right, because we had a family
to raise and all that kind of stuff.
We stayed in touch with people
but we were more acquaintances than friends, right?
So, we haven't gotten invited to any weddings or, you know,
baby showers or whatever because we didn't have
that link if you will.
But we went to the odd party, you know, soca party,
reggae party, whatever, you know, and we needed a night
out and stuff like that.
And we were young parents.
Anyway, you can imagine what that picture might have looked
like as we tried to finish school
and raise a family at the same time.
So, Association of Caribbean Students was good.
I should point out it was started in I think the 1970s.
Jermal Jones
OK.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
So, when I was just born
and I think, what was it?
Yeah, in the '70s, for sure, the Caribbean Students were around.
And that's interesting because a lot
of Caribbean students will come or black students will come
and they'll think that they don't recognize the history
of the association at the University of Waterloo.
You know, they think they're doing things for the first time.
You know, they think they're the first ones to come here.
They're thinking, you know, they're the first,
how to say it, groundbreakers.
Jermal Jones
Yeah, trailblazers.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
And when I hear them talk,
trailblazers, and I'm like, "No, no,
there was an association here before you were born," you know.
But, you know, I can understand their perspective
because if you don't have that documented history then,
you know, you think you're the first, right?
No, you're not.
I wasn't the first, so.
Jermal Jones
Would you say that like the --
that involvement and maybe sort of call it like a fraction away,
diffracting away from the Caribbean, the Association
of Caribbean Students was a big reason why now you're involved
in the Caribbean Association of Waterloo Region?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Definitely.
I mean, we, how to say it, we decided to settle here.
My wife and I had the choice between moving our family
to Trinidad when she finished school, moving our family
to Jamaica or staying in Waterloo.
We liked Waterloo.
We liked the environment.
It was a small city at the time, right?
Not nearly as big as it is now.
We decided to settle here.
And we didn't have many family members around
or anything like that.
And a quick story is as we were, you know,
she was a math grad, chartered accounting.
I was an engineering grad.
We were making reasonably good salaries.
You know, we could put food on the table kind of thing,
take the odd vacation.
But it really, that experience
in the States really shaped my perspective around racism and,
you know, what's -- we now use colonialism and stuff like that.
And we saw very clearly that we needed a network,
a community around us to help us raise our children, right?
You grew up in the Caribbean.
You've got auntie this, uncle that,
friends and all this stuff.
Here, you're a visible minority.
You don't have those support systems.
You don't have those shared values that you're used to.
So we were actively seeking out ways to connect with people
who would share our values
and share our perspectives and stuff like that.
And the Caribbean-Canadian Association
of Waterloo Region was an obvious way to get involved,
to meet people, to work on projects and initiatives
of shared interest, all that good stuff, right?
And it worked because aunties
from Trinidad, an aunt from Jamaica.
So it wouldn't make sense to say, "Oh,
let's join the Jamaican Association or,
you know, Jamaican."
And let's join the Trinidad."
But for our children's development, it made sense
to have joined the Caribbean Association, right,
and meet some people and so on.
So that's really where it got started.
Basically volunteering, hanging out, attending social events.
I don't think either of us thought at the time
that we'd be helping to, you know, we'd be serving
on the border or anything like that.
We were just a family with a young family wanting to network
with other Caribbean families
in the region once we decided to settle here.
Jermal Jones
So, you are now, if I'm not mistaken,
still the president of the Caribbean Canadian Association.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
That's still true.
Jermal Jones
So for those who may not know -- OK, thank you.
For those who may not know what it is or what you do,
would you mind giving us some information about what it is?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
So, the Caribbean Canadian Association of Waterloo Region,
we call it the CCAWR, was started in 1975
by students slash staff slash faculty who were here
at the University of Waterloo.
They were immigrants from the Caribbean looking
to maintain their culture and their values and so on.
I think most people, well, maybe not most people,
but around the time if Trudeau had,
meaning the elder Trudeau was, you know,
multiculturalism was being promoted and stuff like that.
So they received a grant from, I don't know
if it was a provincial or the federal,
to implement some programs, practices, events,
whatever you will around multiculturalism.
And that's really where it got started around 1975.
I've said that the Caribbean Students have a long history
here at Waterloo so you were talking about very brilliant,
very accomplished people back in the '70s who had ideas
around building community, made use of the grant,
started the Caribbean Association.
And of course back then, I was what, two years old
and living in Jamaica.
But what they were doing at the time were community events,
stuff around black history, cultural exchanges,
if you will, everything Caribbean.
And it was a very strong, very strong organization run
by very gifted people, very hardworking persons.
And they -- so, it was incorporated I think in 1975.
And then through the years, you know,
the leadership changed and so on.
Nowadays, I guess you could say we're generation two where many
of us who are involved
in the Caribbean Association were either born here in Canada
or were raised primarily here in Canada as opposed
to the original founders of the association who would have been,
you know, formed and shaped in the Caribbean and then came here
as grown adults and tried to make sense of where they were
and tried to build that community for, you know,
immigrants from the Caribbean,
from the English-speaking Caribbean countries.
So it's the, what do you call it, the --
if you want to say the culture
of the association has shifted a little bit.
And this is true not just for Caribbean organizations
but any immigrant association,
whether it'd be Portuguese, Italian, Japanese.
Initially, these associations tend to be started by immigrants
who have a very strong connection
to their mother countries.
And then as they have their own kids and they settle
into Canada, the nature of the organization shifts
and incorporates, you know, more of the thinking of people
who were primarily raised here
or were born here and stuff like that.
And it's always a challenge to decide how, to what extent,
you hold on to the traditions and practices
from the mother country.
Again, it's not a Caribbean thing.
It's any association.
The Caribbean, of course, we have our own unique challenges
but in a lot of ways, we're very similar
to other community associations in Canada in that regard.
Anyway, very strong organization created by the founders and,
you know, think about them building this from the ground up
and creating bylaws and setting
up bank accounts and all this stuff.
You know, by the time I inherited the presidency
or I decided to serve as president
with a very healthy bank, you know, bank account
and strong bylaws and procedures and most importantly,
amazing connections to the movers and shakers
in Waterloo region, to the police chiefs, to the MPs
and the MPPs, to the mayors.
All of those relationships have been developed.
Long before I knew about the Caribbean Association
and I inherited that, I like to describe it as,
in Jamaican terms, you know, in a relay race,
the baton was passed to me.
There was very little I had to do in terms of building up.
I just had to maintain.
Whether I've done that well or not is a different debate.
So, yeah, kudos.
Shout out to the founders.
Shout out to Loris and Chloe and Murch and all the other --
Marcia and all the other founders.
You know, well done, well done.
Jermal Jones
Thanks
for sharing a bit about that history.
It's great to know that it's been here for a longer time
than I think most will know slash remember.
So, I appreciate that insight.
Is there any sort of like new initiatives
that you're partnered on or that you'd like to speak about?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
So, I want to say that I agreed to serve as president I think
in November or December of 2019.
And at the time, the association was primarily concerned
with I'll call them cultural events
that celebrate Caribbean culture,
whether it'd be steel band, stuff for, you know,
Caribbean food, oxtail, jerk chicken patties, roti, whatever.
It just so happened that 2020 was the George Floyd Black Lives
Matter explosion across North America.
And because of the history that we had in the region and so for,
you know, for whoever will watch this video,
you can loosely group all black persons in Canada
into three groups, Caribbean immigrants, African immigrants
and then the third group, we'll call them Afro Canadians,
they don't have a strong connection
to either the Caribbean or Africa.
Maybe they're descendants of, you know,
formerly enslaved persons or maybe they originally came
from Africa or the Caribbean but it's been four or five,
six generations and they just don't connect that way.
So, if you look at those three groups at a 10,000-foot view,
the only organization that had a long history
and a long connection with the powers that be
with the Caribbean Association from the 1970s,
there was no single African association or strong coalition
of Afro Canadian organizations and there wasn't any single
or strong coalition of Afro Canadian organizations.
So our phone was ringing off the hook
when Black Lives Matter blew up.
And, you know, what do you think about this and why you want
to be involved in that?
And do you want to help shape this and do you want to do
that and so on and so on.
So it was really overwhelming.
And this happened, of course, what, a few months
into my tenure as first tenure as president.
It was really overwhelming.
And the board was amazing in terms of buckling down
and doing 10 times the work that we had been used to doing
in the previous X years.
It was exhausting work.
It was high expectations.
But we felt that there was an opportunity
to make a contribution to equity, diversity,
inclusion, and all that stuff.
Anyway, I say this to say
that the federal government introduced some new programs
to promote entrepreneurship in the black community,
black entrepreneurship program.
And we were one of I think 31 organizations across the country
to be approved for funding.
So, we were approved for about $3 million in funding
over three-and-a-half years to start and maintain a black --
a program in the region of Waterloo and Wellington County
for black entrepreneurs.
So, we went from a small not-for-profit
with an operating budget of, I don't know, $20,000,
$30,000 maybe, $40,000 a year, to having, you know,
checks totaling $3.5 million
over three-and-a-half years coming in, becoming an employer,
having employees, we now have about seven or eight employees,
to having a national profile.
And that's probably the biggest initiative I've been a part
of since I've decided to serve as president.
Huge amounts of work to build an entrepreneurship program
in this ecosystem here in Waterloo.
That I said would be number one.
Number two, we continue to provide between five
and 10 scholarships every year.
So I just see your note there.
Do you want me to quickly repeat?
Yeah. So, in terms of key initiatives
that we've been a part of,
we were one of 31 organizations approved for funding
under the federal government's black entrepreneurship program,
$3.5 million over -- $3 million over three-and-a-half years.
That's been a massive undertaking.
We now have seven employees.
I think seven full-time employees.
We never had employees before.
We're now networked with a lot of the movers and shakers
in the region of Waterloo and Wellington County
and including Conestoga College,
University of Waterloo's entrepreneurship program
which escapes me right now, Velocity, Communitech.
We're engaged with all of those organizations and trying
to create a safe space and create a runway
for black entrepreneurs to grow their businesses,
connecting them with venture capitalists and so on and so on.
Number two, we continue to give out between five
and 10 scholarships a year to university and college students.
Last year was our 20th year.
We've given out close to $100,000
in scholarships over that period.
Obviously, it started before I joined the association.
Number three, we're really trying to build --
trying to intentionally create a community
between African immigrants, Caribbean immigrants,
and Afro-Canadians because although we are extremely
different, we're all seen as black by the wider society.
And we have to just recognize that and accept it.
And the fact that, you know, you're coming
from a Muslim majority country or a Christian majority country
or a country, you know, that speaks Amharic versus English
versus French versus, you know, whether you're Cameroonian
or Eritrean or Kenyan or Jamaican,
the system as it stands now, the society cannot distinguish.
You're black and you're slotted into this category
and your financial outcomes and your health outcomes
and your mental health outcomes and how, you know,
how you interact with the police and opportunities for schooling
and education like forget all your differences.
So, we've been very intentional about trying to create
that wider community, helping people
to understand what this black social construct means
and what it means for them and for their families,
and encouraging them to work together on shared projects
for the benefit of all the communities.
So, those are really the three major things the Caribbean
Association has been involved in and lots
of small projects obviously but at a 10,000-foot view,
black entrepreneurship, scholarships for university
and college students, building that sense of community
and strengthening the bonds for all black persons in the region
of Waterloo and Wellington County, you know,
despite our obvious differences, right?
Obvious to us but not to the wider community.
And until we have the economic muscle
and the intellectual muscle and whatever other type of muscle
to push back against prejudice and racism, we're going to have
to keep creating those intentional communities
and working towards a shared future
where our children have an equal opportunity to succeed.
Again, that whole idea of passing the baton and so on, so.
Anyway, lots there to unpack but let me stop there.
So, I am having -- you seemed to be muted.
Go ahead.
Jermal Jones
I muted myself.
Yeah. I was saying I appreciate those --
the backstory there and hearing about all the --
or let's say the major initiatives
that the CCAWR have been part of.
So maybe just shifting gears and talking about your work
on campus, your role, can you explain a bit about your role
and what it is that you do on campus?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
So, I'm currently the manager
of data analytics and reporting in IAP
which is Institutional Analysis and Planning.
Essentially, IAP's a data hub.
And we're very much concerned with the data
of running the university, retention rates,
university budgets, metrics about space
and buildings on campus.
So, we're not academic-focused but all the numbers that have
to do with running the university including reporting
to the provincial government, reporting to StatCan,
all of that stuff runs through us.
So, I joined as a manager here 2017.
Prior to that, I worked nine years in IST,
Information Systems
and Technology supporting the HR system primarily.
That's what I do.
I studied engineering here way back when so I',
obviously no longer an engineer.
I guess I could myself a data scientist
but that's a very loaded term and especially at a university
that is on the cutting edge of data science.
So I prefer to call myself a data analyst or a manager
in data -- in a data analytics unit.
I have done data science courses.
I just completed my master's including courses
on data science.
But I would hate for this recording to get out there
and I, you know, I say I am a data scientist and have 35
or 40 professors from math
and engineering call me alternate and go, "Mm."
Anyway, that's where I'm heading,
that's where I'm heading.
So, that's the work that I do.
Really, a good place to work, I enjoy my work here, it's -- I --
the university obviously is built
on a tradition of excellence.
I like that my upbringing of, you know, working hard
and excellence and academic pursuits and all that fits
in well with the culture, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, I've been working in IT since I left the university
because when I left the university in 1997
as an engineering grad, there were very few engineering jobs
in the region of Waterloo and my wife was still finishing school
so I didn't want to move.
But there were lots of IT jobs, surprise, surprise,
and I just needed work.
I needed to pay off all the student loans,
I needed to provide for my family.
So, I took IT, took an IT job, specifically a Y2K job,
back in 1997 and ended up staying in IT since then.
So, I'm a little bit of a fish out of water in terms
of my academic training versus what I do now.
But I've kind of learned on the go, engineering of --
is, of course, good training for data analytics
but that's what I do right now.
Jermal Jones
Can you just go back
and explain what a Y2K job is?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah, a Y2K.
So, the -- back in 1996, 1997, the computer engineers
and the computer programmers recognized that the systems
that they had built over the past 30, 40, 50 years --
'97, so yeah, 40, 50 years, because of the cost of computing
at the time, storage was extremely expensive.
And so, you were trying to store computer data
as efficient way as possible.
And one of the ways that you store efficiently was
to use two-digit years instead of four-digit years.
So, instead of 1960, 1-9-6-0, you do 6-0.
And so, the two-digits 6-0, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, anyway,
it eventually rolls over from 99 to 00
and nobody was sure what the computer algorithms would do
when numbers rolled over from 99 to 00
and there was no context behind what 99 to 00 meant.
So, there was this panic that planes would fall
out of the sky, bank machines would stop working,
just like in the movies and the car chases,
things would randomly explode.
Boom! You know, and there'd be widespread death.
You know, people bought -- thousands and thousands
and thousands -- thousands of people brought --
bought generators and guns to protect themselves
from the anarchy that was going to follow
when all our integrated computer systems failed.
People hunkered down.
Anyway, companies hired a lot of programmers to go
through their code line by line to figure out what was going
to choke, whether something minor
like how your life insurance premiums are calculated
or something major like traffic lights stopping.
Jermal Jones
Completely.
[Lannois Carroll-Woolery] Completely.
You know, an armed bands roaming the streets
and that kind of thing.
Anyway, I got one of those jobs and --
Jermal Jones
OK.
[Lannois Carroll-Woolery] -- it turned out to be --
well, some people say it's much ado about nothing,
other people argue that it was much ado about nothing
because we fixed everything before something could happen
but -- whatever.
I was a lowly programmer, I got paid, I had a family to support,
and that's how I got into IT and I've been there since 1997,
switched into -- switched from programming to data science
in about 2017, something like that, six years ago.
Jermal Jones
OK.
[Lannois Carroll-Woolery] Yeah.
Jermal Jones
So, you went --
and you said something around the Waterloo is built
on excellence and sort of that was like your upbringing.
So, my question is what makes Waterloo unique to you?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I've always liked to learn
so if you -- if I go back to what I said was --
when I was in high school, I had a lot of fun with Spanish
and French and geography and STEM subjects.
So, I remember friends saying to me,
you probably will never decide on a career,
you'll probably be a lifelong student learning.
So, I think an educational environment
as a workplace works for me.
I love taking part-time courses and I got my French certificate
and attending lectures by visiting, you know, persons
and all that kind of stuff.
So, that's one thing.
I think culturally it fits in with how I was raised
with the tradition of academic excellence,
researching new things, making the country --
you know, making the world a better place,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's also a multicultural university.
Not as multicultural as some people would like it to be,
but in terms of that island within the region of Waterloo,
it's definitely more multicultural
than the wider community, right?
So, for me, University of Waterloo is multicultural.
I can find Jamaican patties in the Student Life Center,
no problem, and coconut water.
It's definitely a place that encourages
and rewards excellence.
It allows a work-family balance for me that I did not get
at some of my previous jobs.
You know, I can work hard but I'm not necessarily required
to work weekends and holidays which happened in the past.
And yeah, I think that's it.
I mean, that's what it means to me.
My primary job, honestly, is husband and father.
I wish I could be, you know, start to RIM or BlackBerry
or something like that, you know.
Maybe one day island likely, but a job that works for me
and works for my family is a positive to me.
I have my kids at a young age and I've been a father since 22.
So yeah. So, what do I need out of life?
Stable job, a place that rewards hard work
and whatever excellence, and something that allows me
to be a dad and a husband, and do some cool stuff,
maybe do some cool stuff on the side
which I've been able to do a few times.
Jermal Jones
I would argue that you've done some cool stuff
on the sides especially the work with CCAWR sounds cool.
So, like -- I know Waterloo
at 100 has been a big conversation among
or across the institution.
What would you hope to see in 2057?
Where do you think the institution will be?
What do you hope to see?
And this could be a question that, you know, doesn't have
to be like one vision, it could be multiple visions.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Right.
Yeah, I mean high level.
I've thought about it a lot.
I mean, I was a student here, I've donated to the university,
my youngest daughter goes here, blah, blah, blah.
So, I've been -- I've had many roles, grad student, whatever.
Definitely would like to see it become more international,
definitely accepting of more students
and providing opportunities from underdeveloped places
or locations in the world, Caribbean
but Africa as well, for sure.
So much talent there that's not really given the opportunity
to succeed and be all that they can be.
So, that's one for sure.
More international.
More international also means more --
to me, more work terms in far-flung locales, right?
So, it'd be wonderful if Waterloo says one-third
of all your work terms must be, I don't know,
some far-flung location.
It could be Jamaica, it could be Sierra Leone, it could be China,
it could be northern Manitoba, I don't care.
But just take you out of your comfort zone so you get used
to interacting with different people.
Internationally -- internationalization also means,
to me, if everybody had to have a second language
when they graduated, a certificate allowed --
which allows you to see the world in different places.
So, OK, internationalization, coop, languages, all that kind
of stuff, more students from international places.
Number two, having been raised in a third-world country.
So much of what we do here in Waterloo has to do
with making money, starting companies, you know, up 30,
under 30, all that kind of stuff.
I would love to see a shifted focus to volunteerism,
not necessarily about money making, about working
on initiatives and projects and programs
that increase equality and diversity.
Whether that's volunteering with world vision,
working with first nations, you know,
tutoring underprivileged kids from the community, I would love
to see that baked into the university's DNA.
So, just like in high school, you know, Ontario high schools,
you can't graduate until you have, what is it,
200 hours of community service?
Something like that.
I'd love to see that baked in to all Waterloo degrees
where we don't care if you work with world vision,
volunteer at a homeless center,
started a not-for-profit, we don't care.
You got to have a check mark that said,
"I work to make the world a more equal place,"
and that's what our grads are.
They're internationalized, they are well-trained in equity,
diversity, and inclusion,
something like that, that's number two.
I have that perspective of being --
right now, I'm pretty sure I'm a middle-class Canadian
and I'm pretty sure I'm on the Sunshine List and whatever,
and -- so, I'm middle class.
So, I have privileges, vacations in Cancun
and that kind of thing.
But I also know what it's like to be bathing in the river
in a third-world country, you know, and walking everywhere
because there is no bus.
What bus? There is no bus.
You walk. You know, so what did I say?
Internationalization, community involvement, bettering of that.
Number three is med school.
I think we'd like -- I'd like to see a med school here.
I don't think I'm supposed to say that out loud
so you might have to edit it
because you hear two things on campus.
One of them is, "What med school?
There's no med school.
What are you talking about?
Nobody said anything.
Who said -- censor that person."
And then, there is the other group that goes,
"Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah.
I mean, we're a large metropolitan area,
10th largest in the country.
You know, right behind the Toronto
and Vancouver and Montreal.
Hey, wait, London is number 11.
London has a med school at Western.
Jeez, wait, so we've got 650,000 people
in this region and no med school?
Why are you trying to censor the guy?
What he's saying is logical.
Come on," you know.
So, anyway, let's see how that conversation plays
out when you're trying to do that.
So, yes. And that med school would be a holistic med school:
emotional, mental, social, spiritual.
To me, those are -- they're different facets
and dimensions of health.
And I would love to see a medical school
that incorporates rabbis and imams and whatever, pastors
and preachers as part of their treatment.
As long as -- well as psychologists and psychiatrists,
that's part of the channel.
Oh, and yeah, we've got these, you know, MDs as well who,
you know, will set broken bones and do all of that stuff.
Holistic medical care, I think, I would love to see
at a future medical school here.
Surrounded by flowers and birds and foxes running
through the wards [inaudible].
Jermal Jones
But it's a nice picture and I --
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
-- appreciate the sort of addition
on the end to kind of do that.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
I think you raise some really important
pieces or like concepts around like holistic, the emotional --
tending to the emotional, spiritual aspect
of someone's well-being.
Do you think right now, at Waterloo, we're doing a good job
of doing those things or you can maybe not say yes or no, it's --
are we on the right path --
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
-- and what other path do you think we
should start trying to take?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah, I would say no,
we're not where we need to be, that's obvious.
Jeez, that's so obvious.
But one of the things that I've learned --
I mean, I'm 52 now and one of the hard truths I had
to learn is that these changes never happen
in a short space of time.
And every generation --
let's just take it from Black perspective,
every generation thinks that they're going to move the needle
in this massive way and that all the barriers are going
to fall away and we will get to be all that we can be,
right, as Black persons.
And then, at some point, maybe when you hit 50,
you realize that, OK, we've made an incremental change
and maybe I'll shift my focus to my kids having the opportunity
to -- you know, that I didn't have kind of thing.
We're definitely headed in the right direction,
we're definitely putting the energies and the focus
where they need to be, I'm happy for that.
However, I believe if I focus on racism,
I believe it's really a heart issue, an issue of the heart,
an issue of values and so on.
And it's really hard to codify values, to codify, you know,
the attitudes and the behaviors.
Well, you can codify behaviors but attitudes?
Next to impossible to codify, right?
So, you can send me to jail for robbing a bank,
you can't send me to jail for thinking
of robbing a bank, right?
And what that means is as we try to codify behaviors
to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion,
we're not really addressing the heart.
And so, inside people's hearts,
they may still work towards increasing inequality,
increasing racism, and so on
and that's just something I've learned from being a parent
and raising kids and so on, right?
That's the values drive behavior.
How do you incorporate values in the hearts of each
and every person at the University of Waterloo,
or at least enough powerful people
so that we can drive behavior?
I don't have an answer for that.
And so, what you find is a lot of people jumping
on the bandwagon for equity, diversity,
and inclusion and it looks good.
But sometimes, I see in source suggestions
that it's performative, right?
Is that 100% bad?
You know, I guess if we bring people along
and say we'll behave in this way.
It's worked for gender equality to a very great extent,
it's worked for equality around --
sorry, other dimensions of inequality.
So, sexual orientation, ability, disability, and so on.
So, we do have ramps now for wheelchairs and stuff like that.
So, definitely good things can happen.
I am just worried about how we teach people
to actually value it.
And if they value it in their hearts,
we'll get to where we're going a lot faster.
If they don't, they will pretend.
And if they will pretend, we'll make --
it'll be one step forward, two steps back, one step forward,
three steps sideways, and we'll be having more Black Lives
Matter protests in another 15 to 20 years without fail.
And yeah, and I wish I was brilliant enough to figure
out how to make that happen.
It does keep me up at night, but I am grateful
for what Waterloo has tried to do or what Waterloo is trying
to do to advance equity, diversity and inclusion.
Not just for Blacks, for indigenous persons,
for non-meals, you know, and all of those things as well.
So -- and there's work to be done for each of us.
I don't consider myself an expert on EDI.
I think I have blind spots that I need to work on.
So, it's not just about if we fix the Black anti racism thing,
everything's OK.
No, there's lots going on.
So, I'll keep working on it, I'll keep trying
to change people's hearts.
A lot of smart people at the university are working
on this initiative right now.
I respect what they're doing.
I think about Dr. Taylor, Dr. Christopher Taylor
and other persons on the parts committee, and I applaud them.
I applaud them but I am worried
about someone sticking us a stick in the bicycle wheel,
in the spokes while we're riding along, you know,
just a little stick and derailing it.
Long answer, but that's my honest feeling on the situation.
Jermal Jones
I appreciate that
and I think I particularly appreciated the moment
of addressing the issue of the heart and it does --
I think there's -- it needs to move
that to different tandems, right?
Like I think you need people working on system,
people working at -- working on issues of the heart,
others who are doing that in between work
around programmatic and policy changes.
So, it's a holistic solution as sort of what you --
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yeah.
Jermal Jones
-- reference into what you'd hope to see.
If we discussed like what medicine means
or how we take care of well-being
and it's holistic of approach.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Right.
Right.
Jermal Jones
Yeah.
So, I think just some final thoughts that I'd
like to hear from you.
How important do you believe it is that stories such as yourself
that are recorded, preserved for future generations?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I think absolutely important
to not just record it, you have to go beyond --
we have to go beyond recording to sharing those stories, right?
So, what I have discovered over what now?
How long has it been since I've been here?
Thirty-three, 34 years in Canada?
We keep, in many cases, reinventing the wheel,
restarting and if our communities are not strong --
communities are the ones that pass along traditions
and learnings and stuff like that.
And if our communities are not strong,
those stories are not getting passed on.
So, people are doing things that people have done before
that didn't work or, you know, starting from scratch again
and we cannot succeed if we keep going back to the start line.
We cannot.
So, what happens with stories and books and recordings
and film and all of those different ways
of documenting what's going on is that people begin
to understand their place in the history of our peoples, right,
and what's been done before, why do we have certain laws.
People don't know, for example, that there was a time,
like in the 1950s when there were no laws
against racism in all of Canada.
It just didn't exist.
And we're so proud of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms
and stuff, we don't actually know how it started and the work
that was done to codify, you know, anti-discrimination
and anti-racism laws by our parents.
It was just a generation of goal, for goodness sakes, right?
And so, if you don't understand where you're coming from,
it's very hard to understand
where you're going, it's really hard.
And we definitely need to document the stories,
but we also need to find a way of communicating
and teaching those stories to our children
and to the wider community.
So -- like this is something I learned
like maybe two years ago.
I'll give an example.
I used to give Black History Month speeches
to my children's classes when they were young
and in primary school and middle school, and I just did
that because I thought there was a need.
And if you do this as a parent and the teacher allows you
to come in, thanks to all the teachers who allowed my wife
and myself to come in, you don't necessarily have the Black
history of Ontario and Canada.
You're from the Caribbean but you do some research
and you figure stuff out and you put together a story
and you make it fun for the kids and all
that kind of stuff, right?
And you teach them all about melanin
and the real McCoy and stuff like that.
Anyway, if you Google Black settlements in Ontario
from the Underground Railroad, there's a map
that will come up on Google.
It's near the top of the list and it shows stars
for all the settlements like Chatham, Kingsville,
and all of those areas around southwestern Ontario
where former -- where escaped slaves settled
and built community and so on.
If you actually look at that map, you will see
that there is a big empty space where the region of Waterloo is
which could mean nothing except two years ago I found
out about Queens Bush where there was a population of 2000
to 2500 Blacks on the land having schools, churches,
farming the land, a huge community,
and they were forced off the land when surveying was done
and it was determined whichever way you want to take it,
that they couldn't afford to buy the land that they've cleared
and farmed and all of that stuff.
So, they all went away.
So, wait a minute.
You mean this was one of the settlements?
This area was one of the settlements?
Did you know that?
Did you know that perhaps some
of your ancestors helped to clear this land?
OK, so until very recently this whole region
of Waterloo was White or was considered White, right?
So, the First Nations history was essentially erased the
history of Blacks.
Wait a minute, what would Waterloo region look
like if those 2500 persons in the mid-1800s had stayed
and had raised their families and have contributed
to the development of it?
Would wealth outcomes be better?
Income outcomes?
What about the distribution of land?
What about -- you know, all of these things come up.
And if you're not telling that story, you might think
that you're Black, you're a Johnny-come-lately
to this region.
You might think that you don't really belong here.
You might think all of these things.
Actually, we were here first but who knows that?
And if you know that, if you know that as a Black person,
you know, we were here first.
We cleared a lot of the lands and so on and this is
within region of Waterloo boundaries.
You get that greater sense of belonging.
You get that greater sense of, you know, I am --
I can do things here, my ancestors did things here.
And if the wider community,
let's say the non-Black community doesn't recognize
that we were here first or if they do recognize,
their attitudes towards us might change, right?
Maybe the land you're farming and living on was cleared
by a Black person, right?
You inherited it through whatever means and methods.
So -- anyway, all of this stuff, to summarize that, say you have
to know where -- who you are, you have to know
where you're coming from to understand
where it is that you're going.
And if we're not documenting these stories,
then it's not getting passed down
and every generation is trying to rethink who they are,
rethink where they're coming from, and we just --
we're just spinning our wheels in the mud instead
of taking a hold of the futures
that should be available to us in all fields.
We're starting from the starting line again and again and again.
I'm sorry, long-winded explanation.
I just wanted to give that example of the Queen's Bush
because when I found out about it, I was just so stunned.
I was just so stunned.
You know, all that wealth lost, all that investment
in land lost, and erased essentially, you know, so.
Anyway, we got to get that story out there.
Sorry.
Jermal Jones
No, no, I appreciate that.
And I know there are some people doing some really important work
in the community as well and here to kind of unveil that
and put it out to the current public --
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Right.
Jermal Jones
-- so that those stories can be uplifted
and told and shared.
Is there anyone else that you think
that we should interview --
that I need to interview for this this project?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
I'm going to say the --
I'm going to give two groups.
Jermal Jones
OK.
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
One is the persons who started
or were involved in the very early years
of the Caribbean Association.
Very brilliant, very hard-working persons
who started this organization from scratch
and built those relationships with leaders
in the community, right.
Mayors and MPPs and police chiefs and so on like that.
That's number one.
And then, I'm going to be a bit controversial here
when I say I think about the ACP network as a group
that has been very -- I can't think of a better word now,
but I'll say militant in terms of pushing the envelope in terms
of how we communicate with the powers that be and how we fight
for equality, diversity, and inclusion.
And sometimes, I think an organization like that,
even when they're not accepted in the mainstream,
they help to move things forward because they make the powers
that be interested in working with "more moderate persons."
And I've always had this sense that some of those doors
that have been opened to mainstream organizations
like the Caribbean-Canadian Association of Waterloo Region,
African Associations, and so on, I sometimes wonder if some
of those doors have been opened because we might be easy
or considered easier to work with than those other ones.
But I -- it's a little bit controversial to say because,
you know, you want to walk that fine line between, you know,
respecting the powers that be and the channels and lines
of conversations that are possible between those
who hold the reins of power and stuff.
But somebody said something to me, I guess a couple years ago,
and that is when immigrants first came here,
whether they be African or immigrants from Africa
or the Caribbean, they were happy to be or more
or less happy to be subservient as they made sense
of the environment that they were in, the opportunities
that were available to them, being immigrants and all
that stuff just like any immigrant group
from Ireland, Italy, whatever.
Now that their children have been born here,
those children are not as accepting
of being second-class citizens.
They were born here, they were raised here, they --
you know, ate the food, they -- whatever.
They drank the water, they played hockey, they -- whatever.
And someone said to me that generation is very frustrated
at being second-class citizens.
And so, there's a generational divide in terms
of people wanting to move EDI initiatives ahead faster
like now, and I think it would be helpful for you
to interview groups that are on that fringe
and the ACP network comes to mind
because they believe things are moving way too slowly
and they're tired of Blacks in this region
or across the country having to, you know, being said, "Wait.
Things are getting better, wait."
And they've got a point, they've got a point.
So, the Caribbean Association will continue to work
in the way we always have, right?
We've got our ways of operating and stuff like that but we --
I shouldn't say we, I'll say, personally, I respect the work
that some of those fringe groups are doing to advance EDI
When they think things aren't moving fast enough.
So, a little bit of a Martin Luther King, Malcolm X kind
of dynamic kind of going there, right?
And yes, I agree that they were both important
for the civil rights movement.
And if there wasn't that tag team,
I know that's not the right term but would be --
would the states be where they are today?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Jermal Jones
That's some food for thought.
Hopefully, for some listeners and consumers of this interview,
they can do some research as well and know about some
of these great organizations that you have mentioned.
Any final thoughts that you would like to share,
things that we haven't covered?
Lannois Carroll-Woolery
Yes, but I'll include one more group.