Renowned scientist was an advocate for Toronto Police integration
June 11, 2020
At a faculty luncheon, Dr. Thomas Massiah told a colleague he was unable to pursue graduate studies because of marriage and a lack of funds.
“The man said he was married too with a six-year-old son and when I inquired how he was going to go to graduate school, the response was ‘I got bursaries and fellowships’,” the Research Chemist and Pharmaceutical Chemistry Consultant recalled. “No one told me that these things were available back then. There were a number of Blacks who had their undergraduate degrees, but none of them knew anything about graduate school.”
Equipped with this knowledge, Massiah founded the Montreal Negro Alumni Group (MNAG) in 1953 and was its first president. He left three years later because of his belief that the organization had become elitist.
The trailblazer and high school classmate of late Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson died on May 28 in his 93rd year.
Surviving the Great Depression in the 1930s, the fourth of six children born in Montreal to working-class parents who migrated from Guyana graduated from Sir George Williams University, re-named Concordia University, in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry.
Massiah completed his Master’s and PhD in Organic Chemistry at McGill University and the University of Montreal respectively.
The Association of the Chemical Profession of Ontario ex-president and Chemical Institute of Canada Fellow did post-doctoral research work, primarily in the pharmaceutical field, for nearly two decades and was granted five patents.
Growing up in Montreal, Massiah — who taught Chemistry at Concordia for 15 years — was subjected to racism.
In an interview with the Admission department in his quest to attend university, he was encouraged to work on the railroad because ‘no matter what you get as a Black man in Canada, you wouldn’t be able to validate it’.
A Montreal nursery told Massiah in 1959 that his daughter wouldn’t be able to attend their school because of her skin colour.
“The racial prejudices that me and my family faced back then are still evident in Canada today,” the former Seneca College faculty member said at an event in Toronto in 2009. “I would give Canada a ‘D’ grade and that’s not for distinction in terms of race relations. I am a realist. Some people can’t get their heads around it. I didn’t encounter racism when I was at the University of Montreal, but I did encounter incredible naiveté. A White priest once asked me where I was born and when I told him Montreal, he said, ‘no, before that’. Yes, there is still a great deal of race and prejudice. It is subtle in Canada, but it’s there and you might as well face it.”
A member of the National Black Coalition, Massiah – who relocated to Toronto with his family in 1966 -- joined Arthur Downes and Dr. Sheldon Taylor in making a presentation to Toronto Police in the early 1970s on behalf of the Black community.
Dr. Thomas Massiah (c) with Arthur Downes (l) & Dr. Sheldon Taylor
“We worked on the first Black Community Police Liaison Committee and one of the things we were talking about was the integration of the Service,” said Taylor. “Our responsibility was to develop a number of modules representing the interest of the community. Tom was a very intelligent man who was extremely proud of his heritage, but he was embittered that no matter the heights you can reach in a country like Canada, you were still frowned upon.”
Massiah authored ‘Musings of a Native Son’ that reflects on his life struggles while pursuing pre and post-secondary education and how he coped with the double-edged challenge of being Black and ambitious while persevering in a mostly unwelcoming White-dominated environment.
The former Drug Quality & Therapeutics Committee member and defunct Vaughan Road Academy Maths instructor was a close friend of retired Ontario Superior Court judge Romain Pitt who passed away on April 29.
“Having known Tom from the 1970s, I have always been struck by his remarkable mental acuity and how he applied his remarkable intellect with decisiveness to attain the highest scientific accomplishments in an environment and during a period in which even the attainment of a high school diploma was properly regarded as a significant achievement,” wrote Pitt in Massiah’s book.
His wife of 68 years, Pearl Massiah, predeceased her husband. She passed away last December at age 91.
They are survived by their daughter Sharleen Nwakwesi.
