Dr. Gary Warner made his mark at McMaster University and in Hamilton
December 21, 2020
About 10 days after arriving on Canada Day 1967 to take up a teaching appointment at McMaster University in Hamilton, Dr. Garrett (Gary) Warner and his wife went apartment hunting.
Osler Court Apartments in Dundas was the first one they checked out and the manager was cordial.
Assured that the lease documents would be prepared for signature in a few days, the couple was confident they would soon be moving out of their temporary residence on campus.
They were in for a surprise.
“As soon as we got back, I got a call from the person who showed us around saying he didn’t realize that the apartment was already rented and we couldn’t get it,” recalled Warner whose wife is White. “We got a White couple to go and look at the same apartment and it was available for them.”
With Warner threatening to lodge a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the manager relented and rented the apartment to the newcomers.
Shrugging off the harsh introduction to Canada, he became an advocate for positive change.
“The overt acts of racism still exist, but probably would have gone underground,” Warner said. “In terms of the more systemic forms of racism, I don’t see a fundamental change. It’s still very much there. We can look no further than the pandemic to see which communities are more disproportionately impacted.”
Matthew Green, the Hamilton Centre Member of Parliament, said Warner’s tireless work to strengthen and promote human rights and combat racism and discrimination rank among his most significant contributions to the community.
“His guidance and leadership have been critical and he was an integral part in providing governance support to many non-governmental and non-profit organizations,” he noted.
Evelyn Myrie, the President of the Afro Canadian Caribbean Association, said Warner is one of the community’s bedrocks.
“Gary is one of the first persons the community calls upon for advice and guidance around critical issues facing individuals or organizations in the Black community,” she said. “We rely on his wisdom, love of community and his commitment to principles of fairness and equality to help facilitate meaningful dialogue.”
Hamilton is nearly 4,000 kilometres from Trinidad where his academy journey began.
Warner, who turned 80 in the summer, attended Saint Mary’s College from 1952 to 1958 on a scholarship and was a junior teacher at the same institution for a year before going to France in 1960 where he spent seven years completing undergraduate and graduate studies.
“I enjoyed my time in Trinidad and I often went to the University of Woodford Square as it was referred to back then to listen to Dr. Eric Williams (Trinidad & Tobago’s first Prime Minister) and other speakers in the years leading up to independence,” he said. “Growing up in that period of the excitement of ‘Massa Day Done’ and feeling really proud was a great gift.”
Finishing second in a bid for the only island scholarship available in Languages, Warner was awarded a bursary by the French government.
At the undergraduate level, he studied French Language & Literature and English and his doctoral thesis was on French dramatist Moliere who was considered one of the greatest writers in the French Language and World Literature.
“I took a course on 17th century French Literature and Moliere really appealed to me,” he said. “Through comedy, you can make some really interesting comments about life. I would put Moliere in the same category as Shakespeare.”
Warner’s maternal grandmother sparked his interest in Languages.
A 1783 proclamation by the representative of Spanish King Jose de Galvez opened Trinidad to immigration from mainly French Caribbean islands. As a result, most of the island’s inhabitants spoke French Creole in the 19th century.
“When I went to the market with her, she communicated in French creole with vendors and customers,” he said. “Through that, I did French in high school and became good at it.”
Married in July 1966 to British-born Joy Warner who he met in France, the couple started to look at countries to settle after her husband graduated the following year.
Gary & Joy Warner have been married for 54 years (Photo contributed)
With no job opportunities in his field at the University of the West Indies St. Augustine campus in Trinidad, they chose to look for a neutral country.
“As a boy in Trinidad, I remember at Christmas time hearing Trinidadian students at McGill, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia sending home Xmas greetings,” he recalled. “Canada was in my mind from then and became a strong possibility.”
One of the two opportunities that Warner saw when he was applying for teaching jobs in Canada was for a French Language & Literature lecturer at McMaster University which quickly snapped him up.
Teaching the subject for three years he was hired to do changed after an unexpected meeting with the late Dr. Fred Case at Gatwick Airport in 1970.
Among the first batch of Black university professors in Ontario in the 1960s, Case chaired the University of Toronto French department, played a key role in the launch of the African & Caribbean Studies program at New College where he was the Principal for five years, lectured widely in several countries, published numerous articles in journals on issues of race and on the social and historical contexts of racism in Canada and authored ‘Racism and National Consciousness’ and ‘The Crisis of Identity: Studies in the Guadeloupean and Martiniquan Novel.
“Me and my wife were returning from vacation in England and the flight was delayed,” Warner, who was inducted in the Hamilton Gallery of Distinction in 2006, recounted. “Myself and Fred got chatting and soon found out some of our experiences were similar. We stayed in touch and he mentored me for about three years. So, while I was teaching French, I started reading in my spare time and basically transformed myself into an African, Caribbean & French Literature person.”
The scholar introduced two undergraduate courses and a graduate one in African-Caribbean studies in McMaster’s Faculty of Humanities and played a leading role in the French department setting up a PhD program, Francophonie et diversite.
“It was because of Fred that I was able to do these things,” said the former Ontario Council of University Affairs member. “He was a leader, deep thinker and role model.”
Retiring officially from McMaster at the end of June 2005, Warner continued as Director of the Arts & Science program until 2018.
Last month, the university honoured him with an honourary Doctor of Laws degree for a storied career in academic life and as a community leader.
“I am touched by the honour and grateful for the wide range of opportunities that McMaster provided me to integrate my intellectual interests and community engagements so seamlessly,” he said.
Warner was the only Black professor on campus when he started teaching at the southern Ontario University.
Jamaican-born Woodburn (Woody) Heron, who was of Lebanese-Jewish ancestry, was teaching Psychology at McMaster when he arrived. Heron succumbed to cancer in 1994.
When Dr. Juliet Daniel became a faculty member at McMaster two decades ago, Warner took her under his wing and was a mentor.
“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Gary to launch the African-Caribbean Faculty Association of McMaster and to support the African-Caribbean community at McMaster and in Hamilton through the African-Caribbean Cultural Potpourri Inc. and the John Holland Awards,” she said. “He’s a trailblazer and one of my unsung heroes.”
Faith Ogunkoya, a Student Services Team Lead at McMaster, said Warner has blazed a trail for Black faculty members, staff and students.
“His leadership, influence and impact have been vital in enhancing a sense of belonging and inclusion,” she said. “I can confidently say that because of Dr. Warner, I can.”
Outside the university setting, Warner was active in international development.
Gary Warner has played an active role in community development in Africa (Photo contributed)
He spent a year in Dakar, Senegal and two years up until 1979 in Sierra Leone as Program Director for CUSO International (Canadian University Services Overseas).
“Although my work was in Sierra Leone, I was also responsible for the program in Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria,” he said. “In addition, I was a consultant looking at the CUSO program in West Africa and, in that connection, I did some work in Togo where they were looking at starting a program and a water project.”
Warner was a CUSO Board of Directors member for five years and Chair for four years.
“From been involved in that kind of work, I ended up making a switch out of African & Caribbean Literature to International Development Studies,” he said. “In my last years at McMaster, any teaching I did was really related to that area. In a sense, I migrated.”
Warner also chaired the Board of Settlement Services Organization, the Strengthening Hamilton’s Community Initiative Working Committee in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, co-chaired the Civic Centre Project Advisory Committee and was a member of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.
He also helped set up the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and the Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council.
As co-chair of the History of African Canadian Workers in Ontario, he collaborated with numerous partners to create a travelling exhibit that chronicled the lives of African-Canadians from the 1990s.
Having a passion to see young people academically succeed, Warner volunteers with the Loran Scholars Foundation, serving as an interviewer at the regional and national level and as an annual donor.
Retirement, or even the pandemic, hasn’t slowed down the octogenarian whose life motto is ‘Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’.
Most days, Warner spends almost six hours in zoom meetings.
He, along with McMaster School of Nursing Assistant Professor Brenda Flaherty and child advocate Jean Clinton, are part of a Hamilton School Board panel that will provide independent feedback and recommendations on how to deal with bullying following the death of Devan Selvey who was frequently bullied before being stabbed to death in October 2019.
They have had over 30 public consultations.
Warner also sits on the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton and the Good Shepherd Centres boards, welcomes new Canadians at swearing-in ceremonies and is a member of the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre Community Advisory Panel.
Inducted into the Order of Canada in 2005, he was named Hamilton’s Distinguished Citizen of the Year the following year. He’s also the recipient of the John Holland Memorial Award for Community Service in 1998 and in 2002 shared the Hamilton Mundialization Committee World Citizenship Award with his wife.
Gary Warner receives the Order of Canada from then Governor General Michaelle Jean (Photo contributed)
Lay Spiritans, the couple has four children and nine grandchildren.
Jody Warner is a writer, human rights adviser and former librarian; Clare Warner, who has a PhD in Educational Studies, spent 16 years in England before returning to Canada with her family on December 2 to settle in Hamilton; Remi Warner has a doctorate in Social Anthropology and is a Senior Manager in the Human Rights Office at the Toronto District School Board and Kassim Warner is an active volunteer with several organizations, including Out of the Cold and Good Shepherd Ministries.
