Trini students at U of T launch Canada's first steel orchestra 60 years ago
September 23, 2020
International students face many challenges, including culture shock and finances.
As if studying and living in a new country weren’t enough, St. Mary’s College graduates Lennox Borel and Nicholas ‘Mr. Pan’ Inniss started a steelband at the beginning of the September 1960 academic term at the University of Toronto, just a few weeks after arriving from Trinidad & Tobago to hit the books.
Pan was in their blood as Inniss, who went on to become marketing manager at Angostura before his death in August 2015 in Trinidad at age 79, and Borel played with established steel orchestras in the twin islands republic.
Long before multi-tasking became the norm and even before settling into their new environment, they were writing letters to pan tuners in Trinidad & Tobago requesting instruments, playing pan and studying.
Using T & T’s Invaders Steel Orchestra guitars and bass, tenor bass and double second pans tuned by Emmanuel “Cobo Jack” Riley enabled the Caribbean students to launch Canada’s first steel orchestra 60 years ago.
The other band founders were Pat Clarke and Vaughan Thomasos who are deceased, retired engineer Gerald Fernandes who resides in T & T and George Cornelius who lives in Aurora.
Panniks lasted for just over a decade.
“There were no steelbands here at the time,” recalled Borel. “I made the proposal to start the outfit and Nicholas was only too happy to be an ally.”
With assistance from educator/social activist Kay Riddell Rouillard who died in 2006 in her 100th year, space was provided for the band to practice in the basement of the U of T International Student Centre that she played a leading role in transforming.
“We were like the university band since we were all students,” said Borel “We knew about two or three songs and it took some time for the drums to arrive from Trinidad. We really didn’t get going until January 1961. This was new for the university and we were given the opportunity to play at a lot of university functions and at fraternity houses on campus.”
They also played at Toronto and Ottawa nightclubs, made regular appearances at a summer gig at the Muskoka Sands resort in Bracebridge and was well received by thousands at a 1962 performance at the Canadian National Exhibition band stand. The group also went as far north as Timmins during the winter to play at the Lions Club on Carnival Friday Night.
“We did a lot of club gigs and patrons were surprised they didn’t see us using drugs or drinking heavily,” noted Borel. “We told them we were students and not entertainers. We were just playing pan on the side because we liked it and it offered us an opportunity to make some extra money to help with university tuition.”
From left are Cecil Louis, Pat Clarke, Nicholas Inniss, Lennox Borel, Stevenson Sarjeant and George Cornelius performing in Timmins at the Lions Club on Carnival Friday Night
The sweet sounds and pulsating rhythms of the steelpan, the only acoustic instrument to be invented in the 20th century, appealed to a wide variety of audiences.
“Every race and colour enjoyed the music and almost everywhere we went, Canadians, in particular, always requested we play ‘Yellow Bird’ and ‘Jamaica Farewell’,” Borel said. “That was all they wanted to hear.”
Panniks also performed at a cocktail reception organized by the T & T High Commission in Ottawa to mark the country’s independence on August 30, 1962.
“That is an occasion I will never forget,” Borel pointed out.
As part of the musical performance, High Commissioner Wilfred Rose requested that the band play the T & T anthem.
“Of course it was new and none of us had heard it,” Borel said. “The High Commissioner provided me with the music notation, but we couldn’t read music. We just played by ear. I went to a friend (Gretta Taylor graduated from U of T before returning to T & T to be the conductor and musical director of The Marionettes Chorale) who had a piano and she played the anthem for me. I listened to the melody, went into the pan yard and we arranged it and played it in a calypso tempo. Hearing it for the first time, the guests started to dance and I had to inform them it was the national anthem. I will always remember that funny moment.”
Cecil Louis, Francis ‘Carney’ Yew Woon, who died in a vehicular accident in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 1974 and Stevenson Sarjeant, who went on to become the Mayor of Port-of-Spain before his death in 2011, joined Panniks in the second year shortly after arriving in the summer of 1961 to attend U of T.
“We were all friends and those who played before in Trinidad taught those who didn’t know how to play,” said Borel who did steel pan presentations in elementary and secondary schools in the GTA in the 1960s. “When guys graduated and returned to Trinidad, other students filled their spots.”
Vaughan Thomasos’ brother, Wenceslaus Thomasos who studied at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and spent summers in Toronto, and former Tradewinds bass player Joe Brown were drafted into the band in the summer to fill in for members who were married and unable to perform because of family commitments.
After Borel left the band in 1965, the name changed to Steltones which took part in the inaugural Toronto Carnival celebration in 1967 before dissolving a few years later when many members returned to T & T.
Lennox Borel (r) and Nicholas Inniss started Canada’s first steelband six decades ago
As a teenager, Borel played the tenor pan and guitar with Demboys in Belmont, Blue Stars which he co-founded, Dixieland and Del Vikings Steel Orchestras.
“Pan back in those days was associated with the lower class and if the Roman Catholic priests at St. Mary’s found any of us in a pan yard, we would have been expelled,” he said. “If my late parents knew I was in a pan yard, I would have been in big trouble. When they sent me for piano lessons, I would divert and go to the pan yard. I couldn’t help it.”
Borel’s love of pan didn’t get in the way of him striving for academic brilliance.
Finishing high school at age 16, he taught English, French, Spanish, Greek and Latin at his alma mater for three years and his students included retired Toronto school principal and superintendent Dr. Joel Ien -- the father of Canadian broadcast journalist Marci Ien -- who topped his class as an undergraduate and at Harvard University, lawyer and former T & T independent senator Martin Daly, eight-time T& T calypso monarch The Mighty Chalkdust and late scholar Dr. Tony Martin and Toronto musician and entrepreneur Dennis Renwick who died on the last day in 2014.
When the time came to choose a university to pursue post-secondary education, U of T was Borel’s choice.
“Most of my friends were at McGill, the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba,” he said. “After leaving high school, I was looking at McGill where I had an older sister (she’s deceased) living in Montreal attending that institution, and the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) in Jamaica. My parents’ preference was UCWI because it was close to home, but I had heard stories of students partying a lot while they were there. I assumed the atmosphere was not conducive to studying as it would be at a Canadian institution where, with nothing much to do during the winter, I could stay in my room and study.”
Accepted at McGill, Borel’s plans changed a year before he and good friend Pat Clarke – they had planned to go to the same university -- travelled to Montreal.
“A report was issued by the T & T Ministry of Education saying that ‘Trini’ students seeking to pursue higher education in Canada or the United States should check to ensure they are entering an accredited university,” he recounted. “The report also went on to say that the best university in Canada was U of T which I had never heard of before. At around the same time, ‘Time’ magazine ran a story of the top seven universities in the world and U of T was the only Canadian one on the list. I told Pat if that is the case, that was where we were going.”
They applied and were accepted.
Borel arrived at U of T to find many Caribbean students on campus.
They included Trinidadians Overand “Bunny” Padmore, a former Senator and cabinet minister, and academic writer/researcher Selwyn Ryan who taught at York University, and Jamaicans Pat Terrelonge who was the founding director of the Jamaica Computer Society and Joan McConnell who -- with her husband Peter -- co-own Worthy Park Estate & Distillery in St. Catherine.
Unlike those who returned to their respective countries after graduating, Borel remained in Canada.
“My plan was to do an honours degree in French and Spanish and go back to St. Mary’s to resume my teaching career,” he said. “However, I went on to graduate school and Harvard University where my roommate, who was from Texas, was pursuing an MBA. I had never done any business courses before, so he invited me to one of his finance classes. I found the class interesting and on my return to Canada, I enrolled at the Rotman School of Management.”
After nearly two decades with the then Scarborough Board of Education where he rose to the position of Principal, Borel – who earned five degrees at U of T and was the recipient of the 1988 Robert Hillmer Award presented to the top business studies teacher in the province -- was an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education business professor for almost 20 years before retiring in 2009.
The author of several finance, accounting and information technology textbooks and Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum served as the Addiction Research Foundation director for four years up until 1998.
Borel, the father of two children and two grandchildren, played soccer at the U of T was also quite active outside the classroom.
He was the first president of the T & T Association of Toronto, a track & field, basketball and soccer coach, a mentor to inmates in penal institutions across the province, a three-time Caribbean Cultural Committee board member and a mas, pan, soca and calypso judge.
For over a decade, he was the Organization of Calypso Performing Artists soca monarch final head judge.
