Recognition for Caribbean-born steelpan pioneers in Canada
October 23, 2023
Travelling Ontario playing pan at community events and private gigs in the early 1960s, Cecil Louis recalled curious Canadians peeking under the steelpans to see where the sweet sounds were coming from.
“They also observed our sticks closely because they could not believe that the steel drums were producing different musical notes,” he recounted. “You could imagine what it was like when we made a television appearance in Timmins. On the way out of town, we stopped at a diner to get a bite and the servers came up to us, saying ‘we saw you guys on TV and you are great’.”
A member of Panniks, possibly the first steelband in the province, formed by Trinidad & Tobago students attending the University of Toronto in 1960, Louis and several early pannists were honoured at the Trinidad & Tobago Consulate in Toronto on September 24.
Cecil Louis receives his award from T & T Acting Consul General Tracey Ramsubagh-Mannette (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Soon after arriving in Canada in 1961 to pursue studies at U of T, he hooked up with fellow St. Mary’s graduates Lennox Borel and Nicholas ‘Mr. Pan’ Inniss who started the steelband on campus at the start of the 1960 academic term just a few weeks after they came to hit the books.
“When I came, Gerald Fernandes (he died in December 2021) had completed his engineering studies and was heading back home, so I took his place,” Louis said.
In 1965, Panniks transitioned to Steltones that took part in the inaugural Toronto Caribbean Carnival celebration in 1967 before dissolving a few years later when many members returned to T & T.
“I stayed with Steltones for a few years until my job began to take up a lot of my time and I left in the late 1960s,” said Louis.
He returned a decade later when the band created history by putting out the first steelband album – A Mellow Taste of Steel -- by a Canadian-based steel orchestra.
In high school in Tobago, Louis played double seconds with Our Boys Steel Orchestra and with a few bands in Trinidad before coming to the Greater Toronto Area 62 years ago.
At the time, steelpan was not socially acceptable in the twin-islands and the then St. Mary’s Principal, who was an Irish Priest, frowned on students playing the instrument.
“We didn’t play for money,” Louis said. “It was for love of pan and no one was going to stop that.”
After graduating from university in 1965 with a Geography degree, he became a planner.
Hired by the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Louis was seconded nine years later to the newly created Niagara Escarpment Commission as Manager of Development Control.
The former Canadian Institute of Planners member prepared the first set of development control regulations, hired, trained and supervised a staff of planners and landscape architects and led a team responsible for preparing the first Five Year Review before retiring in 1996.
Proud of his Tobago roots, pan maker/tuner Earl Wong was introduced to the instrument when a teacher, Linton Brown, brought in a few steel drums at Belmont Boys Roman Catholic School.
“We were all drawn to it and three members of my class went on to become tuners,” he said. “I am grateful that my mother shipped me out to Trinidad.”
T & T Acting Consul General Tracey Ramsubagh-Mannette presents Earl Wong with his award (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
A pioneer in the foundation of the Tobago All Stars, Wong joined Steltones in 1968 and arranged the music for a few tracks on ‘A Mellow Taste of Steel’. He also produced and played on Steelband Fever that featured his band, Trin Stars.
In 1993, Wong – who made pans for the Toronto District School Board -- toured Mexico as a tuner/player with Our Boys that won the Tobago Panorama competition the following year.
The Toronto Metropolitan University Industrial Engineering & Business Administration graduate instruments are on permanent display at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec.
While the late John ‘Jayson’ Perez is widely acknowledged for his contributions to calypso music, steelpan was his first love.
The four-time Calypso Monarch and Juno Award winner died a week after suffering a heart attack in March 2022.
The late John ‘Jayson’ Perez (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“Before he was ‘Jayson’, he was John Perez, the Panman,” said his widow, Brenda Alexander-Perez, who accepted the award. “During my generation, mothers didn’t want their daughters to marry a panman. But I break stick in my head.”
Two years after he started playing pan at age 14, Perez began performing in clubs and bars to raise tuition fees for his education. He played with Esso Tripoli and Starlift prior to joining the Trinidad & Tobago Coast Guard where he became the arranger of the Mariners Steel Orchestra.
He captained the Mariners for seven years until 1969 when he migrated to Canada. During that time, the Coastguard band performed at Expo 67 in Montreal and returned to Canada the next year for an extensive tour.
In his new home, Perez started a steelband in St. Catharines that is twinned with Port-of-Spain and taught steelpan music at a Toronto school for academically challenged young people.
“He was really a pannist at heart,” added Alexander-Perez. “During the last years of his life, he had two pans behind his bed. He just could not separate himself from the pan.”
Brenda Alexander-Perez received the award from T & T Acting Consul General Tracey Ramsubagh-Mannette on behalf of her late husband John ‘Jayson’ Perez (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Perez also started a string band, The Legends, before switching to calypso in 1983.
In 1972, former Toronto Caribbean Carnival Chair Ken Jeffers founded the Harriet Tubman Centre that had a resident band, the Tubman Survivors, which became the Avenger Steel Orchestra and then Afropan.
With Earl LaPierre Sr. at the helm as arranger, Afropan has been very successful, winning the Pan Alive competition a record 28 times. He also arranged for three-time winner Impacts and the Toronto Symphony Steelband that won the inaugural competition in 1969.
Before migrating to Canada, he was an Invaders member and arranger for the twin-islands republic Junior Chamber of Commerce Steel Orchestra that performed at Expo 67 in Montreal and at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre a few weeks later.
LaPierre taught steelpan at the University of Toronto and in North York Board of Education schools and was instrumental in pan music being offered as a credit course in the mid-1980s before accepting a hotelier invitation to introduce steelpan in the Cayman Islands.
Earl LaPierre Sr. (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Since 1986 when he was a member of Earl Wong’s Trinstars band that toured the Cayman Islands for the annual 10-day Pirates Week festival, the septuagenarian has resided in the British Overseas Territory where he introduced steelpan to schools.
Daughter Melanie Awang and granddaughter Taysia Thompson accepted the award on behalf of prominent natural products chemist Dr. Dennis Awang who died last year.
Melanie Awang (l) & her daughter Taysia Thompson accepted the award on behalf of the late Dr. Dennis Awang (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
He founded the Queen’s University Steel Orchestra in 1964.
“I know that if he was still with us here, he would be so filled with joy,” said his granddaughter. “Even though he travelled the world as a scientist, he always made sure to travel with a steelpan wherever he went.”
Lennox Borel, who was also recognized, was a schoolmate of Awang at St. Mary’s.
“We sat side by side in the same class for four years,” he said. “As teenage boys, we became enamoured of steelpan and played for a steelband (Silver Stars) that included many of our fellow students.”
Lennox Borel and the late Dr. Dennis Awang were schoolmates at St. Mary’s (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
As a teenager, Borel played the tenor pan and guitar with Demboys in Belmont, Blue Stars that he co-founded, Dixieland and Del Vikings Steel Orchestra.
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 Senator 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 who passed away in 2013 and Toronto musician and entrepreneur Dennis Renwick who died on the last day in 2014.
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 the University of Toronto 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.
Trinidad & Tobago’s Acting Consul General in Toronto Tracey Ramsubagh-Mannette, who presented the awards, said the steelpan embodies the spirit of T & T nationals.
“It looks simple, humble even, but just like a Trini, when you get it going, it is hard to stop,” she pointed out. “Like a Trini, it is powerful, it shines brightly, it knows about proper ‘broughtupsy’ and it is versatile and expressive. Embedded within pan is the story of our journey, our struggles and our breakthroughs as a people. It is a lasting symbol of our creativity, ingenuity and our ability to make something out of nothing, to recycle even before that became a thing, to find beauty and potential where someone else might have seen just a piece of junk. So needless to say, the steelpan means a lot to us tangibly and intangibly.”
T & T Acting Consul General Tracey Ramsubagh-Mannette (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Ramsubagh-Mannette thanked the event organizers for acknowledging those who blazed a trail.
“Steelpan to me is something magical, but I think we can all agree that for the wonderful things pan can do, it cannot play itself and it did not advance its own message,” she pointed out. “People did that. So any celebration that ignores those people, those initiators, those pioneers, would ring hollow. I am happy to say that many of these people, their friends, their families and supporters that initiated the steelband movement in Ontario from where it spread to other parts of Canada are here in this room today.”
Former Trinidad & Tobago Consul General in Toronto Michael Lashley assisted Patrick ‘Panman’ McNeilly who conceived the idea for the celebration and was among the honourees.
“This is the fist time that a project has been created specifically and exclusively to honour the members of our steelpan community,” said Lashley. “Today’s awardees are the pioneers who established the steelpan movement in Canada and played leadership and teaching roles until 1970.
Michael Lashley (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“This is the first phase of an annual recognition and celebration that will be undertaken by the Ontario Steelpan Association as of next year. It will be up to the OSA to determine the merit criteria and the process for the shortlisting and the final selection of the awardees.”
For McNeilly, singing and playing to musical beats was more appealing that walking the beat.
After four years as a uniformed Toronto Police Service officer, he resigned in 1972 to pursue a cultural career.
Patrick ‘Panman” McNeilly (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
The only pan player at the inaugural Caribbean Carnival in the city five years earlier introduced the steelpan as a formal high school music credit in the Toronto District School Board, published ‘Hands on Steelpan: A Teachers Guide and Student Companion to the Art of Playing Steelpan’, and adjudicated several Toronto District Catholic School Board music festivals.
Other honourees were Joseph Brown, Steve Regis and the late Elton ‘Smokey’ John, Jerry Jerome, Nicholas Inniss, Patrick Arnold, Ralph Ryce and Selwyn ‘Sello’ Gomes.
Acknowledging that the steelpan promotes inclusive societies, sustainable communities and the creative economy and can have a positive impact on mental health and well-being, gender equality and youth empowerment, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed August 11 World Steelpan Day.
