Black Radical History in Toronto: Marcus Garvey's place in Toronto

Thymeless, the bar at 355 College Street, is no more, but Marcus Garvey’s role in Toronto’s history remains.

“What many people forget or don’t know is that for 57 years — from 1925 to 1982 — this building was home to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Hall…it certainly was not taught in public school — or the fact that there was a Toronto division, and divisions just like it across the country.

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Toronto’s Black community in the early twentieth century was, in many ways, just as diverse as it is today. It comprised native-born Black Canadians, West Indian immigrants, African Americans, and African Nova Scotians. Some West Indian immigrants had arrived in Toronto from Nova Scotia, where many had been recruited to work the coal mines. Others came after short stays in New York. Most settled in the neighbourhood between College and Dundas Streets, and University and Spadina Avenues. In my forthcoming book, Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture (Wilfrid University Press), I describe how Black-owned barbershops and hair salons also operated near Queen and University as early as the 1910s.

The UNIA Hall, in addition to holding formal associational meetings and events, housed the United Negro Credit Union, the Toronto United Negro Association and the Black Cross Nurses, an organization which promoted good health and hygiene practices within the black community. There were weekly Sunday Mass Meetings that included a choir. Additionally, Garvey himself visited Toronto several times during the 1920s, and again in the 1930s. He even gave a speech at Windsor in 1937 where he passionately spoke to an audience about not giving up on the goals of the UNIA. “Stand up for yourselves and for your race,” Garvey demanded, adding, “Don’t let anybody tell you that you are made to stay down.”

The Hall ultimately provided space for Toronto’s Black community to be “free” amidst a climate of discrimination and anti-Black racism. In their 1996 book, Towards Freedom: The African-Canadian Experience, Ken Alexander and Avis Glaze observe that when the Palais Royale or other white-owned night clubs barred Black people, they headed to the third floor of the Hall for evening jam sessions. Many Toronto jazz musicians, like Archie Alleyne, performed there.

‘Toronto’s UNIA headquarters was much more than a musical meeting place,’ Alexander and Glaze note. ‘It was there, and at similar locations across Canada, that Black culture and politics fused. Young and old met to discuss the issues of the day and to celebrate Black talent.’”

From Cheryl Thompson writing in Spacing magazine.