By RON FANFAIR
Barbara Taylor brings a community lens to everything she does.
Born and raised in Cocoyea Village in San Fernando, she founded the Blue Triangles that was deeply immersed in her community and the People’s National Movement’s (PNM) first youth group in San Fernando which was home to close friend and Trinidad & Tobago’s fourth Prime Minister Patrick Manning who passed away in 2016.
“That is where my community service took off,” said Taylor who was among this year’s 100 Accomplished Black Canadian women honourees.
Leaving the twin island republic in 1965 to pursue nursing in England, she did administrative work, instead, before coming to Toronto two years later.
While working with Canada Life and the municipal government, Taylor was a member of several community organizations in the city, including the Harriet Tubman Centre and the Black Education Project founded by the late Marlene Green in the 1960s.
She later joined the now defunct Harambee Services Canada as its Director of Educational Services before switching to teaching.
“Harambee was going sideways and Madge Logan (she spent 38 years with the Toronto District School Board, rising to principal before retiring in 2002) encouraged me to go into education,” said Taylor. “I took her advice and joined the then North York Board of Education.”
She taught at Lawrence Heights and Brookview Middle Schools, succeeding the late Vernon Farrell as principal after he retired in June 1998, and at Flemington Public School before being seconded to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) where she retired.
During a celebrated professional career, Taylor raised her son, Sean Taylor (DJ Sean Sax), as a single parent.
He died in his sleep in 2021 at age 51 due to autoimmune disease complications. Her pride and joy, Taylor is still struggling to come to grips with his death.
“Soon after his birth, I looked into his crib and said ‘Seanie boy, you are not going to be a statistic’,” she said. “I didn’t have him by accident. I decided to have Sean and gave him all my love. That child made me who I am today.”
In the 1980s, she re-migrated with her son to Trinidad & Tobago. The stay was brief.
“I packed up everything and went back to be close to my mother and give back to my birth country,” said Taylor. “However, it didn’t take me long to discover the folks down there were not receptive to things I brought forward to advance what they were doing. After two years, I had enough and came back to Toronto.”
Event planner Carole Adriaans met South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the first time when he was in the city for the Toronto Arts Against Apartheid Festival at Massey Hall in 1986.
After the event, he interacted with a few South Africans residing in the city, including the owner of Adriaans & Associates, a full-service event management agency.
“I remember the Archbishop looking at me and saying, ‘Just don’t let the enemy know that you are angry and just smile with them and go along with it’,” she said.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement, died in December 2021 at age 90.
Adriaans, who started the South African Women for Women (SAWW) organization in the mid-1990s, and Tutu were close friends.
One of the highlights of the SAWW calendar was an annual fundraising gala celebrating South African Women’s Day on August 9.
The SAWW made significant strides in empowering African women through education and poverty alleviation. One of its key initiatives was the Desmond Tutu Scholarship Fund which provided scholarships to disadvantaged African youth, enabling them to pursue educational opportunities that might otherwise have been out of reach.
In addition to education, the organization worked on projects aimed at improving living conditions and addressing economic disparities among women and their families.
SAWW also played a pivotal role in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa, supporting Archbishop Tutu’s initiatives to assist those impacted by the epidemic.
The organization’s broader mission was to uplift African women by promoting self-reliance and instilling hope in communities grappling with unemployment and poverty. Through its partnerships with Zenzele Development Organization and other efforts, SAWW left a lasting legacy of empowerment and social change.
In the fall of 2006, Adriaans attended Tutu’s 75th birthday in South Africa.
For his 90th birthday three years ago, she played a key role in establishing a bursary for divinity students at the University of Toronto, ensuring that his legacy of faith, justice and equality will continue to inspire and support future generations in perpetuity.
Celebrating Black Canadian women and the advancements they have made, said Co-Master of Ceremony Itah Sadu, is a watershed moment.
“When you get 100 accomplished Black women in a room and they feel the moment is about them, for them and probably by them, we feel electrified in their moment,” the entrepreneur and community builder said. “It is a moment where they don’t just see themselves as individuals. They see themselves as part of the sisterhood. They belong to a society of greatness. They look like every shade under the rainbow and at the same time they are Black women.”
