A FRIEND IN A NEW LAND
Capital Builders: ‘Pops’ Brown
To mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, we’d like to introduce you to some of the people who have shaped and built the National Capital. Today: Herbert ‘Pops’ Brown.
New immigrants to Ottawa in the decades from the 1950s to 1970s were often given this piece of advice: “Go and see the Browns.”
Sure enough, people of Caribbean or African origin who came to the capital to build new lives found comfort and guidance from Herbert Brown — more commonly known as “Pops” — and his wife, Estelle.
The Brown name is familiar to most Ottawans today: Pops Brown was the founder, in 1957, of Brown’s Cleaners and Tailors. Today, it has 26 locations across the city, though it is no longer owned by the Brown family.
But the name behind the stores cements the legacy of one of the first black business owners in Ottawa.
Herbert “Pops” Brown first came to Canada in 1937. His family joined him in Ottawa in 1953 — after Mr. Brown completed his time in the army.
“There were always people coming and arriving in town. They would hear of my grandparents,” says Marvin Bedward, one of the Browns’ grandchildren.
It wasn’t uncommon for Caribbean immigrants to gather at his grandparents’ home, or at a Brown’s Cleaners location on Bank Street, as they sought friends and ways to navigate their new lives in Ottawa. But the wider community also knew of his grandfather: he made it a point to talk to everyone, Marvin adds with a chuckle.
“He was very gregarious. Anyone he would meet, he would try and get their back-story. He would have a conversation.”
If the customer at the cleaner’s was of African or Caribbean origin, the conversation would be long, Marvin Bedward recalls. He himself worked at the first Brown’s Cleaners on Murray Street until he was 16.
“Chances are my grandfather, who had this incredible memory, would find the relationship between them,” says Marvin. “He would have known their brother or their uncle, or grandfather” back in Jamaica.
Marvin, now 64, grew up in Ottawa after arriving from Jamaica at age 2. He’s had a career in government, as an entrepreneur and now as a photography and music studio and production company in his home in Orléans. He can count on one hand the number of black families in the city when he arrived in the 1950s. “I think there were four of them,” he says.
The extended family, including his grandparents, all lived in one large home in Hull during the 1950s.
While Pops was the cleaning side of the business, Estelle was the tailoring side, as she was a gifted seamstress. She had the expertise when it came to managing a successful business, Marvin adds. “There were very few African Canadians with businesses in town (at the time). They were probably the most visible,” he says.
But more black business owners began to set up shop following the Browns’ example. The family was an example of what could be achieved in Canada, that success from the ground up for African-Canadians was attainable.
“We came to Canada with no money, really,” Marvin Bedward says. “The ability for him to start a business, and then move it from basically a mom-and-pop shop to hiring staff, is inspiring.”
It was rare to see a black man in the Canadian Army during the Second World War, perhaps one face among 4,000 or 5,000. But it didn’t bother Brown, who had grown up around white people while with the British Army in Jamaica — though the barracks were segregated.
He was a sergeant, and fighting for the Canadian Army won him automatic citizenship at a time when West Indians were not being frequently accepted as immigrants.
In 1975, the Citizen published a profile of Brown. On moving to Ottawa, he told the newspaper, “I knew I had to make up my mind to get the best out of life and if the worst comes, to accept it. So Ottawa didn’t worry me at all.”
On official army papers he wrote that he wanted to start a dry cleaners in Canada after the war, says Albert Bedward, another grandson (and Marvin’s younger brother). Albert, who settled in Toronto, also worked at Brown’s Cleaners as a teenager in the 1970s.
The Browns first worked as dry cleaners out of the Beacon Arms Hotel but eventually set off to expand the business, says Albert. “I worked Saturdays and was paid $2 a day,” he says, grinning. “I worked at the front counter. They complained, ‘We buy you breakfast and lunch, that should be enough.’ ”
He recalls members of the Caribbean community dropping in and feeling a sense of belonging.
“People of different cultures in Canada — there’s usually a bit of resistance, because they are different from what you’re accustomed to,” he says. “Ottawa, then and now, is totally different.”
Albert, 60, is a writer who also works for the Toronto school board, teaching software to teachers. He has put together a book for the extended family, filled with photos of his grandparents, marking the legacy in a concrete way.
One photo featured in the book is of his grandparents at a party at Parliament’s East Block, honouring their community achievements. In it, Pops Brown wears sunglasses; diabetes resulted in blindness later in life.
As well, Estelle had become ill in the late 1970s, and Brown left the business to care for her. Other family members took over Brown’s Cleaners. Eventually the successful business was sold.
The nickname “Pops” came about for good reason. In the late 1950s, the Canadian government launched a domestic scheme to bring in Caribbean women for work as domestic helpers.
Brown served as a stand-in father at the weddings of at least seven of them — while Estelle Brown made their wedding dresses.
“For a while, their house was one of the only houses that the ladies of the islands would have as a place of sanctuary,” says Nessa Bedward Sherwood, the daughter of Pops and Estelle Brown. She came to Ottawa from Jamaica at age 20.
It was difficult work for her parents, Sherwood recalls. But hard work runs in the family. Sherwood, now 81, became a nurse while raising four children, and has spent her life in Canada volunteering for organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Elizabeth Fry Society.
Perseverance is also a family value: Sherwood recalls a time when she was only given night shifts at Ottawa’s Civic Hospital in the 1950s, due to her race. “I just learned to turn my head; I had a mission to work. My father had that experience in the war also,” she says.
Sherwood is a published author who also writes poetry, and notes that her father had a musical bent. During his life, Brown penned love songs to his wife and even a song about Ottawa. In retirement, he became an active choir member.
Ewart Walters, a prominent Ottawa journalist, author and former editor and publisher of Spectrum newspaper, recalls the impact Brown’s Cleaners had in creating a sphere in Ottawa that welcomed new immigrants. He first met Pops Brown as a journalism student at Carleton in the mid-1960s, after coming from Jamaica on scholarship.
“You could say he helped to stabilize the social condition of Ottawa and of young black women in Ottawa who were getting married,” says Walters.
“When you leave your community and travel to another country, the settling here can take a long time. So by helping them to feel comfortable, he was helping them settle into Ottawa,” says Walters.
“That is a success story if there ever was one.”
I knew I had to make up my mind to get the best out of life and if the worst comes, to accept it. So Ottawa didn’t worry me at all. SGT. HERBERT BROWN, in 1975 interview