Hands that Feed Us: Linton Blackwood
A Casio keyboard sits on a bulky coffee table hogging precious space in Linton Blackwood’s simple dwelling.
It’s there waiting for him when he returns from Jamaica each spring to work in Niagara.
And it’s there waiting for Blackwood at the end of each workday at the Niagara-on-the-Lake fruit farm that employs him from May to September.
If he feels up to it after putting in 12 hours on the job, Blackwood will play some gospel music. But there’s dinner to eat first. And maybe an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger to watch with his three roommates before going to bed and doing it all over again in the morning.
“Nobody teach me,” Blackwood said about the keyboard in his lilting Jamaican accent. “It’s a gift,” he added, tapping his index finger to his temple.
Blackwood doesn’t use sheet music when he plays. He follows the notes in his head, playing by ear and by memory.
When he was 16, he fashioned some wood and string into a homemade banjo and taught himself to play. Blackwood, now 45, and his two brothers mastered the makeshift instrument. He graduated to the bass and the guitar, and somewhere along the way, the keyboard.
There are videos of him jamming with friends and visitors back home. His fingers find their way on the neck of an acoustic guitar like a sojourner finds his way home.
As he talked, he swiped his phone to find a photo of him in a white suit with an ethereal cast. His two young nephews stand next to him, wearing bright, satiny shirts kept in check by black suit vests.
They’re all wearing shades and smiling, their happiness brought about by being together and performing music at a church convention back home. Blackwood talked about the art of playing music as he took in the image.
“Most times, you just listen to the person singing and you play with them,” he explained about his technique.
His talents aren’t just sought out at home. Here in Niagara, Blackwood has been on stage at the annual workers welcome concert organized by local residents and churches every spring.
The concert, attended by hundreds of workers and their farmer employers, ushers in another growing season that couldn’t happen without him and the 2,800-plus seasonal agricultural workers who come to Niagara every year from Mexico and the Caribbean.
On Aug. 13, Blackwood will perform at the Peach Pickers’ Picnic at the Market at the Village in Niagaraon-the-Lake.
He’s flattered to be part of the festivities. The event will break up the summer and fill the void of not being able to perform with his family in Mandeville, Jamaica.
“It’s a nice place,” Blackwood said about his hometown. “And sometimes the work is not there back home so you come here to work and go back home.”
Blackwood has been coming to Niagara since 2015. The paycheque he earns supports his wife Nicola and their five children ranging in age from six to 21.
It’s not uncommon for them to talk every day on the phone. Sometimes Blackwood calls. Sometimes Nicola can’t wait so she’ll call first. “She cries, she misses me,” he said.
Employment is sporadic in Mandeville. Blackwood relied on what he could find in farming and construction for nine years before deciding to return to Canada to make a living each summer.
“We find work,” he said. “We don’t want to sit. We have to do something. We don’t want to sit down.”
Blackwood participated in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program once before. He worked on a tobacco farm near Simcoe for three years and was able to handle every gruelling demand of leaf production until it got to emptying the kilns where crops were dried. The cloying smell of cured tobacco made Blackwood’s stomach turn.
He’ll take the scent of berries and peaches in Niagara instead, putting in seven days a week until he goes home in September.
When he returns, he’ll eat bananas he said are so sweet and so pungent, they can’t be stored in the house.
The pasty versions he finds in stores here make Blackwood miss home that much more. Ditto for the taro root he calls coco, and batch cooks on Sundays to make soup and dumplings to sustain him through his work week.
And of course he’ll play music when he goes back to Jamaica, perhaps with a new instrument he’ll purchase with some of his earnings this summer.
“I’d really like to find an electric guitar,” Blackwood said. — Tiffany Mayer is the author of Niagara Food: A Flavourful History of the Peninsula’s Bounty (The History Press). She also blogs about food and farming at eatingniagara.com.