Jumping for joy
It was all fun and games at this year’s LINK Picnic Festival.
KITCHENER — Past the trays of oxtail stew, beyond the kids’ sack races and far away from the pounding rhythms of the drum circle, things are starting to get serious.
A small crowd is gathered around portable card tables, slapping down little plastic pieces in a flurry of movement and chatter, punctured by occasional triumphant shouts.
They’re playing dominoes — the game of small numbered tiles that is the beloved pastime of the Caribbean. And it wouldn’t be a LINK Picnic Festival without it.
“This is our pastime,” declares Velma Francis, who learned the game as a little girl in Jamaica. “When Caribbean people get together, everyone plays dominoes. There would be a set in every house.”
The clack-clack-clack of the game, off in a quiet corner of the festival in Victoria park, is part of the soundtrack of Caribbean culture. For a lot of people, it’s also a reminder of home.
“This is constant,” explained Emily Ellis-Yamoah, who helped organize the dominoes tournament at the annual celebration of African and Caribbean culture.
“If you drive around Jamaica, you will see people playing this on the side of the road. It’s everywhere. Every district has a dominoes champion, and if you are the champion, you are a big man.”
In previous years, players from Guelph and Brampton came to the festival just to take on the reigning champs from the local Caribbean association, she explained, battling for bragging rights and a trophy.
While you’ll often find men sitting around domino tables in the streets of the Caribbean, the game is played with passion and intensity by both sexes and players of all ages, from Cuba to Trinidad. It’s more universal across the Caribbean islands than soccer, baseball and cricket, they say. There are variations on how to play, but the object is always to get rid of all tiles in your hand and block your opponent.
“Every kid learns how to play, because you grow up watching it. In Canada, I play Scrabble, but when I’m home, it’s always dominoes,” said Francis.
Dominoes may have originated in China, but the game was long ago imported to the islands.
The region now dominates the game at its most competitive level, and it’s where the World Council of Domino Federations is headquartered.
Part of the appeal is in its simplicity, said Andre Hollingsworth, wearing a yellow and green Jamaica running shirt.
“We play this in the day and the night,” said Andre Hollingsworth. “It’s fun, there’s a lot of strategy involved and you can take it anywhere.”
It’s hard to understand the fanatical attachment to the game until you see it in action. Dominoes, of course, is just a game. But in the Caribbean, it’s much more than that.
“Here, kids play it for fun. But in Jamaica, it’s a serious thing,” Ellis-Yamoah said. “They have perfected it.”