August 5, 1967: Toronto’s first Caribana parade
Ten coconut trees were flown in, planted to represent Caribbean islands at festival
Revelers packed Centre Island, 50,000 strong, for Toronto’s first-ever Caribana, starting August 5, 1967. Organizers were not fazed.
“In the Caribbean, 200,000 people dance through the streets . . . and we do it every year,” one told the Star on one of the festival’s quieter nights.
The Caribbean community in Toronto at the time only comprised about 12,000 people.
Caribana ’67 — held as part of Canada’s centennial — was the city’s first celebration of the Caribbean festival of Carnival.
Nonetheless, organizers boasted to the Star that it would “. . . pale the ’67 efforts of any other Metro ‘ethnic’ community.”
Ten coconut trees were flown in and planted on the Toronto Islands, one for each of the 10 major Caribbean islands represented at Caribana.
Brilliantly ornate costumes, parties and the unceasing beat of calypso bands reeled in Torontonians by the thousands. Cultural departments with the Caribbean’s “big islands” arranged for booths and four hundred revelers even took over a ferry, the Thomas Rennie, and cruised around the islands.
Amazingly, organizers managed to do all this with just $4,000 of outside funding.
The rest of Caribana’s bill, around $46,000, came out of the community’s pockets.
Despite summer thunderstorms, a power outage during a steel band show and overworked ferry crews, the “non-stop carnival” partied on.
“We made a few mistakes, wasted a little time and money,” organizing committee chairman Sam Cole admitted to the Star. “But it was worth it.”
And organizers did, in the end, break even. Just two days after the calypso music finally died down, the Star already predicted Caribana “may become an annual festivity.”