aka Jack Toronto *
* I’ve wanted to be “aka Jack Toronto” ever since I lived in Ghana from 1966 to 1968. “Jack Toronto” was a name of folk lore then that seemed to pop up everywhere . Tamale had a “Jack Toronto Tailor Shop” Born in Toronto, it’s time for me to claim my alias. Readers aware of the origin of “Jack Toronto” in Ghana in the mid ‘60s are invited to email me at jacktoronto@telus.net .
The full acceptance of children into family and community life in Ghana was the focus of my article in July’s The Afro News. This acceptance was striking because inclusion of children in this way was comparatively rare in Canada in the 1960s and because the society which welcomed children also welcomed me as a stranger. Stresses on Canadian families have only increased in the past 41 years and I search for ways in which the Ghanaian model I knew can help Canada now.
It’s very complex. The examples of child involvement in family and social life cited in last month’s article were all taken from a rural agricultural setting unaffected by modern pressures. This way of life did exist in Ghana when I was there but had already begun to change. World-wide the forces of industrialization and technology splinter family functions and shift many of them outside the home. Many children are educated in a formal school system rather than at home. Fathers and mothers must travel away from home to work. New media technology can bombard children with images of lifestyles and morality that are very different than their family values. All I can say is that in Ghana when I was there the ancient family patterns seemed to hold sway even as the society adapted to western influences. The children I met in Accra and Kumasi had the same confidence and curiosity about life as those I met in northern villages. Ghanaian parents must have been doing something right as their society changed. They must have been surrounding their children with love and guidance.
Many Canadian parents do this as well but increasing numbers of families have lost the centre of love and inclusion, battered by modern influences that fracture families. Upon my return from Ghana I took teacher training at The University of British Columbia and then taught for 34 years in BC schools working with children from Kindergarten to Grade 12. I know there are well-off professional parents who expect the schools to raise their children because they are just too busy. I know that there are families who lack the financial, emotional, intellectual or spiritual resources to cope with life and whose children drift without roots. I know that there are children who experience limits, expectations, guidance, support and love only when they are at school. I know that there are teens and preteens whose concepts of adult life come from television shows, pop music, the Internet and their peers but not their parents.
Faced with the challenges of raising children many concerned parents seek out external, mechanical solutions rather than the mutual love and affection that is the well-spring of emotionally strong children and a rewarding family life. With great seriousness parents search diligently for supplementary work books, school tutors, summer camps, or music lessons when the best thing they could do would be to love and enjoy their children, to adapt the traditional Ghanaian model to Canada Now.
At least that’s how it seems to Jack Toronto. What about the challenges to family facing immigrants from Africa? How can family values be guarded when children live in a world that can be very different from that in which their parents grew up? What are we all to do when dealers in illicit drugs peddle their wares through vast marketing networks that generate enormous profits? Answers to these questions are not important just to Canadians with African roots, they are important to us all.
