Dudley Laws Honoured Through Scholarships and Community Awards

Jill Andrew, former Ontario MPP, put it simply at last Sunday’s Dudley Laws Scholarship Bursary event at the Jamaican Canadian Association Centre:

“I am here because it’s my way of sharing a few words to remind us of our greatness and our collective goal towards Black liberation, towards Black joy, towards our security, our safety, our health, and wellness, whether that’s socially, whether that’s culturally…”

The event also reaffirmed the ongoing work of the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC), which was founded in 1988 with Laws as the group’s first chair. It came into being after Lester Donaldson, a Black man diagnosed by a psychiatrist as a paranoid schizophrenic, was fatally shot by Toronto Police. The group protested police violence and opposed “police investigating police.” BADC’s activism led to the creation of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which still investigates police-involved shootings and serious incidents today.

BADC President Hewitt Logue underlined the significance of the event:

“We’re celebrating Dudley Laws, his birthday, and also raising funds for scholarships since he passed.” This sentiment was echoed by Director of Communications Kingsley Gilliam in his address.

Following a classic Caribbean lunch, the more than 200 attendees gave spirited support to Sunday’s varied agenda: the stage performances; the enlightening addresses by Jill Andrew, Kingsley Gilliam, and Thando Hyman, first principal of Toronto’s Africentric Alternative School; and, above all, the celebration of Julianna Samuels’s BADC Scholarship Award, Lincoln DePradine’s BADC Media Award for more than 40 years of covering the affairs of the Caribbean community, and Andrea Babington, the first woman of colour to serve as President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council.

In a chat with The Caribbean Camera, DePradine was humble and thankful:

“Nobody in media thinks of receiving awards while doing their jobs. One’s prime concern, as a journalist and reporter, is doing the job to the best of your ability and with accuracy and fairness. That said, if you do receive an award, you must be thankful that someone appreciates your work and thinks it’s deserving of recognition.”

Even as the early afternoon event stretched into early evening, the crowd never thinned, nor did its enthusiasm wane, until poet Bryan Hood and singer Diane Jones sent them off with a verse in their ears and a song in their hearts.

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