Caribbean Canadian woman

Dr Yvonne Bobb-Smith Phd, refers to herself as “a Caribbean woman.” Born in Belmont more than 70 years ago, this still very strong and active woman, temporarily migrated to Canada on two occasions. During her second migration in the 1980’s, Yvonne started a seven-year doctoral programme, at age 60, in adult education community development, counselling and psychology, at the Ontario Institute in Education, University of Toronto.

In the programme, she studied issues of race, class, gender and diversity, which served as a thrust to her theorising Caribbean life and identity. Two years after her graduation she published a text version of her thesis, I Know Who I Am — A Caribbean Woman’s Identity in Canada. This text provides the journeys of 46 Caribbean women who came to Canada from nine English-speaking countries, and explores how their stories of survival are connected to “home” in the Caribbean.

Dr Bobb-Smith, a past student of Bishop Anstey High School, first graduated in the seventies as a librarian in Toronto, and was responsible for establishing the Medical Library Service in Trinidad and Tobago. As president of the Library Association of Trinidad and Tobago she helped to activate education for library assistants. She chaired a committee which published an Intellectual Freedom Statement in the 1970’s, in response to a censorship policy by the then Government.

A career change took her into the field of corporate management at two State enterprises: The TT Bureau of Standards and the Iron and Steel Company of Trinidad and Tobago.

For five years prior to her return to TT in 2004, Dr Bobb-Smith taught Caribbean studies at both Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. She currently teaches part-time at COSTAATT.

“Teaching for me is highly exciting. I find it easy to deal with the generational differences as I am both student and teacher.

The reader has gathered by now that I Know Who I am — A Caribbean Woman’s Identity in Canada is not by any means a novel which can be read in quick time, but is a text for teaching mostly at university level. However, it is not all “stiff and starchy” as there are humorous moments, as is to be expected when 46 Caribbean women go on a “Remember When” journey of their lives dating back to childhood in very simple Caribbean homes, in a period when many mothers did not hold executive careers, yet were the backbone of the family.

Throughout Dr Bobb-Smith’s book, the 46 women’s strategies to survive in Canada always go back to “home” – the Caribbean home. While the Canadian feminists saw “home” as one of the significant sites of oppression, the Caribbean women living in Canada did not see “home” in a negative manner, because their experiences of home meant nurturing and connection with family which taught them how to overcome race, class and gender oppressions.

It would be very difficult to try in this one article to go into Yvonne’s in-depth discussion on the many and varied issues experienced by the 46 Caribbean-Canadian women, but one fact stands out that no matter how long they lived in Canada, the long separations from their families only made their homes, their havens.

“Their Caribbean methods helped them to survive,” says Dr Bobb- Smith. “The women interviewed tell their stories about how they learnt to survive by taking care of their economic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual lives. Survival is a key to life, it includes uses of one’s capabilities together with one’s social conscience. Thus, these Caribbean-Canadian women manifested their strengths for survival in developing their own feminist community movement to fight oppressions in their terms.”

Dr Bobb-Smith herself had been an activist and advocate in the local community in the 70’s where she facilitated self-development programmes in a diverse range of community organisations in Trinidad and Tobago. In Canada, she continued to use those skills in the black women’s movement, as well as in other organisations ranging from professional to community, during her 18 years in that country.