Heritage Singers Canada Collection

Contents: About the Collection | About the Heritage Singers | About this Site

About the Collection

The Heritage Singers Canada fonds housed in the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections consists of 0.22 metres of textual material, 35 videocassettes: VHS, 4 CDs, 5 DVDs, 26 audio cassettes, 4 DAT tapes, 193 photographs: 46 x 30 cm and smaller, and 26 photographic negatives.

The audiovisual material preserves the language - both Jamaican English and Jamaican Patois/Patwa as interpreted in plays and songs by Jamaican Canadians, thus bearing the linguistic and other cultural changes and inflections that come with migration. Documentary records include brochures, programs, organizational papers, a portfolio, newspaper clippings from several Black newspapers in Toronto, and award certificates from various levels of government.

This site offers a selection of some of the resources from the fonds. Please consult the finding aid Heritage Singers Canada Fonds, to help access the rest of the collection.

About the Heritage Singers

The Heritage Singers Canada was founded by Grace Carter-Henry Lyons in 1977. Meeting in living rooms, they gathered as friends to overcome the loneliness after immigrating to Canada from Jamaica. The 30-member group is a dynamic blend of the Caribbean, African and Canadian mosaic, drawing its members from Toronto, Trinidad and Tobago, Pakistan, Guyana, the Congo, and Jamaica. Their inaugural performance at the Harbourfront Centre in 1977 included songs from the sacred to the secular, work songs, lullabies, and ballads. Over the years as they professionalized, they maintained the friendships and connectedness that sustain nearly 50 years of volunteering their time to preserve Caribbean heritage. The group is as much family as it is oriented towards stage performance.

The group's mission is to “promote the development of Caribbean folk music and theatre to the greater Canadian community, to donate part of the proceeds from fundraising events to charitable organizations, to use folk-singing and dance as tools to enhance ethnic, historic, and social traditions relevant to the Caribbean, African, and other communities, and to bridge cultural gaps by helping other ethnic groups develop an awareness of and respect for cultures other than their own.”

The significance of these fonds lies beyond the materials now preserved at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University Libraries, where it sits alongside the Jean Augustine fonds and the Caribana collection in the Kenneth Shah fonds. Caribbean culture is grounded in oral tradition. It is within these embodied, living archives—living “istriis” to use the Jamaican language— of songs, stories, movement, and gatherings that our history is preserved.

About this Site

This project was graciously funded by the York University Research Support Fund. We also thank the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collection for their In-kind ($300) support of this project by scanning selected materials from the Heritage Singers Canada fonds.

• Original site created by: Dina Blanco Pena, Debbie Ebanks, and Norda Bell
• Project Heads: Debbie Ebanks and Norda Bell
• Research Assistant: Dina Blanco Pena

Special Thanks:

• Grace Lyons, Founder, Heritage Singers
• Anna St. Onge, Interim University Archivist & Julia Holland, Archives Assistant, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections , York University;
• Kris Joseph, Digital Scholarship Librarian, York University Libraries
• Staff at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University Libraries