George Elliott Clarke on The Life of Howard D. McCurdy: Part One

Black Activist, Black Scientist, Black Icon: The Autobiography of Dr. Howard D. McCurdy by Howard Douglas McCurdy with George Elliott Clarke
Nimbus Publishing
312 Pages

I recently spoke with poet George Elliott Clarke about the autobiography of the late Black Canadian leader Howard Douglas McCurdy. Born in London, Ontario, in 1932, McCurdy was a prominent microbiologist, activist, orator and politician. He sat on the Windsor City Council, then served as the NDP Member of Parliament for the riding of Windsor-St. Clair. At the age of 27, Clarke moved to Ottawa to head up McCurdy’s media relations. He came to see the older man as a father figure. In this, the first of two interviews, Clarke discusses the importance of McCurdy’s history in Southwestern, Ontario. Along the way, the former poet laureate of Canada shares the people and experiences that helped form his own political and artistic thought – including activist Rocky Jones, filmmaker Sylvia Hamilton, poet Dionne Brand and of course, the great Howard McCurdy himself.

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DBN: Why should Howard D. McCurdy be important to Canadians and why should this book be important?

GEC: The reason Howard McCurdy’s life is important to all Canadians, and the importance of his autobiography is this: “How does a descendant of Underground Railroad fugitive slaves in Southwestern, Ontario - Essex County - in the mid-19th century end up producing Canada’s first Black tenured professor- and a scientist on top of that: a microbiologist who authored 50 different scientific articles. Along with his background as a scientist, Howard always knew he was Black. He started off in his life being called “coloured” and “Negro.” But he very quickly made the shift to Black in the 1960s and then ultimately to African-Canadian in the 1990s and early 2000s. But as a Black child, as a Black youth, as a Black young man and university student and ultimately as a mature adult, he always knew who he was where he was, and how other people were reacting to him. Some, of course, with racism and prejudice and segregationist attitudes.

Howard McCurdy in 2012 (photo by Nick Brancaccio).

He was born in 1932. He was already in his early twenties when Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat to a white bus passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. That incident helps to spring forth the Civil Rights Movement in the United States which then sloshes over to Canada, especially Ontario.

DBN: I want to pause you for a second. The speed with which Black people advanced out of slavery was astonishing. I mean we can talk about Howard, who was a very gifted individual. But many Black people walked out of slavery and straight into community organizations, politics, teaching or ministry, already proud and empowered. I find that extraordinary! To what do you attribute that drive?

GEC: It’s basically a heritage of survival by struggle - the indomitable will to push past all obstacles and to realize that no matter what the larger society is saying about us, we have the power to overcome. We have the power to transcend and to set the example for others following after us, just as our ancestors set terrific examples for ourselves.

With the history of slavery is the history of constant rebellion. The slave masters had to live in fear. The house slaves may have been smiling at these guys, serving them with humility and docility. But they had to know there was a very good chance that some “very loyal” slaves may also be interested in cutting their necks when they were asleep.

DBN: Of course, when you are guilty or behaving badly you feel afraid all the time. So, the slave owners were afraid all the time because they knew they were doing wrong.

GEC: That’s why they had to be so repressive despite the myth of the happy-go-lucky slave.

DBN: Agreed!

GEC: Howard McCurdy knew he came from people who not only passed through the Underground Railroad, but Nasa McCurdy, his great-grandfather, was actually a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Not only that, once Nasa arrived in Essex County, Ontario, this guy was going everywhere building churches.

DBN: Your relationship with McCurdy was also of deep significance to you. Can you tell me about that?

GEC: Oh, wow! I’m glad to have that question. But first I want to talk about the stresses and strains of Black families. I dearly loved my parents. They both passed away in the 2000’s. My father had a lot of demons. And he took that frustration out on us, his three sons, and on my Mom. That was a very unhappy part of my childhood. But I still esteemed him. I saw him as a paragon of virtue and as a person of great rectitude. When he walked with us - his three boys - he would walk at his normal pace and he would tell us to run to keep up. That’s the kind of guy he was. And he was very strict. Always you had to enunciate your words: You had to speak the Queen’s English. None of this jive talk; none of this slang. That was all forbidden from our home. For music, that man, Bill Clarke: Classical music! He was a working-class guy, working for the railroad. Not as a porter. He had very humble jobs carrying people’s suitcases back and forth to the train and changing the linen in the overnight train to Montreal. That was his job and it was his job for a long time.

GEC: I’m taking a long time to say this….

DBN: Take your time.

GEC: He never took my two brothers and I to see him at his workplace. You know why? He never wanted us to see him having to bow down to any badly behaved white person for the sake of getting a tip. That’s how proud he was. He was always a good dresser, a snappy dresser. Always well-spoken.

DBN: I do remember him from your biographical novel The Motorcyclist. He remains very vivid to me.

GEC: I’m the oldest of three boys - born in 1960, ’61 and 62. And my father was a very dominant and dominating presence in my life. Until the marriage began to break up. And it broke up because both my parents had affairs and they would not end their affairs. They would try to, but they were unable to.  So, I’m entering my adolescence – a point in life when I could really have used a strong father figure present in my home, but that just wasn’t the case. Instead, my Mom’s boyfriend who was only 10 years older than me was the supposed father figure. But he wasn’t really. He was like a cool, big brother.  So I got through my teen years. I did well in school, but I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Except, I knew I should do well in school, and I kept doing well in school. But I didn’t have any goals apart from that. High school was coming to an end - and then what do you do? I was really lucky because Rocky Jones - the great Black radical of the 1960s - entered my life.

DBN: How did Rocky Jones enter your life?

George Elliott Clarke in front of Halifax Harbour in 1980 (photo courtesy of George Elliott Clarke).

GEC: Well, my brother Bryant was his daughter Tracy’s boyfriend. I would sometimes go to the Jones home in Halifax and just hang out there. That house was like a commune. It was like a university classroom. Harry Belafonte dropped by their place - everybody sitting on the floor talking about socialism and eatin’ curry. Rocky and Joan: They were a Black power couple - pun intended. They knew from Tracy and from Bryant that I was a good kid at school. So Rocky pursued me, “Look, you’ve got to come to Dalhousie. You’ve got to get into the program I’m running called Transition Year Program.” But my marks were too good.

In fact, I told Joan I wasn’t going to university. And the real reason was I was afraid I wouldn’t be smart enough. And I didn’t have the money. And my parents were not in a position to help. My father said, “From here on in you’re 18, you’re on your own. I don’t have any much more to do with you.” My Mom definitely wanted me to go to university, but there was no way, funding-wise. So Joan Jones gave me a job; put money in my pocket.

DBN: What was the job? What did you do?

GEC: She made me become a tutor and counsellor in the local North End schools in Halifax. She had a government-funded program called Community Employment Strategies (CES) which was meant to assist Black adults facing unemployment issues, or family issues in terms of divorce and so on, trying to get them the resources to rebuild their lives - even go back to high school. Joan used that program to hire me to work with North End Black and white kids - underprivileged kids. It was my job to help them do better in school; to improve their reading levels and math skills.

DBN: Were these high school students?

GEC: They were basically elementary to junior high: Grade 3- Grade 7.

GEC: When I told Joan I wasn’t going to go to university, she put her finger in my face. She said, “You are going to go to university!” I will never forget that. “You are going to go!” Then I’m thinking: Where am I going to go? I didn’t want to go to Dalhousie because I didn’t want to be around the same people I had gone through high school with. So, Rocky said, “You are going to go study at the University of Waterloo.” I had no idea where it was. I didn’t even know a place called Waterloo existed in Canada. I still hadn’t bothered to look up where it was on the map when I got on the train to go there. But Rocky said, “You’re going to go to University of Waterloo.” Why? Why am I going over there?  “Because you are going to work with the foremost expert in Black Canadian history: James Walker, Jim Walker.”

DBN: You’re kidding me! Is this in your memoir?

Where Beauty Survived: A Memoir of Race, Family Secrets, and Africadia by George Elliott Clarke
Knopf Canada
326 pages

GEC: Yes, it is. Where Beauty Survived. But in the meantime, I basically spent ages 17-19 hanging around Rocky and Joan. Also, Sylvia Hamilton, the filmmaker.

DBN: Is she not your cousin? I guess everyone is kind of your cousin.

GEC: Yes, everybody is. In Nova Scotia, somewhere along the line.

DBN: But she really is your cousin.

GEC: She really is. On my mother’s side. I ran into Sylvia again in my life when I was 18. She was the first Black woman intellectual that I ever knew. Apart from Joan. I entered the realm of Joan and Sylvia around the same time. Sylvia was really interesting because she was more like a hippy young woman.

DBN: Was her mom, Marie the teacher, a bit of a hippy?

GEC: No. NO. Her mom was a very serious, soft-spoken, but iron-willed lady. Oh, my golly! She carried herself well! Sylvia went to Acadia University. She was one of the first Black graduates in Nova Scotia in the 1960s. She became a reporter, a journalist. She was a teacher.

DBN: I’m a fan. She intrigues me.

GEC: I’m heading back towards Howard again – I’m taking a long time to get there - but just to give you the architecture of the narrative. So, my parents break up and I feel adrift.  Rocky and Joan make it possible for me to go to university. Sylvia was assisting me as I was trying to further my idea of being a poet. She also modelled the intellectual life for me. I used stay overnight at her and her husband Bev Greenlaw’s home. Even in the bathroom, they had The Black Scholar as reading material. This was how much they modelled this idea that you could be a Black intellectual. Whew! Wow! I’m 18, 19: I’ve never encountered anything like this before. They know all about the Black Panthers; They know all about Malcolm. I was getting the same education from Rocky and Joan. My high school education was worthless! Worthless! The real education was coming from those folks.

GEC: Hanging out with Rocky, I ended up going to Toronto with him in 1978 and 1979. The first day, in 1978, I met Dionne Brand. She was 25. She was in Toronto. Big Afro.

DBN: How did you meet Dionne?

Rocky Jones graduating from Dalhousie, circa 1970, with Joan beside him (photo courtesy of the Jones Family).

GEC: Rocky took me to Toronto because he knew that the Black Youth Community Action Project with Dudley Laws was having a conference, and he wanted a Nova Scotia presence to be there too. So, he called me up and said, “Jump on the plane. We’re going to Toronto.”  There was entertainment that night. Dionne was one of the entertainers. I meet this beautiful, dynamic Black woman. A poet! And I’m trying to be a poet! And she’s got this huge afro. She’s got the drummers drumming: They’re doin’ The Last Poets kind of thing. Well, look that was a transformative performance for me. And I go to Third World Bookstore, meet Gwen and Lenny – and I’m buyin’ all the one-dollar poetry books they got; all the two-dollar Black Power books they got. I’m hanging out with them; hearing all the stories. Then I go back to Halifax and try to put together a Black youth organization.

GEC: The second trip to Toronto in 1979 is when I met Howard. Because the National Black Coalition of Canada was trying to revive itself. They were kind of moribund - a lot of splits in the organization which Howard put together in 1969. But 10 years later it was dying.  They had this huge conference in Toronto. Every Black elected person in Canada was there. And some un-elected Black leaders were there too. Rocky was not elected but he was there. Howard was there - not yet elected to Windsor City Council but about to be. Leonard Braithwaite was there. Rosemary Brown, Emory Barnes was there - also from the BC legislature. Lincoln Alexander was there - about to become a minister in Joe Clark’s government. A guy named Jean Alfred, a Haitian, was a member of the first Parti-Quebecois government.  He caused the whole thing to explode. When he got up to speak, he said, “I’m not here to talk about Black liberation: I’m here to talk about the liberation of Quebec!” I’ll never forget that! Things were in such ferment. Howard had to have a fistfight. He doesn’t talk about it. But Rocky witnessed it. And Rocky put it in his memoir. So, I put it in Howard’s autobiography.

Howard McCurdy

GEC: Howard and I had a quick conversation which I’ll never forget. I said something to him that he thought was so funny. Now, this guy is wearing pinstripes. He doesn’t look anything like a radical. Yet he was actually taking very progressive positions. I was really struck by that: How does a guy in pinstripes do all this progressive, radical stuff too? I said something to him, and we had this one-on-one moment. And the man doubled over. He doubled over laughing so much that his head almost touched the floor. Now, I’m exaggerating. But I’ll never forget that he was just so down to earth. Course, he had the cigarette goin’.

Fast forward 8 years I am publishing a newspaper, The Rap, in Halifax. I’m publishing it. I’m the editor. And Howard’s communications person resigned her position. And so, Howard said to her, “You call up every newspaper in the country to find somebody to replace you.” She called me! And I’m sittin’ there in my little office, making $12,000 a year. I’m a student, so it’s okay. I don’t really need much money. And she calls me and says, “Howard McCurdy told me to call you because he’s looking for a communications person.” And she said, “Well, maybe you’re not interested because you’ve got your own little newspaper.” And I said, “No, no, no! I’m interested! I’m interested!” Then Howard called to interview me over the phone. This is October 1987. He said to me, “I can only offer you $24,000 a year.” I’m doing the math fast. I said, “Okay. I think I can put up with that.” I was thinking, holy smokes! I just doubled my income!

DBN: Did he remember you?

GEC: I don’t think he remembered me. But I pointed out that I remembered him. Of course, we knew Rocky Jones in common. As well as other people, like Stanley Grizzle and Roy States in Montreal. And he said, “Okay. You’ve got the job.” I jumped on the train and went up to Ottawa. And so, to answer that question as to why Howard was so important to me: Even though I was 27 years old, Howard became a second father to me. I can’t say it any more than that. So, when he was dying in 2017 and he asked me to edit his autobiography, I wasn’t going to say no.

Part One of this interview took place by Zoom on May 22, 2024. It has been edited for space and clarity. In Part Two George Elliott Clarke delves into Howard McCurdy’s career as an academic, scientist, politician and controversial activist.