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Lennox Victor Farrell is a Canadian community activist and retired teacher from Toronto, Ontario.
Canadians are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Canadian.
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
Farrell was born in Laventille, Trinidad and Tobago, and raised in Morvant in a family of 15 brothers and sisters, 6 of whom were adopted by his parents, Philippa and Medford Farrell. He emigrated to Canada in 1969, [1] and attended the University of Toronto, from which he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1974 and Bachelor of Education in 1976, qualifying to teach both history and mathematics. [2] He earned his Master of Education in 1980. [3]
Laventille is a ward of Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is a twin island country that is the southernmost nation of the West Indies in the Caribbean. It is situated 130 kilometres south of Grenada off the northern edge of the South American mainland, 11 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Venezuela. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the northeast, Grenada to the northwest, Guyana to the southeast, and Venezuela to the south and west.
Morvant is a community in Trinidad and Tobago located east of Port of Spain and west of Barataria.
Farrell was active in the movement against Apartheid in South Africa, and in 1985 Farrell was involved in protesting the appearance of apartheid South Africa's ambassador to Canada, Glenn Babb, at a debate at the University of Toronto’s Hart House. Farrell was accused of hurling the debating society's ceremonial mace at Babb during the raucous protest. Charges against Farrell were eventually dropped. [3]
Glenn Robin Ware Babb is a former politician and diplomat for the former apartheid government in South Africa. More recently he has been a businessman and entrepreneur. From 1985 to 1987 he had a high-profile posting in Canada where he was his government's ambassador to Ottawa and made frequent public statements against the anti-apartheid movement and in defence of his government and in opposition to the movement for economic sanctions on and disinvestment from South Africa that the Canadian government was leading internationally.
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution. As a collegiate university, it comprises eleven colleges, which differ in character and history, each with substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs. It has two satellite campuses in Scarborough and Mississauga.
Hart House is a student activity centre at the University of Toronto. Established in 1919, it is one of the earliest North American student centres. Hart House was initiated and financed by Vincent Massey, an alumnus and benefactor of the university, and was named in honour of his grandfather, Hart Massey. The Collegiate Gothic-revival complex was the work of architect Henry Sproatt, who worked alongside decorator Alexander Scott Carter, and engineer Ernest Rolph, and subsequently designed the campanile at its southwestern corner, Soldiers' Tower.
Farrell ran as a New Democratic Party of Ontario candidate in the riding of Oriole in the 1990 provincial election, receiving 33% of the vote to come in second place behind Elinor Caplan. Four years later, he ran for Mayor of North York against incumbent Mel Lastman in 1994, over a dispute over the musical Show Boat being staged in North York, finishing third.
Oriole was a provincial electoral district in North York, Ontario, Canada. It was created from York Mills riding in 1975 and merged into Willowdale and Don Valley East ridings after 1999.
Elinor Caplan, is a businesswoman and former politician in Ontario, Canada. She served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1985 to 1997, and was a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada from 1997 to 2004. A Liberal, she served as a cabinet minister in the provincial government of David Peterson and the federal government of Jean Chrétien.
North York is an administrative division in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of Old Toronto, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2011 Census, it had a population of 655,913. It was first created as a township in 1922 out of the northern part of the former city of York, a municipality that was located along the western border of Old Toronto. Following its inclusion in Metropolitan Toronto in 1954, it was one of the fastest growing parts of the region due to its proximity to Old Toronto. It was declared a borough in 1967, and later became a city in 1979, attracting high-density residences, rapid transit, and a number of corporate headquarters in North York City Centre, its central business district. In 1998, North York was amalgamated with the rest of Metropolitan Toronto to form the new city of Toronto, and has since been a secondary economic hub of the city outside Downtown Toronto.
In 1988, Farrell was a founding member of the Black Action Defence Committee.
The Black Action Defence Committee (BADC) is a Canadian activist group founded by Dudley Laws, Charles Roach, Sherona Hall and Lennox Farrell, with Laws as the group's chair. It was founded in 1988 in response to the killing of Lester Donaldson, which was the latest in a series of police shootings of Black men in Toronto. Among its several accomplishments, the BADC was primarily responsible for the creation of Ontario's Special Investigations Unit. The BADC organized demonstrations and called for an end to "police investigating police", which had become the norm when police shootings previously occurred. Still in effect, the SIU investigates incidents involving police shootings.
In the 1990s and again in 2005, Farrell was head of the Caribbean Cultural Committee, which put on the Caribana parade. [1] [4]
The Toronto Caribbean Carnival, formerly and still commonly called Caribana, is a festival of Caribbean culture and traditions held each summer in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is a Caribbean Carnival event, that has been billed as North America's largest street festival, frequented by over 1.3 million visitors each year for the festival's final parade and an overall attendance of 2 million. The entire event, which is one of the first Caribbean Carnivals along with those in New York City, Notting Hill and Boston to be held outside of the Caribbean region, brings in over one million people to Toronto and over $400 million into Ontario's economy, annually.
Also a writer and playwright, Farrell is the author of Poetry Not Amnesia. the musical drama Soul Brother Job, the play Warahoun, as well as essays on race, education, culture and politics. [1]
In retirement, Farrell writes for Screen, and for Share. [4]
