Conversation with Jonathan Griffith

Title

Conversation with Jonathan Griffith

Description

Jonathan Griffth is a twenty-year-old second-year Nursing student at the University of Ottawa. Jon is originally from Barbados. He came to Canada in 2013 with his parents and siblings. His mother was posted to Ottawa as a Diplomat. Jon was eight when he moved to Ottawa, so most of his life was spent in Canada. However, Jon made it a point to honour his country while living in Canada. He discussed that when he was in high school, and there were culture days or black history assemblies, he would ensure that his heritage was honoured, whether through food or general facts regarding Barbados. Although not mentioned within the podcast, Jon also told us that he wears a Barbados Flag Pin at his place of employment to honour his hometown. Near the end of the interview, Jonathan also takes a few minutes to reflect on his experience and offer any valuable advice.

Date

2025-03-25

Format

MP3, 15 min 7 s

Language

English

Interviewer

Noha Kandar: Ganaaboute Gagne: Rana Babiker

Interviewee

Jonathan Griffith

Transcription

Ganaaboute 0:01 Good afternoon or good whatever time of day you're joining us at. My name is Ganaaboute Gagne, and I'm a fourth year student at the University of Ottawa. Today, some colleagues and I are going to be doing an anthropology interview. Hello.
Noha 0:14 My name is Noha Kandar, and I'm a fifth year student at the University of Ottawa.
Rana 0:18 I'm Rana and I'm also a fourth year student at the University of Ottawa. Today we're going to be interviewing Jonathan who is going to be introducing himself Jonathan 0:28
Hi, my name is Jonathan Griffith. I'm a second year student at the University of Ottawa, and I'm in the nursing program.
Rana 0:34 And what is your country of origin?
Jonathan 0:38 I'm from Barbados.
Noha 0:42 So what brought you to Ottawa?
Jonathan 0:45 I came to Ottawa when I was eight years old with my family, so my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister, and we came because my mother had been posted to Ottawa as a diplomat for Barbados.
Rana 0:57 And do you have any other family here? And do you see them frequently?
Jonathan G 1:01 No, I don't have any other family in Ottawa or Canada, and I see my family in Barbados every few years. Rana 1:09 So then, do you like live in a Caribbean community or neighborhood?
Jonathan 1:15 I wouldn't say so, no,
Ganaaboute 1:19 Do you or your family speak any Caribbean dialects or languages that you'd like to share with us today?
Jonathan 1:26 Yeah, so my father and my mother both speak Bajan dialect fluently. That's the dialect we have in Barbados. It's just a it's a mix of English and whatever the African languages that the slaves spoke, I guess, mixed with the British English. And me and my brother and sister, we all speak it. We just choose not to, because it doesn't sound very nice with a Canadian accent.
Ganaaboute 1:51 I mean, that sounds really interesting. And I want to ask, are there any like community spaces where you do find yourself speaking it while living here in Ottawa?
Jonathan 2:00 Yeah, when I go to, like the Barbadian functions and stuff, I'll speak more of it, but, you know, very little bit, just whatever people will allow me to speak without clowning me.
Ganaaboute 2:10 Of course, of course. And you mentioned yourself, there community celebrations and occasions. What sort of celebrations are most important to you and your family, especially being removed from the country.
Jonathan 2:24 I would say independent celebrations, because that's when they get all of the bar medians living in Ottawa together. So we just have a big ceremony, and there's food, music, activities, and yeah, so I would say that's the most important.
Ganaaboute 2:37 Well, I'll be really curious to hear a little bit more about that food a little later in the interview, but sticking to the community theme. Could you describe a typical day in your community if you feel like there's anything different or a lack thereof that you want to share?
Jonathan 2:54 I don't think there's anything too different on a daily basis in my community, my community in Ottawa, or back in Barbados?
Ganaaboute 2:59 you could share about both, that would be great
Jonathan G 3:04 I would say it's very much the same as regular Canadians.
Ganaaboute 3:10 So if a typical day looks pretty similar to other Canadians, how do you find yourself celebrating and remembering your heritage as you go through your life?
Jonathan 3:21 I wouldn't say that there's a straightforward way that I celebrate my community here in Ottawa, because there's not a very large Barbadian community here, or at least not a large Barbadian community of people around my age. So I would say that I mostly try to just promote Barbados as much as possible. You know, I like to talk about it a lot back at school, whenever we would have any type of culture days or things where we got to, you know, choose a specific topic, or we had to bring in food for whatever reason, I would always talk about our readers. I would bring in food from our readers. We would have black history assemblies that we get to talk about Barbados there too. So yeah, so that's just what I like to do.
Ganaaboute 4:05 That is great. And now this next question, it might be a different answer for both the Caribbean community back home for you, and your own experience living here in Ottawa. But what are some of the values or beliefs, things like that that you hold most dear, and that you think your community holds most dear.
Jonathan 4:26 So back in Barbados, there's a very high expectation of education and just respect and honesty. I would say that's like the foundation of the country. And those are things that I believe are important to be like a productive member of society. And those are like values I try to live by so and values that my parents want me to live by, which is why, like, I've always had like, such a high push on education my whole life, and just respect, respecting others, elders, the environment, all of that. Barbados is also very like, environmentally friendly, because we are an island, and climate change affects islands in particular, like, harsher than a lot of other places. So yeah, environmental sustainability is important to me because of that, um, and then just respecting everyone.
Ganaaboute 5:19 Well, thank you for that answer. That was great. I'm going to pass the microphone over to my colleague, Noha now for some more questions.
Noha K 5:27 All right, so what would you like to share about yourself or your community that you think is important for people to know?
Jonathan 5:34 That's a hard question. Let me think. Take your time. No problem. Okay, yeah, so something that I think is important for people to know is that just because Islands are a part of the category Caribbean, they're not the same at all, and oftentimes they're very, very different. I think people have a tendency to group them together, but a large difference is that many of the countries in the Caribbean were colonized by different countries. So some were colonized by brands, some were colonized by Spain and some were colonized by England, which is why some speak Spanish, some speak French and some speak English. Barbados is one of the ones that was colonized by England, and when you have islands that were colonized by England, sometimes have accents or words that are this, that are similar or sound the same have similar meaning. But for Barbados in particular, our accent is usually thought of as very different from the rest of the English speaking Caribbean islands, because Barbadians were taught how to speak English while the original African slaves were taught how to speak English by the Irish indentured servants that were living in Barbados at the time. So the Barbadian accent is usually thought to sound very Irish to people who don't speak it. So that's one of the ways that the islands are different. One of the other one is food. So in Canada, like you could go to like any restaurant, and it'll be labeled like a Caribbean restaurant, but most likely it's going to be a Jamaican or a Haitian restaurant, and that's because, like, there's not the population of the other Caribbean countries isn't too big in Ottawa, specifically, except for Haiti and Jamaica but the food that Jamaicans eat is usually not the food that we would eat in Barbados. There's some similarities, but overall, like their core meals that are thought of like their island dishes aren't really things that we would eat in Barbados as like our we would eat them, but they aren't like our Island's core meals. So that's another thing that I would say people often lump us in together with and our culture is also very different from the other Caribbean islands. Barbados is one of the more conservative, more religious islands, and I would say some of the islands, they're a bit more like free they the music is different, a little more vulgar. They have more freedom when it comes to like substances. Barbados is, like, pretty big on drinking, but everything else is a big no. Jamaica would be more into like cannabis use. But overall, I would say Barbados is a very conservative Island compared to the others.
Noha 8:23 Yeah. Okay, great. I didn't know a lot of that actually, but you did mention food. So I'd like to circle back to that. What foods do you make that remind you of home, and where do you purchase your grocery, your your groceries and things to prepare your traditional meals?
Jonathan 8:41 So there are some Caribbean stores in Ottawa where you can buy groceries that are that are for making specific Caribbean foods. There's one right next to South keys. It's called Savannah. That's mainly where I will go. There's also another one in elmville, but usually the foods that I would make from my culture at home, there's breakfast foods and then there's lunch foods that I like to make. One of the breakfast foods is called bakes. And it's kind of like it's a it's a dough that you make, kind of from flour baking powder and just some cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar, and then you fry it surprisingly instead of baking it. And they're called bakes, and you'll just eat that as like a little snack or a breakfast type meal. Then the other one I mainly like to make is macaroni pie. It's a bit similar to mac and cheese, but it's just assembled differently, and then the cooking is different. So you you get long macaroni instead of the elbow macaroni, so it's long, hollow, like tubes. And then you would boil that, and then you would put some cheese and some milk and egg, and then spices and ketchup and mustard and. And then you would put that in addition, you would bake that. That's my favorite food from arbitus, so I like to make that a lot.
Noha 10:06 Would you say that it's easy to find the supplies that you need to make these things?
Jonathan 10:11 The long macaroni was actually the thing that took me the longest to find, which was really upsetting, because it was, it is my favorite food from arbitus, but I I wasn't looking for the right name. Just call it macaroni and Barbados. And here it's labeled as Bucha tiny. So when I finally found that, other than that, yeah, it was. It's pretty easy to find the ingredients.
Noha 10:33 Okay, well, thank you for sharing that and moving on a little bit. How likely would you and your family be to using the website that we're preparing where we're creating and uploading stories from Latin and Caribbean communities.
Jonathan 10:49 I think it could be interesting. Could you tell me a little more? Yeah, sure.
Noha 10:53 So we're using a site called Omeka, and pretty much, we're just interviewing people of different Latin and Caribbean backgrounds, and kind of compiling the data into that website so that it's easily accessible, so that people can learn more about Latin and Caribbean communities in Canada, what it's like coming from those countries to Canada, and like the sort of barriers that they face and those things. So it's more like educational than anything, but you could find people from your community and build communities that way as well. So it's kind of got more than one purpose. But yeah, well, then
Jonathan 11:34 definitely it sounds interesting. Yeah, my parents would enjoy that.
Noha 11:38 All right. Speaking of the website, is there anything that you would like to see added onto there?
Jonathan 11:46 Yeah, maybe, um, some maps about different Caribbean stores in Ottawa, or maybe some resources for where I could connect to other Latin or Caribbean folks in Ottawa around my age.
Ganaaboute 12:00 Well, thank you, Jonathan, so much for everything you've shared with us today in the interview so far. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask one more sort of open ended question, so feel free to share as much as you want or as little as you want. The floor is entirely yours. But I was curious, did you experience any big culture shocks coming to Canada, like, what's, what's the biggest difference that's really stuck with you or affected you?
Jonathan 12:28 I would have to say it would be coming from a building that was like 90 to 95% black to moving to Ottawa and then going straight to a almost 100% white private school. And from that moment on, as soon as I came here, like suddenly I was aware of what it meant to be black and growing up in Barbados, like we knew, we knew we were black, but it just was not something that was it wasn't something that was a topic of conversation. It was just, it was just life. It was normal. It was nothing that we thought about to coming here and then suddenly realizing like that that defined me in a way that it had never before, and then having to navigate, like, still being like a Barbadian, and then suddenly, like being thrust into this environment, like, where no one was like me. People didn't understand when I talked. They made fun of my accent, and then having to, like, change the way I spoke so people could understand me. And then one of the things that I really regret to this day is just how much of my like, accent and language is gone because of the fact that, like, I purposely stopped speaking like in my dialect, or speaking like with a Bayesian accent, because I wanted people to understand me, or because people would make fun of me. And, like, now that I'm older and like, that doesn't matter to me anymore. Like, I wish I still had that aspect of my culture.
Ganaaboute 14:01 And I actually do want to cap some of one final question, because you've said some very interesting, deep and serious things in there. If you could give a message to your younger self when you came here, Does anything come to mind that you wish you could tell that? Tell that boy,
Jonathan 14:18 yeah, if I could go back, I would tell myself to hold on to my culture, because years from now, when you're going through an identity crisis or realizing that you don't relate to any of your extended family anymore, you're going to wish that you had held on to the parts of yourself that were truest.
Ganaaboute 14:37 Thank you so much for that. I appreciate the vulnerability and I respect you for everything you've said to us today. And on that note, I think that actually concludes our interview for today. So on behalf of the three of us, I thank you again, Jonathan for taking the time out of your busy schedule, and we'll make sure to send you the appropriate links so that you can access this on Omeka one. It gets published later next month. Thank you again, and I hope everyone listening has a great rest of their day.

Original Format

In person