Pan Am 2015 Games Caribbean Village

A Caribbean Village for Pan Am games 2015 in TO?

By William Doyle-Marshall  

Caribbean people in Canada should utilize the forthcoming Pan American Games 2015 in Toronto to exhibit their prominence in the world of athletics. Mr. Seth George Ramocan, Dean of the Caricom Consular Corps expressed this desire in an exclusive interview recently.

   As a region, because Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are so prominent in the Sports arena, the Consul-General for Jamaica said they need to utilize the games as one of the common grounds to work together and showcase themselves regionally.

  “The Caribbean must have a Caribbean village, to be able to have the number of things that we do together that people can see that being done here,” Mr. Ramocan explained. He was confident that there are many ways in which Caribbean states can pull together and cooperate more.

    Reflecting on the size of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and the big impact they are making on the world through sports, Ramocan acknowledged both countries have been able to train football teams that can be spoken about. While they have not really won the World Cup, Ramocan is proud they are spoken about; due to the impact they have created.

                                        Jamaica's Consul-General Seth George Ramocan with 

                                        Dr.Rosemary Sadlier, President, Ontario Black

                                        History Society at 2013 Black History Month 

                                        celebration at Queen's Park, Ontario

  He cited an international athletic race where Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was there and he happened to have made two false starts causing him to drop out of the race. In retrospect the Consul General reflected: “you could feel a sigh of relief by the rest of the world. They felt ‘wow, we could get it now. Usain is out’. Not realizing another Jamaican was in the race. Jamaica still came and won gold and Usain was out. What do you say about that as a region? How does the world see that?” he continued.

  While identifying the sports arena as a vehicle for coming together Mr. Ramocan wants to see a Caribbean Chamber of commerce established in Canada where all the businesses that are Caribbean here in Canada and in the Greater Toronto Area come together and work as a unit and lead a delegation out of Canada into the Caribbean to explore and exploit opportunities. “We are much too scattered,” Ramocan concluded.

   The Caribbean, as a region in Canada, has close to a half million people in terms of descent, second and third generations within this country he noted.  “Many of our Caribbean islands do not have a half a million people in terms of its population. We want to take the Caricom approach and to try to build a single Diaspora here that can cause the people of the Caribbean to be aware of how they can have a greater voice both in Canada and to make a greater contribution to their region,” the Dean of the Caricom Consular Corps said.

   He plans to work together through his peers in the Consular Corps to reach their respective Diaspora and develop some kind of common ground where they identify a lot of things that they are doing in common. The Chief Caricom Consular official is confident that relationship between the Consuls General is what signals to the community that working together is possible.

February 22, 2013