Local firefighters and residents are proud of the distinguished history of Station 435 at 130 Eighth Street which was built in 1929 and will be turning 91-years-old this year.
Dubbed ‘R435: The Lone Wolf,’ the station was part of the New Toronto Fire Dept., (NTFD) which served Mimico and Long Branch, before it was absorbed by the Etobicoke Fire Dept. (EFD) in 1967 and later Toronto Fire Services under amalgamation in 1998.
The first volunteer fire brigade was organized in the area around 1914, according to records, which described the equipment as “rudimentary’ and consisted of two lengthy pieces of hose, a wheelbarrow and axes placed at Fourth and Twenty Second Streets.
A hand-drawn hose cart was later obtained to make life a little easier for the volunteer firemen.
It wasn’t until 1918 that The Lone Wolf obtained its first motorized apparatus; a pumper built on a McLaughlin-Buick chassis.
Built in 1929, the two-bay fire hall and living quarters is pretty much the same today. The facility was manned by two paid fire fighters of a then 24-man strong EFD. It originally housed both the New Toronto municipal offices and volunteer fire department.

With the area undergoing rapid industrial growth during WW11, the NTFD became the first in Etobicoke to purchase an aerial truck, an American LaFrance 85′ mid-mount with a steel ladder that was delivered in 1954.
Proud fire fighters bragged about their state-of-the-art truck that could pump 850 gallons per minute at a raging blaze. The station would handle about 200 calls yearly.
By the 1950s the department had expanded to 26 paid men and by 1965 the use of volunteers was discontinued.
New Toronto amalgamated with neighbouring municipalities in 1967 to form the Borough of Etobicoke. The NTFD was no more and re-designated Etobicoke Fire Department Station 9.
Perhaps their busiest night on record was in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel struck killing dozens of people, including five volunteer fire fighters from the Kingsway-Lambton station. Dozens of residents were rescued along the Lakeshore that night, including several that had been swept into the Etobicoke Creek.
The station was re-numbered Station 435 in 1998 with amalgamation. Fire fighter Jon Lasiuk recalled their new patch says, the “Lone Wolf” remains “On Shore Patrol, protecting the south-west corner of Toronto.”

Beloved Congolese gynaecologist and most recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege seldom ventures out by himself these days and requires 24-hour bodyguard protection to stay alive.

Mukwege, 63, is known as “Doctor Miracle,” for his ability to repair through reconstructive surgery the horrific damage inflicted on women who have been raped.
He, along with Nadia Murad, an Iraqi human rights activist, were last week awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 for “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”
Mukwege has been “the foremost, most unifying symbol both nationally and internationally of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflict,” the Nobel Committee said.
The world-renowned surgeon told the Committee that he was in the operating theatre of the Panzi Hospital, which he founded in 1999, when he heard the news of his win.

“It was when I was operating and I heard people start to cry and it was so, so surprising,” he recalled. “I can see in the face of many women how they are happy to be recognised and this is really so touching.”
Born in 1955 in Bukavu, he went to medical school in Burundi and later studied gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Angers in France.
He was inspired to become a doctor after numerous visits to see the sick with his preacher father.
Mukwege’s life has changed dramatically since he now lives under the permanent protection of UN peacekeepers at his hospital.
He was forced to flee his homeland after giving a September 2012 speech at the UN, in which he criticized President Joseph Kabila’s government and other countries for not doing enough to stop what he called “an unjust war that has used violence against women and rape as a strategy of war”.
The following month he was targeted by gunmen who broke into his home and briefly held his daughters hostage, according to news reports. In one incident, his trusted friend and security guard was killed in an attack.
The talented surgeon fled with his family to Sweden, then to Belgium.
He returned home in 2013 following a campaign by local women who raised funds to pay for his return ticket.
“After that gesture, I couldn’t really say no,” Mukwege recalled. “I am myself determined to help fight these atrocities, this violence.”

He placed his family and medical opportunities on hold to return to help his beloved people.
“My life has had to change, since returning,” he told the BBC’s Outlook in 2013. “I now live at the hospital and I take a number of security precautions, so I have lost some of my freedom.”
He set up the Panzi hospital in Bukavu almost 20 years ago, shortly after he had his first experience of treating a woman who had been raped and mutilated by armed men.
Mukwege will never forget the horrific injury the patient had suffered, telling the BBC the woman had not only been raped but bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs.
In addition to the Nobel, Mukwege has also received the Seoul Peace Prize, a 2008 UN Human Rights Prize and was named African of the Year in 2009. He was also named by Time magazine as one of the world’s top 100 influential people.
He is on a growing list of Africans to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Others include Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan.
Panzi hospital, with a staff of 370, now cares for more than 3,500 women a year. Sometimes the beloved “Doctor Miracle” performs as many as 10 operations a day.
The country has been wracked by more than two decades of conflict, with numerous armed groups battling for control of the region’s rich deposits of gold and other precious minerals.
Many different militias have been accused of carrying out the indiscriminate rape of the region’s women. A top UN official in 2010 labelled the country “the rape capital of the world.”

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Passengers boarding aircraft today are mostly greeted by smiling cabin crew made up of all races, nationalities, genders and backgrounds. But it was not always such a rosy scene.

Up until the 1950s and ‘60s, the flying world was very homophobic, with Blacks and other visible minorities not being hired in any large numbers for the globe-trotting, good-paying airline jobs held by whites.
All that changed in 1958 when a feisty Ruth Carol Taylor broke the colour barrier to become the first Black woman to work as a flight attendant for a major U.S. air carrier. And that was big news in a time of famed CBS newsman, Walter Cronkite.
Taylor, who is still alive, was born in 1931 in Boston. She was studying to become a nurse like her mom, when she decided to switch to become a flight attendant, a field she felt was dominated by whites.

She was rejected for a position with Trans World Airlines (TWA) because of the colour of her skin. This angered Taylor and she was determined to fight back. She filed a complaint against TWA with the New York State Commission of Discrimination. No action was brought against the airline, but other companies began to re-think their policies on hiring ‘minority’ crew members.
Through luck and hard work she managed to land a job with Mohawk Airlines after being selected from 800 Black applicants.
Taylor made history in February 1958 when she became the first African American flight attendant on a flight from Ithaca to New York City.
“It irked me that people were not allowing people of colour to apply,” Taylor recalled to JET Magazine in a 1995 interview. “Anything like that sets my teeth to grinding.”
She admitted that she had never actually wanted to become a stewardess, but did it to break the racial barriers that existed in the industry.

It was a ground-breaking moment in both American and civil aviation history, as three months later, Margaret Grant was hired by TWA as their first African American flight attendant. She was let go after disclosing she suffered from sickle cell anemia, which the airline falsely concluded can cause “Negroes to develop damage of the spleen at great altitudes.”
She was forced to resign six months later as she was about to marry another Mohawk employee, which was banned. Being a married woman was forbidden by all carriers in the 50’s and 60’s and Taylor was forced to leave the job she loved.
Her flying career, according to the press, had not only changed the aviation industry forever, it had also been a major coup in the fight for civil rights in America.
Shortly after Taylor and her husband moved to Barbados, where she founded the country’s first professional nursing journal and became active in civil rights.

She returned to the U.S. and in 1963 covered the ‘March On Washington,’ as well as becoming an activist for consumer affairs and women’s rights. In 1977, she co-founded the Institute for Inter Racial Harmony, which developed a test to measure racist attitudes known as the ‘Racism Quotient.’
Still very busy, Taylor In 1985 wrote ‘The Little Black Book: Black Male Survival In America,’ a guide for young Black men living in the U.S.
Taylor’s accomplishment was formally recognized by the New York State Assembly in 2008, some 50-years after her historic flight that broke the color barrier and paved the way for other women of color to join the industry.
The life-long activist lives in New York City where she is still active. It has been a far cry from the days when passengers hailed the ‘coloured’ attendants as “Trolley Dollys” or “Angels of the Sky.”

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He’s enjoyed the victory of an Olympic gold medal and suffered from injury, but Andre De Grasse’s biggest thrill is becoming a dad for the first time.

The 23-year-old Scarborough-born world-class sprinter says becoming a father is a totally new experience which helped him to settle down.
De Grasse’s girlfriend Nia Ali gave birth to a cute little girl last June in Philadelphia. The couple have named the child Yuri.
“Being a father is exciting for me,” De Grasse said proudly. “I’ve learned a lot in these past couple of years.”
Ali, a sprinter with the U.S. track and field team, met De Grasse while they were both attending the University of Southern California. She is also a top athlete and took home a silver medal in the 100-metre hurdles at the 2016 Olympics.
“It’s been a little bit no sleep (with the baby),” De Grasse chuckled. “I get a chance to get away a little bit. I’m in the hotel and get a little sleep.”

The athlete, who was raised in Markham, has track and field in his blood. His mother, Beverley De Grasse, was a high school sprinter in Trinidad and Tobago before she moved to Canada at age 26. His father, Alexander Waithe, moved from Barbados to Canada as a teenager.
De Grasse didn’t start racing seriously until he reached Grade 11. Then he wore basketball shorts and Converse shoes and did not use starting blocks. He managed to secure second position in his first 100 metre race with a time of 10.9 seconds.
Soon after he was spotted by future coach Tony Sharpe who noticed his potential and placed him on a training regimen to make him faster.
Last week several hundred people, along with Mayor Frank Scarpitti, gathered along Enterprise Boulevard in Markham to watch as new street signs were unveiled honouring De Grasse.
The famous athlete said he never imagined in his wildest dreams being honoured with having a street named after him in the place he grew up.
A proud De Grasse, holding Yuri, and his family and friends were at the unveiling ceremony. A park in that city will also be named after him in the near future.
Last June, he and Aaron Brown led Canada’s relay team to an easy win at the Harry Jerome International Track Classic in Burnaby, B.C., which is one of De Grasse’s favourite tourney.
De Grasse also took home two gold medals during the breathtaking Pan Am Games held in Toronto in 2015.

The runner is coming back from a Grade 2 hamstring strain which forced him to miss last year’s world track and field championships. He also sat out this year’s Commonwealth Games. He plans to be back in action for the 2019 world championships in Doha and the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
The sprinter often returns to his hometown and was here last summer to launch the Andre De Grasse Family Foundation at York University, with a mandate to help promising young athletes. The runner and Coach Sharpe will be giving athletic clinics during the off-season.
“It’s pretty awesome to be able to do this for the kids,” he told reporters. “Moving forward, that’s going to be my legacy. I want people to remember me for something off the track.”
His success at the Olympics led to his winning the Lionel Conacher Award as the Canadian Press’ Male Athlete of the Year in 2016 and in April 2017 he was a recipient of a Harry Jerome Award, which is named after his hero.
Jerome, who was also one of Canada’s fastest men, who competed for Canada in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Summer Olympics, winning 100 metre bronze in 1964. He also won the gold in the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games and the 1967 Pan American Games.

– 30 –

The Queen of Soul and lifelong civil-rights activist Aretha Franklin will be buried next to her preacher dad, brother and two sisters in her beloved hometown of Detroit following a celebration of her life.

Franklin, who was born in Memphis in 1942, had a career that spanned seven decades. She died of pancreatic cancer on August 14 at the age of 76.

A private funeral service will be held on August 31 at the Greater Grace Temple, before she is laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery, where her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin, sisters Carolyn and Erma, brother Cecil and nephew Thomas are also resting.

A young Aretha was subjected to racism at an early age, which forced her to stand up for her rights. She decreed in her contracts that she would never play to segregated audiences and lived by that rule even when little gigs were coming in.

The second of five children, her family moved to Buffalo, N.Y., and then Detroit, where her parents divorced. Her mother died when she was 10, and because of her father’s travels, she was reared by her grandmother.

As a teen, Franklin was a soloist in her father’s church and began recording gospel songs. She dropped out of high school and toured the gospel circuit, singing in churches around the country. It was a hard life during which she learned firsthand about racism while traveling the back roads of the South.

Her talents led her winning 18 Grammy Awards selected from 112 charted singles on Billboard; including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 Rhythm and Blues entries and 20 number-one R&B singles.

The accolades led to her becoming the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Along the way she influenced countless singers including Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross, Jennifer Hudson and Fantasia.

She at one time famously brought tears to the eyes of former U.S. President Barack Obama in one of the renditions of her hits, which included: “Respect, Think, I Say A Little Prayer and Chain Of Fools.”

Franklin was there when times were tough and Blacks in the U.S. were enslaved by racism. She used her talents and funds to help Black causes and for racial equality.

She was beside the coffin of family friend King Jr., where her touching rendition of his favourite “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” left many weeping at his packed 1968 funeral services following his assassination.

Franklin also performed at the funeral services of civil-rights icon Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It led to a city-wide bus boycott by Blacks in that city.

She also sang at the 1972 funeral services of fellow activist and gospel great Mahalia Jackson, who recorded more than 30 albums and had a dozen million-sellers.

A few weeks after the King funeral, Franklin became only the second African-American woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

By then she had collaborated with Ray Charles, covered Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles, revisited jazz on “Soul ’69,” and recorded the gospel album “Amazing Grace.” It was during this period that she would appear in African garb, a woman consciously representing her community, gender and beliefs with empowering self-confidence that resonated with generations of oppressed minorities.

Her career was derailed by the onset of the disco era in the ’70s and then by the shooting of her father in an attempted robbery in 1979. He spent five years in a coma before dying.

However, it was a cameo with Canadian comedians Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in the “The Blues Brothers” movie, which resurrected her career with a top single and album “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”

Even with her enormous talents and millions of records sold, Franklin was never able to earn the huge sums paid to female white entertainers as Barbra Streisand, Madonna or even Adele, according to Forbes magazine.

The singers’ lesser income was partially due to Franklin’s fear of travelling by airplane and that she performed at smaller North American venues that were accessible by bus.

– 30 –

Many of us had never heard of District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan until he famously ordered the U.S. government to turn around in mid-air a jet deporting a mother and daughter and return them to the States for a proper hearing.

Sullivan, 71, is being considered a hero for ordering a plane deporting the two asylum seekers to El Salvador to turn around and return them to the U.S., so they can have a fair and impartial immigration hearing.

The well-respected Sullivan then blocked the Trump Administration from deporting the two, and other asylum seekers, before they can receive proper hearings to stay in the U.S.

A frustrated Sullivan was hearing an emergency petition last week by the American Civil Liberties Union that the immigrants they are representing in a federal lawsuit should not be deported while their cases are pending.

The hearing turned dramatic when attorneys discovered that two of their clients, a mom and daughter, were put on a plane to El Salvador. Court was assured the asylum seekers would be available, instead they were quietly placed on a flight home.

The mother, known in court documents as Carmen to protect her identity, and her daughter were challenging Trump Administration rules that bar the use of domestic and gang violence as the basis for asylum applications.

“Oh, I want those people brought back forthwith. … I’m not asking, I’m ordering,” Sullivan said in his Washington, D.C. courtroom after learning what had happened.

The D.C.-native said he was “directing the government to turn that plane around either now or when it lands, turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States. It’s outrageous.”

He then threatened to issue U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions with a contempt-of-court order, saying if the immigrants weren’t returned he was going to order officials to explain “why people should not be held in contempt of court, and I’m going to start with the Attorney General.”

“I know I’m raising my voice, but I’m extremely upset about this,” the experienced judge snapped. “This is not acceptable.”

He continued with the hearing but kept reflecting on how he was “really upset” and found it “pretty outrageous” that “somebody in the pursuit of justice … is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her.”

The young girl was among 2,551 children, who were separated from their parents at border crossings. Of those, 559 are still apart from their parents and 386 have been deported, according to U.S. border officials, who have lost track of the deported parents of 26 separated kids.

The plane was not able to turn around in mid-flight, but a Department of Homeland Security official said the mother and daughter did not disembark in El Salvador and were returned to the U.S.

According to their lawsuit, Carmen and her young daughter came to the U.S. from El Salvador after “two decades of horrific sexual abuse by her husband and death threats from a violent gang.

But at the U.S. border, the government determined after interviewing her that she did not meet the “credible fear” threshold required to pursue an asylum claim in the U.S., and an immigration judge upheld that decision.

Sullivan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in October 1984. He was appointed in November 1991 by President George H. W. Bush to serve as an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

He was nominated by President Bill Clinton in March 1994 to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and was confirmed by the Senate in June 1994.

Not one to back down from controversy. In 2015 Sullivan presided over a Freedom of Information lawsuit involving the use of Hillary Clinton’s private email while she was the Secretary of State.

He was also involved in a high-profile case involving United States of America v. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald J. Trump, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

– 30 –

A campaign has been resurrected by a Halifax senator and a number of Black communities to have the federal government declare August 1 as Emancipation Day to mark the end of slavery in Canada.

Blacks in Toronto and other cities have banded with those in Owen Sound, who are marking the 156^th anniversary of the end of slavery, with calls for a federally-recognized national day so Canadians can learn more about their history.

There were bands, shows, exhibits and food as thousands attended the 156^th Owen Sound Emancipation Festival last weekend. Owen Sound was the most northerly stop of the Underground Railroad and was used as a safe haven for hundreds of U.S. slaves who were smuggled to Canada to escape a life of forced servitude.

“Owen Sound was the most northerly retreat of the Underground Railroad journey in Canada” according to festival organizers. “Every year descendants of Blacks, who came via the Underground Railroad to settle in freedom, gather to reminisce and enjoy a time of fellowship.”

The festival has been taking place every August long weekend since 1862. It falls around the same time as the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, which marked its 51^st anniversary last weekend with more than 1 million visitors.

In Toronto, more than 1,000 supporters attended the 6^th Annual Emancipation Day Underground Freedom Train ride on a packed but private TTC subway car that travelled just before midnight from Union Station to Sheppard Ave. W., where they were met with entertainment.

There were speeches, readings and a tribute to the late Judge George Carter, the first Black Canadian-born judge in the country. He would have been 97 last week.

Well-wishers were also treated to a preview screening of an upcoming Marcus Garvey film by well-known Toronto director, Roy Anderson.

Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard, who has been visiting some of the Emancipation Day festivities, said there should be a day set aside to recognize Emancipation Day in Canada.

Bernard promised a vocal gathering that she will continue the work to help make an annual Emancipation Day a federally-proclaimed national day.

“Today is a very special day,” she said. “On August 1st, 1834 the Act for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies took effect, which freed more than 800,000 enslaved Africans.”

We are pleased that Upper Canada, now Ontario, was the first colony in the British Empire to abolish slavery.

John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, from 1791 to 1796, passed an Act Against Slavery in 1793, which led to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which took affect in 1834.

Simcoe was drawn to the plight of slaves after being told of the escape of Chloe Cooley, an enslaved Black woman in Upper Canada, who, in March 1793 was bound and thrown into a boat to be sold in the U.S. Witnesses saw what happened and relayed the incident to a concerned Simcoe.

He was moved to pass new legislation called ‘Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude’ or the ‘Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada’ in July of that year.

It was one of the first pieces of legislation aiming at prohibiting slavery in North America. The Act outlawed purchase of new slaves and freed the children of slaves when they reached 21 years old.

Passage of the act freed nearly one-million slaves in Canada, including those in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and other Caribbean countries as well as South Africa.

A petition was presented last year by the Ontario Black History Society to the federal government to officially declare an Emancipation Day. There has been no response from the feds.

– 30 –

The late and iconic anti-apartheid champion Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela loved Toronto and its residents, who last week returned their love for the late South African president by celebrating his life and 100-years since his birth.

Downtown’s Yonge and Dundas Square was filled with well-wishers last weekend who showed up to remember the famed leader, who visited our city attracting huge crowds in 1990, 1998 and 2001.
Madiba, as he was affectionately called, first visited and fell in love with Canada in 1990, just four months after being freed from a South African jail. He said he was deeply moved to be in a place where, unlike apartheid South Africa, people were free to determine their destiny.

While here, he addressed the joint Houses of Parliament; became the first foreign leader awarded the Order of Canada; an honorary Canadian citizenship and to be greeted by 45,000 screaming Toronto students to launch the Canadian Friends of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
Thousands of residents lined the streets of Toronto to see the former President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 on his visits. People of all ages, races and backgrounds reacted with a joyful outpouring of affection and respect as they waited.
The appreciative city in return dedicated a section of University Ave., from City Hall to Queen’s Park, as Nelson Mandela Boulevard in 2015. The naming stemmed from a visit, when a huge march was held on the University Ave. where Mandela gave a speech attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered many of us by face and was always willing to give his support or advice on issues affecting the Black community.
Mandela praised Canada for supporting the anti-apartheid movement and had asked the government not to lift trade sanctions on South Africa, a request then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney proudly obliged.

The ‘father of South Africa’ would have been proud of a rousing speech to 15,000 people by former U.S. president Barack Obama at the Wanderers cricket stadium in Johannesburg last July 17 to mark Nelson Mandela International Day 2018 and 100-years of his birth.
Obama said Madiba’s light shone brightly “even from that narrow Robben Island cell” and forced him as a young college student to re-examine his priorities and “consider the small role I might play in bending the arc of the world towards justice.”
‘’He came to embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people all around the world, their hopes for a better life, the possibility of a moral transformation in the conduct of human affairs,” the 44th U.S. President told a cheering crowd.
‘’The man went to prison for almost three decades. He split limestone in the heat, he slept in a small cell, and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement,’’ he warned.
Before arriving in South Africa, Obama paid a brief visit to Kenya, his father’s home country. There, he opened a youth centre run by his half-sister and visited the home of his step-grandmother in the village of Kogelo, where his father was born and was buried.

Mandela was imprisoned under apartheid rule in 1962 for fighting for freedom against the white-dominated apartheid government of South Africa. He was freed in 1990 due to mounting pressure from the international community.
He was incarcerated for 27 years with several comrades for the struggle against apartheid on the infamous Robben Island prison off the coast of Cape Town. He won the heart of the world and symbolized the triumph of the human spirit following his release from Pollsmoor Prison.
Millions of people from around the world watched his emotional release from prison, which was broadcasted live on television. He was elected president of South Africa in 1994 and humbly chose the path of reconciliation and restitution instead of revenge.
Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with former South African president F.W. de Klerk, who helped to end the dehumanizing apartheid system, which required Blacks to have ‘pass books’ and was in place from 1948 to the early 1990s.
Mandela passed away in 2013 and was given a heroic, televised state funeral.

– 30 –

Wrestler Reginald Siki was the dirt-poor son of a Texas sharecropper who moved to Toronto, where he dyed his hair blonde and changed his name to Sweet Daddy Siki to become a fan favourite who packed Maple Leaf Gardens for years.

Busloads of fans would jam the Gardens every weekend to moan over the latest antics of the popular and well-liked Siki, or to see him get pounded by an irate opponent. He was a main card attraction who made his debut in 1962 and wrestled at the Carlton St. shrine until 1980.
Siki, who was born in 1940 in Montgomery, Texas, began learning the ropes at Compton College in Los Angeles. By the 1950s, he was fighting in New Mexico.
He is called the “Jackie Robinson of professional wrestling” for facing intense discrimination in the U.S. south, where he was once forced to fight in front of the KKK.
Having suffered enough racism, he and his late long-time Canadian wife moved to Toronto in 1961. He fought in venues across the country and was a fixture at Stampede Wrestling for years.

A large man, with a soft voice, Siki was best-known for his unique moves that included the “coco butt, airplane spin and neck-breaker,” which had rivals in pain on the mat.
Siki was a pioneer, who had grown more popular than the headline fighters, as Whipper Billy Watson, Gene “Big Thunder” Kiniski, Abdullah The Butcher, Dick “The Bulldog” Brower and Lord Athol Layton.
‘Mr. Irresistible’, as he was dubbed by fans, Siki was then earning a whopping $3,000 a bout and was receiving bundles of mail from fans around the world.
He brought sizzle and glamour to the ring and many fans booed as Siki would take out his white hand-held mirrors and begin admiring his good looks and well-built body.
“He was a Black wrestler who had a gimmick that wasn’t rooted in his colour,” one magazine said. “He didn’t want you to hate him because he was Black. You were supposed to hate him because he was a vain, rude, arrogant prima donna.”
In a time when ring attire consisted of solid colour trunks and black boots, Siki’s were candy-striped. His boots were white, with the backs cut out to show off his calf muscles. With bleached hair and mustache, he wore sequined robes and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses on his way to the ring.
“I saw my first wrestling match at the age of 14, and I knew right then that is what I wanted to do,” recalled Siki, who was at one time a corporal in the U.S. Army.

He was a regular fixture in the Parkdale area, where he lived and for years drove around in a converted hearse. Along the way, Siki has earned six major wrestling belts, including the Austria-Asian championship, the North American championship, which he held for three years; the Texas championship and the tag-team heavyweight crown.
His body has suffered a tremendous toll from the sport. His injuries included two broken ribs, his hands were broken twice, his ankle and leg broken and half-his-face paralyzed, after being kicked in the face.
To this day fans still recall his signature phrases: “I’m the Women’s Pet and the Man’s Regret” and “A lot of people try to copy me, but there’s only one Niagara Falls and only one Mona Lisa. And there’s only one Mr. Irresistible”.
Siki has mentored and influenced today’s top stars, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Adam “Edge” Copeland, Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Trish Stratus.
Today, the 78-year-old has slowed down a little. He still trains the next wave of professional wrestlers and hosts karaoke events at area clubs.
He remains secluded and friends say he isn’t feeling well these days to talk.
A documentary called Sweet Daddy Siki was aired by the CBC’s Documentary Channel on June 11, 2017.

– 30 –

The public is invited to the unveiling of Charley Roach Lane in west-end Toronto on July 18 at 7 p.m.