Wolseley Wellington (Percy) Anderson
Husband, father, educator, scholar, community leader. Born on Sept. 22, 1930, in Vauxhall, Guyana; died on May 3, 2015, in Toronto, of kidney failure, aged 84.
Wolseley Wellington Anderson was born in the village of Vauxhall, Guyana, on the Demerara River's West Bank, one of nine children in the family. At his baptism, his godfather suggested that the baby not be burdened with the cumbersome name on his birth certificate and instead be named after him, Percival. From then on, Wolseley Wellington was known as Percy.
When he was 11, Percy won a secondary-school scholarship to Queen's College in the capital, Georgetown, the first student from the West Bank to do so. It would be the start of a long career dedicated to excellence in education.
He began as a primary school teacher in 1951. In teachers' college, he fell in love with his classmate Beatrice Williams, whom he married immediately after graduating in 1955. After their daughters Pamela and Camille were born, he went to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica for an honours degree in history. Returning to Guyana in 1961, he became a regional education officer, and two years later won a scholarship to the University of London in England. There he studied textbook production while earning his master's degree in education.
In 1966, the family immigrated to Canada, where Percy obtained his doctorate at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He became a well-known educator and community leader, teaching at York University for more than 30 years. As a professor of social sciences, his teaching, research and writing focused on Caribbean-Canadian studies, race relations, immigration trends, and education and social change.
His years in Toronto were not entirely free of the frustrations experienced by many immigrants from the Caribbean. One time, Percy was driving slowly to his parking spot in the basement of a building he had just moved into, when an irate resident called police to report that a black man was "casing the joint," perhaps preparing to steal a car. One of the officers who answered the call had been a student of Percy's, and tried – in vain – to persuade his former professor to file a harassment complaint against the other resident.
Over the years, Percy initiated and supported many community groups (such as the Black Education Project, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, and Jane Finch Community Legal Services) aimed at improving the integration of Caribbean immigrants and promoting their contributions to Canadian society. His 1993 book, Caribbean Immigrants: A socio-demographic profile, argued that immigrants have much to offer to their new homeland and that they should not forget their history.
Percy also took his expertise to the wider world, serving as a consultant and adviser to the governments of Kenya and Guyana in human resource development. He was committed to excellence in education and by his deeds challenged his students, colleagues, friends and family to do the same.
Percy loved poetry, and would regale others with quotations from Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats. He was forever writing sonnets on scraps of paper, which he published in a 2011 book, Yesterday, Today and Forever, All Across the Challenging Years. His poems reflected his deep faith and his love of nature, his homeland and his family. The words of one poem captured his free spirit: "I am a child of a beautiful land/ A child of God/ With a hundred blessing to recount/ And share … I thank you Lord."
Lester Fernandes is Percy's cousin.