Manickam Kumaravel -- Catherine Dunphy life story (Great)
Hyfler/Rosner
May 22, 2006 Monday
Catherine Dunphy
Sri Lankan pillar unified a community
Long before there were community halls, churches or even
offices where Sri Lankans living in Toronto could get
together, there was the home of Lali and Manickam Kumaravel.
It was the 1970s and the early 1980s when maybe 300 families
from Sri Lanka were living here - and the social hub for
many of them was the Kumaravel home, which was first an
apartment at Sheppard and Warden and then a house in
Malvern, a corner of Scarborough.
A lot of that had to do with Manickam Kumaravel's joyful
personality, his home-cooked curry chicken and rice, his
penchant for political debate over drinks (and his
insistence that all immigrants owed Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau an eternal debt), the singing and dancing - and the
fact the Friday night card games of 304 often went on and
on.
In fact, they usually lasted the entire weekend.
"It was always good to go there on Friday after work," said
Oswald De Silva, part of a group of young Sri Lankan men who
gravitated to the Kumaravel home. A financial adviser, he
married Kumaravel's niece, whom he met there.
They called him Kum or Kum Uncle and he was always
welcoming. He was proud of his cooking, too, although when
he first came to Canada he had never cooked before and tried
to boil water in a watering can, his wife noted.
"He used to call it his spiritual Fridays, since there was
always alcohol and political debate," said Viresh Fernando,
a lawyer who married Kumaravel's stepdaughter even though he
was an ardent Tory, or as his father-in-law often told him
"a traitor" to all immigrants. "He had a great sense of
humour."
Their political discussions were legendary and lengthy, but
never as long as the card games.
All weekend, people would flow in and out of the house as
the game raged. Players napped on couches, some watched TV
as others took a turn at the table. The game of 304 is like
bridge in that players enter a contract to achieve a certain
number of points (like tricks) that can take many days and
hours.
"We were always coming back from the brink. Kum would always
accuse the others of cheating," laughed Fernando. "But his
emotions just filled his face and we could always figure out
his hand. It was easy to win."
In those years, young Sri Lankans had nowhere else to go. A
Canada-Sri Lanka Association held dances every so often and
celebrated the Sri Lankan New Year every mid-April but "we
had no other entertainment," Fernando said. "Kum was the
glue of the community. He was a uniting figure who attracted
all sorts of people."
When Kumaravel arrived in Canada in 1972, he was met by the
rise of a new kind of racism here. Signs saying "Paki Go
Home" began showing up on hoardings around town.
"There had been very few visible minorities in Toronto until
then," said De Silva. "Racism shifted to coloured people and
they were all called Pakis. Kum took it well; he wouldn't
react."
Kumaravel was a cosmopolitan figure. He had been born into
an established, westernized, middle-class Hindu family,
educated in a Christian school in suburban Colombo, Sri
Lanka's capital. He was a Tamil; Lali was Singalese and he
often accompanied her to the Buddhist Temple.
At one time the manager of a national chain of cinemas back
home, he had switched careers and was a successful insurance
salesman when the family decided to try Canada. Lali's
daughter, Anoma, was ready to start university and her son,
Ajita, was in high school and they wanted the children to
have every opportunity.
Lali and the kids came first - to see if they liked it.
"I liked everything about it here," she recalled. "Even the
food."
On her second day in the country she got a job in a
Scarborough doughnut shop; it was the first time she had
ever worn a dress and not a sari. It was one of three jobs
she was to hold simultaneously for years.
Kumaravel was to become the first Sri Lankan businessman in
Toronto but the only job he could get when he arrived was as
a security guard, first at George Brown College, then at 56
Prince Arthur, a posh residence in the Annex.
He was 50 years old and he knew it was a comedown from his
previous middle-class existence, but he loved it, always
dressing with care in his security uniform. The late CBC
interviewer Barbara Frum and her husband, Murray, lived in
the building and he became very close with them.
And there were tenants such as the Egyptian gentleman who
was rarely at home but made a point of tipping Kumaravel
$100 when he was.
In 1976, he began importing food from back home. There were
simply no Sri Lankan foodstuffs or spices, or even their
famed Ceylon tea, available in Toronto then and Kumaravel
had noticed that his countrymen were pining for a taste of
their homeland. His brother-in-law in Sri Lanka helped him
find a supplier and soon huge 20-foot containers were being
dropped off in the Kumaravel driveway.
"Everyone would come and unload it and put everything in his
basement," said De Silva, who remembered one load of red
rice that was filled with weevils and another that contained
bloated tins of fermented treacle.
Kumaravel sold the good stuff at cricket matches and dances;
soon people were dropping around to the house for their wood
apple jam, date chutney, lime pickle, cayenne powder, hot
black peppers and, of course, the pure Ceylon tea.
"People came to buy two tins of mango and he would offer
them a beer. He was not very business minded," Fernando said
with a grin.
The business grew despite him. Kumaravel rented a big
warehouse and in 1979 took a small booth in the
International Building at the Canadian National Exhibition
to sell Sri Lankan foodstuffs, as well as batik fabrics,
wooden devil masks and elephant pendants.
Fernando remembers the fragrance of the tea wafting through
the building; but Kumaravel himself was also a draw. A proud
Sri Lankan, he regarded the CNE as his chance to promote the
country he loved. He talked to everybody and gave away the
key tags and candies to every child who passed by.
"There were always so many crowds, you couldn't move near
the booth," De Silva said.
But the business died in 1983, the year civil war broke out
in Sri Lanka. The Singalese stopped buying from Kumaravel, a
Tamil, and the Tamils stopped buying because of Lali, a
Singalese. And many of the Sri Lankans who subsequently
immigrated to Toronto opened up Sri Lankan shops and
services, as well.
About 2,000 Sri Lankan businesses are currently in Toronto,
with upwards of 185,000 Sri Lankans living around Eglinton
Ave. E. and Markham Rd., which has the largest concentration
of Tamil people in Canada.
After his business closed, Kumaravel played the stock market
very well, retired, took up gardening and entertaining the
neighbourhood children who called him Buddy and knew he
would always have candies for them. He loved children. On
his 80th birthday, the children of the 17 families who had
been going with him to a cottage near Havelock on Father's
Day for 23 years, made up a book for him.
"Every time I see you, I always have a smile on my face,"
one of them wrote. "We haven't seen you at the cottage (or
anywhere else) ever in a bad mood," said another.
Kumaravel was 83 when he died Easter Sunday morning. He had
been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for the past few
years, but during the last week of his life, when his wife
and daughter never left his bedside, the kids from the
cottage all came to see him. They sat with him quietly and
held his hands.
cdunphy @ thestar.ca
GRAPHIC: Manickam Kumaravel opened his home to fellow Sri
Lankans in the 1970s and early 1980s. "Kum was the glue of
the community," says Viresh Fernando, who married
Kumaravel's stepdaughter.