'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
When COVID-19 started spreading through Canada, Resa Solomon-St. Lewis watched business at her Caribbean food company Baccanalle disappear.
With no events or weddings to cater and farmers markers and other artisan shows cancelled, 80 per cent of the Ottawa company's revenue dried up and like many Black restaurant owners, Solomon-St.Lewis was worried about the future.
"We were looking at our existing business and thinking this is not going to survive," she recalled.
"I don't think that any Black or minority-owned businesses would necessarily expect... and I didn't expect anybody to come to my rescue."
Black entrepreneurs say that feeling stems from years of being underfunded and facing extra challenges in an industry notorious for low margins, high staff turnover and long hours.
They say the pandemic has made things even tougher and predict that it could be months or even years before they recoup lost earnings, but they're bent on not letting the health crisis get the best of them.
"Black business owners have a hard time accessing capital when it comes to even just starting up their business, and so oftentimes we find that food operators, in addition to owning restaurants, start out with a catering business or as a food truck," said Warren Luckett, a co-founder of Black Restaurant Week, which makes its debut in Toronto on Friday.
"Now one of the largest things that we've been seeing is a labour shortage, being able to find and retain quality labour."
Luckett started Black Restaurant Week in Texas in 2016 with co-founders Falayn Ferrell and Derek Robinson after two Black men, Michael Brown and Alton Sterling, were killed in separate police altercations.
The trio wanted to support Black businesses, so they designed 10-day periods where participating Black-owned restaurants offer specials. Most restaurants saw an increase in sales between 15 and 25 per cent and others reported the event triggered their best week in business ever, Luckett said.
Restaurants Canada estimates that more than 800,000 Canadian workers in the sector lost their jobs or had their hours reduced to zero during the health crisis.
The industry lobby group said as the government's rent and wage subsidies are scaled back this month, most restaurants will struggle to pay staff and suppliers and at least half will have to consider closing down permanently.
Femi Folorunsho's Brampton, Ont. business Kejjis is participating in Black Restaurant Week after being hit hard by the pandemic.
"People would usually come get food for the weekend or for a small party, but when COVID hit everyone started making food at home, so it basically just killed the ordering part of the business," said Folorunsho, whose business specializes in Nigerian food like jollof rice and fried snacks called chin chin.
He tried to be patient and push takeout more, but the pandemic took a toll.
"It's stressful because you wake up and you're not sure you're going to make money," he said.
Solomon-St. Lewis knows that feeling well.
"It's kind of not in our nature so much to say, 'oh, there must be some kind of support out there,"' she said.
"You're going to try and make it, you're going to try and thrive and survive come hell or high water."
Experts have long said Black-owned entrepreneurs tend to be underfunded and research shows many struggle to obtain loans and other financing.
Quantifying how much funding venture capital and private equity Black entrepreneurs in Canada receive is tough because such metrics are seldom tracked, but entrepreneurs and investors estimate it to be on par with -- or even worse than -- the U.S.
Less than one per cent of the US$543 billion in venture capital offered in the U.S. between 2015 and 2019 was given to Black and African-American founders, according to business information platform Crunchbase.
To keep her business afloat, Solomon-St. Lewis focused on pickup and delivery.
Now that the province has started to reopen, she hopes other revenue streams will return, but doesn't think her business will be back to some semblance of normal until at least 2022.
Meanwhile, Folorunsho estimates it will take two or three years for Kejjis to make back what it lost during the pandemic, but it is starting to see its loyal customers return and bookings for weddings and other gatherings are beginning to trickle in.
"We're ready for it," he said. "People are reaching out. Everyone's getting excited about opening up and I'm happy."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2021.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.