Raised by a single mom, Brandon Hay felt lost
when his first son was born. By founding a new club,
as Amy Lazar reports, he gives black fathers a place
to turn
By Amy Lazar
Special to The Globe and Mail
April 26, 2008
When Brandon Hay decided to call his new support
group for black fathers the Black Daddies Club, he
knew the name would evoke images of young
mothers pushing carriages with no fathers in
sight.
And that's exactly what he wanted.
"The name itself is helping to kill one big stigma,
which is that black fathers are not around, and for me
that is very important," said Mr. Hay, a 28-year-old
father of three boys who this month began inviting
black fathers to his club's forums on issues in Greater
Toronto's black community.
Although Mr. Hay, a marketing and event-planning
entrepreneur, is striving to counteract the stereotype of
the absentee black father, he doesn't deny the
prevalence of fatherlessness in black families or the
difficulty in trying to get the black fathers who do stick
around to participate in a group like the one he's just
launched.
Case in point: At the two meetings the Black Daddies
Club has held so far, one in Brampton, the other in
Kensington Market, roughly half the participants have
been women.
At the Kensington meeting last Sunday, Mr. Hay stood
in front of about 20 curious faces at the Uprising
Community Centre, a small but colourful space with a
nondescript storefront on Baldwin Street, and
encouraged the participants to tell him their needs, so
future events could cater to them.
