When Tonya Williams was a teenager in Toronto, she started making commercials and appearing in minor roles in television shows and films; she had a stunning revelation.

“I was always the only person who looked like me,” the proud African-Canadian states. “Not only on set but even behind.

“That can be a little unnerving.”

Williams pursued her acting career in Canada from 1976 until 1987, when she moved to Los Angeles. There, she landed a role on the television soap opera The Young and the Restless, known to its fans as Y&R.

In California, she was introduced to an industry that was doing more, although not enough, in promoting diversity in all facets of broadcasting than Canada was. That inspired her to create the Reelworld Screen Institute in Toronto in the early 2000s.

“I really believed that all of us needed to come together,” Williams, the founder and executive director, tells The Wire Report.

Her organization is an advocacy group for Indigenous peoples and Black, Asian, South Asian, and People of Colour in the creative community in Canada. She set about creating forums where racially diverse Canadians could display their talents.

One of the first things that Reelworld did was to create a film festival in April 2001, where diverse filmmakers could showcase their content to a broader audience. The need was paramount, Williams believes.

One of the questions that filmmakers often get asked when they seek funding is whether they have had movies shown at a film festival. They are then asked if they have won any awards at film festivals. By creating the Reelworld festival in 2001 and continuing ever since, the organization helps the people it represents to answer “yes” to those questions.

The seed of Williams’ idea has blossomed over the past 25 years. When she founded Reelworld in 2000, she was assisted by four co-op students. 

“It was brutal,” she laughs.

As more funding became available, she was able to hire people on contract and eventually bring on full-time staff. The organization now has 12 employees, including a managing director who was hired earlier this year.

The landscape has changed over the past quarter century. At one time, Williams could not use the wording “racial diversity” when applying for funding grants. Cultural diversity was the preferred term at the time, she reports.

“I think people are not necessarily held back because of culture but people were being held back because of race,” she notes.

Oftentimes, in the early days, there would only be one or two non-white people on a film or television production set. They were reluctant to speak up for fear of being labelled difficult. Williams remembers hair and makeup professionals not knowing how to work with Black actors. Those actors were expected to do their own hair and makeup for the shoots.

She says she asked the industry to keep data about diverse participation in film and television. It took a decade for the sector to agree. An initial survey discovered that under one per cent of participants on Canadian productions were non-white. Williams dismisses concerns that governing bodies should not ask performers and other talent about their race.

“There is nobody of colour hiding their race. You can see it,” she says. “What it does do is perpetuate systemic racism from the white community by not asking.”

Reelworld has a series of programs designed to further the networking capabilities of young talent. It does not train people; the expectation is that they have already learned how to be actors, directors, screenwriters, and the like. Reelworld seeks to connect those young people with racially diverse mentors who can provide an entry into the business. 

That also includes finding people of means to invest their money in productions.

“We have some of the richest people of colour in Canada,” Williams states. “They come from all over the world, they have money. How can we include them in funding content?”

Oftentimes, wealthy people of colour have never been asked to become investors in film and television productions, she adds.

As someone who divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles, Williams sees the barriers that still exist for diversity in popular culture. Current events underline this to her.

“There’s a new president of the United States who’s not even been in power two months, eight weeks, and he has undone 50 years of what we call diversity,” she noted at the time of this interview. “I’d like to see changes stick and not that they’re so flimsy that they’re in fashion now but they’ll be out of fashion later. Diversity shouldn’t be a fashion piece. It really is creating content for the world.”

Williams likes to impress that message to white content creators as well. Too often they limit themselves to a domestic Canadian audience without realizing they could be selling their productions to Europe, Africa, and Asia. She seeks to explain to white creators concerned about diversity measures in hiring that there is more than enough work to go around. 

“They see any piece of the pie being sliced away and they think the sky’s falling in,” she maintains. “But as I explain to people, it’s not the same size pie that we’re sharing. The more people you bring in makes the pie larger.”

“You’re finally giving people who have been more skilled and more experienced an opportunity where that door was always closed to them,” the Reelworld founder notes.

Reelworld relies on funding from government agencies like the Canada Council for the Arts and Heritage Ontario, and from private outlets such as Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. Williams wants to have independent cash on hand in case there is a rainy day when government and corporate coffers dry up.

This month, Reelworld will host a fundraising dinner honouring Canada Media Fund CEO Valerie Creighton with its Ally award. 

Williams has spent decades in acting, the arts

The Reelworld executive director was brought up to excel. Her parents were immigrants who left Jamaica in their early years to settle in Canada. Her father was an attorney who later became a judge; her mother was a registered nurse.

Williams started taking ballet lessons at three years old and piano lessons at five. She later expanded her musical repertoire to include tenor saxophone, oboe, and violin. After she was cast in her first commercial, she wondered if acting was her forte.

“I didn’t think it was a job, I didn’t think people did that for a living,” she remembers. “It was fun, it was enjoyable. I was in high school. I did some commercials and really small parts.”

Nevertheless, she was among the 4,000 who auditioned for a place in the drama program at Toronto Metropolitan University. She and 39 others were accepted into the program. Her teachers told the students at the beginning of the semester that by Christmas, half of them would be gone. She persevered and graduated from the course.

Reelworld takes up her time now, but Williams is looking down the road to when she can step back from her advocacy work and return to the world of entertainment.

“I really feel what I’d like to do in my later years now is writing,” she ruminates. “More about things that I’m passionate about so that when I’m dead and gone there is some sort of literature there that talks about some of the things, some of the life lessons I’ve learned that I can pass on to other generations.”

She is not destined to be forgotten anytime soon. Next June, she will join other celebrities, including guitarist Liona Boyd and golfer Mike Weir, as an inductee to Canada’s Walk of Fame.

ppark@thewirereport.ca