KENTISH STEELE
It’s All About Soul

By Michelle Livingstone
(click images to enlarge)

The visiting missionary held the baby, who only hours before had been left on the side of a dusty Brazilian road to die alone. In a haphazard slice of fate, the Catholic doctor decided to adopt him back into a life in Jamaica. This was the inauspicious beginning of one Samuel Kentish Steele, who set the bar for his offspring, to face the world in the same metaphorical circumstances and overcome.

**Kentish Steele, the mayor of mystic beach** *(Michelle Livingstone Photos)*

A generation later, and the father of this month’s hero, Noel Kentish Steele, came into being. At 11 years old, he was shanghaied whilst playing on the Kingston waterfront. Upon seeing a long line of young men, and being of a curious mind, he ventured over and all too late discovered it was for the crew of a banana boat. A small boy, he was taken and beaten daily; his job was to unfurl the sails. He never gave up. Retaining a disposition of quiet calm, with a strong desire to live life to the full, Noel and his father Samuel, before him, had many brave tales of resistance and resilience and gave us our unsung hero of this month, Kentish Steele.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Kentish didn't know his dad much growing up, being mostly away at sea, but had still managed to imprint on the young Kentish a love for life and the ability to be his own man. Kentish, almost effervescent when he talks of him, refers to him as his hero. A hero who climbed the ladder and overcame adversity, learnt the world and finally found a better life in Canada after fighting for the Canadian marine corps.

Kentish for his part, grew up with Agatha, his Godmada, (the Patois pronunciation of godmother), after running away from his mother at the tender age of seven. Agatha is the woman he remembers with love and the first to hold him on the night of his birth, January 31, 1945.

Growing up in the ghetto of Kingston, life was rough, but thanks to a snappy intelligence and happy disposition, he started school early, going on to win a scholarship to a Catholic boarding school in Jamaica at St. George's College. He tells me that as he was growing up, 25 was considered an old age because of the continual daily violence that occurred amongst the youth. And he admits that if his father hadn't moved, he would no doubt be dead. Kentish eventually left Kingston in 1961 to live with his father in the West End of Vancouver on Thurlow Street.

Laughing at a childhood memory, he admits to being a bit of a mouthy kid. The local Rastafarians and he used to ‘get into it’. Not many people in Jamaica can swim, amazingly, but on this one day, Kentish was about to discover his inner dolphin. Hurling the usual insults as he ran off laughing, he had conveniently forgotten that he needed to return the same way. He was swiftly caught and thrown into the water. Like life: you sink or you swim. Lesson learned.

Although, to this day, he assures me, after 64 years in Vancouver, he has only been in the water once at English Bay. I guess, just because you can, doesn't mean you need to. However, he has retained an infinite love for the beach and spends most days down there.

FINDING HIS SEA LEGS

Following in his father's footsteps, Kentish found a calling on the ocean, working aboard ships. One summer he discovered that an entry-level cleaning position was needed in the engine room of a ship travelling to Alaska. He went for the ‘wiper’ job interview at the Vancouver docks and being successful, was bursting with pride until discovering that he needed to be 18, and the 16-year-old Kentish was not going to cut it.

Undeterred, he decided to stow away. On the day of the launch, he sauntered on, bravado bluffing the way, and stashed himself away in a lifeboat.The ship set sail, and waiting until it was too late to turn around, he finally presented himself to the rightly annoyed chief, who begrudgingly allowed him to stay. The ship carried on up to Alaska, and Kentish’s first summer job became the catalyst for the rest of his life. Namely, his music career.

A few years later, he was able to legally work on ships, which included ferries from Vancouver to Seattle. Striking up a friendship with a man from North Vancouver, who played guitar, the two spent their free time making music together. One day, as they were playing on the stern, they suddenly realized there was a bunch of rapt American tourists, clapping and cheering and bouncing coins down on the perplexed singing heads below.

A star was born.

One thing led to another, and Kentish and the Chantelles played their first real gig at the Penthouse on New Year's Eve in 1964. Next came the Pacific National Exhibition’s famous ‘Battle of the Bands’. Out of 120 bands, they came second, and continued making music for the next 60 years. His favourite song to sing is ‘Zoom’, the 1977 hit by Lionel Richie / Ronald LaPread of The Commodores.

A glance at a couple of the lines tells me why.

“I wish the world were truly happy / living as one/ I wish the world they call freedom someday would come.”

**an old and slightly fuzzy photo ofThe tiny maple sapling in its early days.**

AT MYSTIC BEACH

Kentish began his beach garden area, now known as Mystic Beach, in 1985, a few years after Englesea Lodge, a 1911 six-storey building, and the last of the homes along English Bay, burned down in 1981. There is much uncorroborated talk of what happened at the Englesea, with some saying it was arson, as the City of Vancouver (COV) wanted the land back to build out the seawall.

It is interesting to note that two days before the second vote on the future of the building was due to go ahead, without a fire alarm being set off, an out-of-control blaze took over, and the fate of the building was decided.

Kentish raked up the residual mess, started having picnics, and using the space. The maple tree that presides over the area was once a sapling presented to him by a little girl, not long after the picnic sessions began. It is now a strong beauty that sways proudly in the beach breeze. Perhaps it is a nod to the building that was destroyed.

A friendly space, Kentish’s vision for his beloved Mystic Beach is to reach everyone, touch them with the magic of being, of finding the love of the human, and the essence of oneself. And where else would you expect to find it than by the water and the forest; the very thing that makes Vancouver so special? What the Indigenous peoples loved and kept sacred.

“The West End could be the perfect centre of recreating an atmosphere of connection, sharing and love that other places can look at and see. ‘Look how those guys live, why can’t we do this?”

**The beautiful grown maple that now marks Mystic Beach.**

His favourite part of life is in the summer, at the beach, singing, laughing, and tending to his flowers. Children come past and are drawn to him like elves to Santa Claus.

“I'm just here to make them feel connected, because when they all like the same song, there's a connection there somewhere. They may not know what it is, but they're there, I see them dancing and smiling. You don't see people smiling a lot these days, so that's what I see, that's the most important thing in my life now.”

Kentish talks of teenagers with their phones at the table, on dates, walking around with their faces forever drawn to the glaring screen of their chosen god. We are so close to being the computer, to being that program that can be shut down, as we move onto something more interesting for 15 minutes. The world is becoming increasingly disposable, and so are we.

What becomes startlingly clear is that this is not just a man who sings soul, but one who is fully aware of soul, but someone who wants others to connect with themselves and the world to make a better place.

“I would like to see the West End of Vancouver become more open with each other. I really believe that if you make eye contact as much as you can, you will be a lot safer. Energy means movement; it is circular; it attracts and expands - space. There's space in everything, and there's everything in space.. All we know is, this is what we have here: we have human beings, and we have to start treating human beings as our soul mates. We are all part of the same whole.”

Stardust, I say.

One for excelling in his math studies as a boy, Kentish tells me that he has lived for “2,554,216,000 seconds. That's 81 years old.” I try to comprehend that figure, but I need more than a cappuccino to manage it - he continues, “If a person gave me a job to pick up a dollar as fast as I could, I couldn't get there. That's how small our lifetime is”.

He points out that the powers that be are keeping us in a psychological and intellectual jail.

**Kentish believes that eye contact is key to a happier way of life.**

“The problem is not God, the problem is religion and politics, it's spiritual politics. There are too many people on the planet, they’re not planting enough stuff, they’re not renewing enough stuff to feed the people, and they’re saving money that doesn't really exist.”

Kentish ran for Mayor of the city twice back in the 1980s and once in 1990 for the council. Although he wasn't successful on the ballot, it didn’t prevent him becoming the Mayor of Mystic Beach.

“When I ran for Mayor, I thought, how come we hire you guys to run our country, and in bad times, I have never heard any of you say, ‘Hey, let's take a drop in pay, let's take a 10 percent drop.’

Asked what he would do now if he were Mayor for a day, he replies:

“I would put all the people living with mental illness in some secure place. You have to get the virus out of the system, but you don't have to walk past a homeless person and smirk. Love is not a thing; it's an action. Love is the unconditional desire to do good. ‘I love you because you're beautiful’, that's nonsense. ‘I love you because I want the best things ever to happen to you’. Hate is the opposite. Love takes work, and anything worth having should take work.”

Until the weather warms up enough to make Mystic bloom again in late April, a typical day for him now, is writing. He has over 300 different stories, each itching to tell their tale.

His wife is collating them from his website, which is an intriguing mix of music, philosophy and humour. I ask if all three are equally important to him.

“I don't think there's a difference; music is just how you convey it, humour is keeping yourself in check, and philosophy is listening to all of it.”

I chuckle and I thank him for that astute response. Our conversation draws to a close, and my final prompt is: his one wish for the world?

“That we would be all equal. I'm talking about soul, and spirit, we're all a configuration of spirit. Within that spirit is also the mind that creates the intelligence to put those blocks together and stick them together. It's energy that gives power to that force that we all have access to. I won't say it's a wonderful world, but all I can do is do good. Smile with people, tell people jokes, sing for people, dance for people and hug people, I’m the luckiest guy on this planet.”

A soul man in every sense. Kentish Steele : superhero name, superhero nature.

To learn more about Kentish Steele visit his website here.