Held on Fathers Day, the event honored two leaders and fathers from the Accompong Town Maroons; Lloyd Eluid Rowe, who passed away earlier in March of this year and Samuel Nathaniel Rowe, the father of current Deputy Colonel Norma Rowe- Edwards, and the main subject of the book My Father Said. 

The film Re-membering Maroonage is a short documentary about African Diasporic travels through time and cultures, across waters and blood. It follows the journey of Canadian-born Ashley Alexis McFarlane, as she returns to Jamaica for the annual January 6th celebration in Accompong and learns about the community where her grandfather Eddie Salmon was born and grew up. Interviews with local historians, spiritual leaders, healers, youth, family members, and political leaders narrate this personal journey about reconnecting to past memories in order to understand one's life and self. The film was produced with the support of the youth from the Accompong community, who helped create questions, conduct interviews and operate the camera. 

The documentary has already been screened in Accompong Town and at the Charlestown International Maroon Conference in Jamaica in June 2012. The film was inspired by a visit from Eluid Rowe in 2007. Ashley was studying abroad at the University of the West Indies, when her Uncle Eluid Rowe, and master drummer, came to her campus and told her that she was maroon. Eluid is featured in interviews and footage in the documentary. His funeral was held in April in Accompong. This event will give family and friends of Eluid the opportunity to celebrate his life here in Toronto. 

"My Father Said "By Norma Rowe-Edwards is the first book about the Accompong Maroons, written by an Accompong Maroon. It tells the personal and historical story of Norma Rowe-Edward's - relationship with her father. Norma Rowe-Edwards is the current Deputy Colonel (akin to Vice President) of the Accompong Town Maroons, one of the many maroon communities in Jamaica. Jamaican Maroons are a sovereign group of enslaved Africans who escaped into the hills of Jamaica and embarked on an 80-year war with the British for their freedom. The result was the second successful rebellion of Africans in the Caribbean and the signing of a Peace Treaty. My Father Said is a personal look at peoples often distorted or left out of historical texts. 

We understand there will be a second screening soon.