Cynics Unlimited

Anybody who was in Toronto in 1994 will remember the Just Desserts case. On April 5 of that year, three young Black men entered a cafe in the downtown area intending to carry out an armed robbery. In the process one of the patrons, a Greek-Canadian girl named Georgina Leimonis, was shot and killed.

The shooting generated outrage throughout the city. The indignation grew further when it was discovered that one of the suspects, “Tiger” O’Neil Grant, had earlier been ordered deported to his native Jamaica for committing a series of crimes, including assault with a weapon. While he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in connection with the Just Desserts incident, in 2002 he was sent back to the country in which he was born.

O’Neil Grant’s name surfaced once again at the beginning of this month. In the November 12 issue of the Toronto Star, Sandro Contenta reported that Grant had been shot dead in Kingston, Jamaica on October 29 2007. His murder has remained unsolved: some speculated that the shooting was ordered from Toronto, others that Grant, who was romantically involved with two women at the same time, was killed as part of a love triangle.

Contenta portrayed O’Neil Grant as a good boy who had taken a few wrong turns along the way. Though Contenta admitted that before the Just Desserts acquittal Grant had not been a model immigrant, he had since then shaped up, caring for his aged grandmother, finding a steady job, and, perhaps more importantly, not racking up any criminal record in Jamaica. Grant had always hoped to return to Canada, “the greatest country in the world” in his own words, and felt betrayed by the Canadian justice system that ultimately deported him. The Star article contained a photograph of Grant’s youngest child, a baby born five days after his death, as if to remind readers of those he left behind.

A much more inflammatory piece appeared in Toronto’s NOW Magazine by senior editor Enzo DiMatteo. Asking rhetorically “Should the pols who ran Just Desserts accused out of town bear some blame for O’Neil Grant’s fate?, DiMatteo depicted Grant as a scapegoat for the “anti-black immigration hysteria” fomented by the police and ruling class following the Just Desserts incident. In addition Grant was supposedly traumatized by his nearly six-year stay in the Don Jail while awaiting trial. DiMatteo cast particular blame on former Immigration Minister Sergio Marchi, who stated that Grant should have been deported long before the shooting.

On the other side of the spectrum, in an article in the Toronto Sun Joe Warmington scoffed at the portrayal of O’Neil Grant as a victim, either in life or in death. The real victim, according to Warmington, was Georgina Leimonis. Warmington spoke scathingly of efforts by friends and family to bring Grant’s body back to Canada for burial.

I have followed the Just Desserts case since its beginning (incidentally, at the time it occurred I was house-sitting for a friend just around the corner from the cafe), so I will make some comments on the three stories mentioned above. It is true that as in the Jane Creba murder eleven years later, White racists used Georgina Leimonis’ death to grind their own axes, although unlike Enzo DiMatteo I don’t believe they were spurred on by politicians or the police. For example, at a makeshift memorial for her at the site someone left a sign saying, “Kill your own. Leave us alone.” (Ironically, at the beginning of the last century some American White Supremacists opposed immigration by Greeks and other groups such as Jews and Syrians on the grounds that the United States should be for the”White man.”)

I have trouble with DiMatteo’s and Contenta’s picture of O’Neil Grant as a victim. If Grant really did turn his life around as Contenta claimed, he (Grant) should be given some credit. Yet even if Grant did not pull the trigger of the gun that caused Leimonis’ demise, surely he knew what his companions were doing when they set foot in the Just Desserts café and was aware that in any armed robbery the chances of someone getting killed or seriously injured are high. While he expressed bitterness over what he saw as a betrayal by the Canadian authorities, Grant never once appeared to express sympathy for Georgina Leimonis or her family. I might feel sorry for Grant over the fact he died violently at a young age, but not over his inability to return to Canada. Similarly questionable, in my view, was the notion perpetrated by DiMatteo and Contenta that Grant was shipped to a “strange country” (i.e. Jamaica). In fact Grant had spent most of his formative years there (he came to Canada at the age of twelve) and was familiar with the language and culture of that nation, which are basically the same as those of Anglophone Canada. It is not as if Grant had been deported to Japan, a country with a completely different culture which does not even use the same writing system as Canada and most other Western nations.

On other hand, I’m not completely in tune with Joe Warmingtonâ’s portrayal of Grant as if he were second in command to Satan himself. Grant was after all acquitted of any direct responsibility in Leimonis’ death. I also believe that if Grant’s family wants to bring his body back to Canada, they should be free to do so (how dangerous is a dead man?) as long as they pay for the expenses out of their own, as opposed to the taxpayers’, pocket.

With regard to Enzo DiMatteo’s question - should the politicians who sent Grant back to Jamaica be held morally and/or legally responsible for his death - my answer is a resounding no. As I’ve written in a previous essay, individuals found guilty of a crime committed in a country not their own (that is, of which they are not citizens) forfeit their right to reside there. Canada was right to deport him, and I’ll even agree with Sergio Marchi, of whom I was by the way no great fan, that Grant should have been thrown out much earlier. Not that it would have saved Leimonis’ life, but at the very least it would have spared us the expense of keeping Grant in prison and putting him on trial.

These are my observations on the story of O’Neil Grant. Please feel free to add your own.