Storyteller with Purpose: Arnold Pinnock

Credit to Author: Canadian Immigrant| Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 18:41:28 +0000

English-born Canadian actor of Jamaican origin Arnold Pinnock is the co-creator of Canada’s largest Black-led television production.

“To those coming to Canada, I want to say that there were people who had laid the foundations for us, and we should put them on a pedestal, because they have paved the roads and helped us to be in the position that we are now,” English-born Canadian actor Arnold Pinnock says.

Pinnock is co-creator, executive producer and writer of the new CBC original series The Porter. Pinnock also plays the character “Glenford” in the country’s biggest Black-led television production that is inspired by real events. Set in the 1920s, it presents untold stories of Black Canadians, including Black train porters and Black Cross Nurses, their dreams and ambitions, and their essential role in forming many Black communities across Canada. The series also reveals the events that gave birth to the world’s first Black union.

Arnold Pinnock as the character Glenford with additional cast of The Porter. Photo by Porter Inc. / Sienna Films, courtesy of CBC.

Pinnock relates the journeys and struggles of the characters in The Porter to the journey of his own family and praises his parents for being an example of dedication, endurance, hard work and courage – qualities and character traits that helped him adapt to Canada and find success.

Pinnock was born in the U.K. to a family of Jamaican immigrants. His parents were part of the so-called ‘Windrush generation’ – people from Caribbean countries who were brought to the UK after WW2 to fill the shortages in the labour market. These people played an important role in rebuilding the country; however, they faced prejudice, racism and discrimination.

Pinnock’s mother was a nurse and his father worked at a factory in Birmingham. Race riots in the ’70s forced the Pinnocks to look for a better country for themselves and their five children and, in 1975, they moved to Canada where Pinnock’s mother’s brothers lived. Arnold was seven years old at that time.

“The first year in Toronto we stayed with my uncle’s family,” he remembers. “They had four kids, so it was a family of six and we were seven. So imagine a house full of kids, teenagers and adults – that was pretty crazy. And we lived like this until my parents eventually managed to afford to rent our own home.

“It must have been really tough for them, but all what they were doing showed me how persistent they were, how determined they were to build a new life for us here in Canada. And I can see where my own persistency comes from – I have learned it from them,” he says.

For Pinnock and his siblings, adapting to Canada was not easy either. Coming from Birmingham, UK, they spoke the Brummie dialect, which, as Pinnock explains, is sometimes hard for people from other parts of England to understand, and in Canada, it became an even more serious barrier to communicating with others.

Going to school was a painful experience for Pinnock. “I think every young kid coming from a different part of the world to Canada can relate with what we were dealing with. They say that kids can be really mean – they really can be mean,” he says.

Fitting in was a challenge. “I found it extremely tough to find friends and to fit in. I didn’t have the fanciest clothes. The first day of school my parents put me in the uniform that I used to wear in England, so there I was, going to a public school with a tie, in my grey pants, my kind of cardigan… and the public school kids were like, ‘What the hell is this?’” Showing compassion, however, wasn’t his parents’ strategy. “As immigrants who had grown up in the Caribbean and lived the hardships of England, their reaction was, ‘Toughen up!’ or ‘Stiff upper lip!’ I would say I didn’t want to go back to school, and they would reply, ‘You’re going back there tomorrow, and you are going to get tougher and tougher and tougher! You’re going to deal with it because this is where we are! And you are better than them!’ So, as I was listening to this, every day got better. The bullies wouldn’t pick on me that much. My strong Brummie accent turned into a something positive – after a while the other kids kind of liked it,” he says.

Being athletic helped Pinnock become more popular at school, but he knew from a very early age he wanted to be an actor. “We were pretty poor,” he explains, “and we obviously had really difficult times, but when we sat around this little apparatus we called ‘the tele’ to watch comedy, sports, drama, it was our family moment, and it was when we felt happiest. And so I used to say I wanted to be on tele – because it made us laugh, it made us cheer, it just brought so many emotions to us.”

Pinnock began his career with sketch comedy at Toronto’s Second City Mainstage. Following his passion for television and film, and armed with persistence, Pinnock has now built a career that spans over three decades. His acting credits include Exit Wounds (starring Steven Segal) and Cold Pursuit (with Liam Neeson), and roles in TV series including Altered Carbon (Netflix), Life with Derek (Disney) and Baroness von Sketch Show (CBC).

Pinnock is excited about his future projects – after The Porter he hopes to continue showcasing the perspectives of visible minorities. “I think there are so many stories about Canada, not just from a Black perspective, but from a multitude of perspectives. And not just about the past, but in the here and now, across the country,” he says. “We can dramatize them in TV series, or in movies, or in plays – and I think we are in a place right now where people are asking to tell these stories and they are listening to them too.”

Pinnock believes that telling these stories will empower immigrants and their children, make them feel proud of their origins and inspire them to pursue their dreams.

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