More than 500 people packed Cornerstone Community Church on Sunday night for Niagara-on-the-Lake’s first major concert in a decade honouring seasonal agricultural workers, several months after Hurricane Melissa devastated much of Jamaica and left over 100 local farmworkers from Jamaica unable to reach their families for weeks.
The 2026 Welcome Concert, held May 31 by Niagara Workers Welcome, marked the 60th anniversary of Canada’s seasonal agricultural workers program and returned the Toronto Mass Choir to the stage for the first time since 2016.
The concert was meant to be a bright spot for some agricultural workers from Jamaica, which endured two destructive hurricane seasons back to back. Hurricane Melissa last fall battered the island nation, cutting off communication between workers in Niagara and their families back home, and leaving some communities still without hydro.
That storm came as the country was still recovering from Hurricane Beryl, a storm that devastated parts of the island in July 2024.
Organizer Jane Andres spent four months co-ordinating transportation from farms and bunkhouses across the region to get workers to the event.
“When the hurricane hit last fall, there was still over 100 men still here,” said Andres, who has organized farmworker outreach in NOTL since 2005.
“For two or three of those weeks, those men were not able to get in touch with their families. They didn’t know if they were even alive. They didn’t know if they had a house to go back to.”
Andres and other local residents responded by showing up at farms, bringing food and raising funds for headlamps and solar battery packs to send home with workers when they returned to Jamaica. She said some workers’ families still have no electricity.
She said the goal this year shifted from previous concerts, which focused on connecting workers with the broader Niagara-on-the-Lake community.
“It’s to provide them an hour and a half of respite from all their worries and just to know that they’re part of a community that cares,” she said.
Andres launched the concert series in 2007 after discovering that Niagara-on-the-Lake had never publicly welcomed or thanked its migrant farm workers, despite decades of their labour sustaining local agriculture and wineries.
Former lord mayor Gary Burroughs delivered the welcome at that inaugural event and returned Sunday for the 60th anniversary.
The concerts ran annually from 2007 through 2019, shifting from concerts to large outdoor picnics from 2017 onward before COVID-19 halted gatherings altogether.
“It was about breaking down some of the barriers that existed, breaking down some of the stereotypes of which there were many, and just providing an opportunity for locals to say thank you,” said Andres.
During the pandemic, Andres and her family converted their home into a donation hub, sorting and distributing clothing to workers in quarantine.
Workers arriving for this year’s season come from communities in St. Elizabeth parish, among the areas hit hardest by last fall’s Hurricane Melissa. Andres said winds reached 405 kilometres an hour in the Black River area, destroying buildings that had stood for three centuries.
She said she visited every bunkhouse in the weeks before the concert to distribute posters and check on workers’ families.
Professional videographers who have documented the concert series since 2007 recorded Sunday’s event. Andres said the footage will air on Jamaican television within a couple of months.
