Canada Seminar

"The Only Airline You'll Ever Love": Air Jamaica and the Paradoxes of Postcolonial Mobility

Marlene Gaynair, William Lyon Mackenzie King Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Canada Program

Marlene Gaynair is a cultural historian of the modern Black Atlantic, with a focus on North America and the Caribbean in the twentieth century. As a WLMK fellow, she is working on her book manuscript about Jamaican migration and settlement in urban Canada and the United States.

In the post-independence period, Air Jamaica emerged as a symbol of national pride and postcolonial sovereignty – a national airline for a modern nation. However, the airline's history is a complex one, shaped by competing forces of neocolonial extraction, economic development, and political autonomy. This talk explores how Air Jamaica, as a migratory infrastructure, simultaneously facilitated the formation of a diasporic cosmopolitan identity and served as a vehicle for foreign control and influence. 

Drawing on archival sources, including government documents, periodicals, oral histories, and material culture, this talk examines the intricate relationship between the Canadian and Jamaican governments during the first decade of Air Jamaica's existence. I also focus upon Air Jamaica's passengers, from American tourists to Jamaicans living in the diaspora, in order to understand how the airline's distinctive branding and identity promoted Jamaican culture, and challenged the perception of a monolithic Jamaican identity.

From the airline's inception in 1968, Air Jamaica Limited relied heavily on the investment and technical expertise from Air Canada, the Canadian national airline and Air Jamaica's minority owner. While the Canadian government initially presented itself as a middle ground, not the neocolonial hegemon of United States or the former colonial power of Great Britain, it needed Air Jamaica in order to access the lucrative Caribbean routes and tourism markets without renegotiating new bilaterial aviation agreements. Partnering with Air Jamaica and the Jamaican government gave Air Canada and the Canadian government neocolonial access with anticolonial branding without the political costs of a formal empire.

Ultimately, this talk invites us to reconsider the complicated legacies of colonialism and the ongoing struggles for Jamaican self-determination in the twenty-first century. 

Image: Air Jamaica DC-9 And Flight Attendants Postcard, 1975. Credit: Air Jamaica, Internet Archive.