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Actress Tonya Williams was just 15 years old when she and her mother first stepped into Azan’s Hair Salon on Davenport Road. Having spent most of her life to date in predominantly white communities, the 1975 visit marked a pivotal moment for Williams, formerly on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” “An establishment filled with Black people, everyone hustling and bustling,” she recalled.

A “larger-than-life” figure approached her and her mother. “I remember how he put one hand into my hair,” Williams said. “It was a confident hand, and it felt to me that my hair recognized it was in good hands.



” That man was Kemeel Azan, the owner of Azan’s, one of the first Black hair salons in Toronto. Azan died Aug. 15 2023, but his memorial was postponed to accommodate people coming from overseas.

Notable attendees included Jean Augustine, the first Black woman to serve as a member of Parliament, former Toronto journalist JoJo Chintoh and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. “Think of all the people that he hired and all the loyal customers that followed,” Chow said in her speech. Born in Clarendon, Jamaica, on Feb.

4, 1938, Kemeel Pethro Azan was gregarious and hardworking, according to his youngest son, Khalil Azan. At 19, not long after graduating high school, he immigrated to Toronto. In Canada, where there was a demand for cheap labour, Azan worked various jobs including as a Canadian National Railway porter.

It was while doing that job when he first had th.

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