Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Nòyaa Mantsè) is William Dawson Associate Professor of U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University. His book, Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press, 2023), is the first and only work of scholarship to receive concomitant commendations in United States, African American, African and African Diaspora, and Canadian history, including The Governor General’s History Award for Scholarly Research.
On 27 October 2025, I enjoyed the immense honour of delivering the Convocation address to graduands of St. Michael’s, Innis, New, Trinity, and University colleges. Meeting, conversing, and rejoicing with students and their loved ones, as well as staff and faculty, at the institution where I matured intellectually and which has had a profound impact on my trajectory is hard to encapsulate fully. For starters, it is difficult for anyone to stand out at a place like the University of Toronto, where academic excellence (and competitiveness) abounds, so, naturally, I certainly gave no indication to anyone, including myself as an undergraduate, that I would one day serve as a source of inspiration to new graduates.
Although I love visiting campus, I matriculated at the U of T and St. Mike’s with the usual anxieties of a first-year undergraduate. Compounding my situation, however, was that I came from a low-income, immigrant household. Poverty and other circumstances in neo-colonial West Africa capped my parents’ education at junior high. University life, therefore, not only mystified, but also intimidated me. It felt like an ecosystem for which I needed more familiarity before beginning my studies. I recall peers in seminars who looked acclimated and sounded polished, having attended prep schools, such as Upper Canada College, the Abelard, U of T Schools, and other bastions of learning. And as the only young Black man in almost all my lectures and seminars, my sense of alienation and displacement grew.
My discomfort notwithstanding, neither capitulation nor hopelessness entered my thought process. These sentiments, in fact, fuelled my ambition to succeed and resolve to overcome my anxieties. I remember reasoning, for example, how I could permit my insecurities (some of which stemmed from real structural inequities) to dictate my future, considering that my parents would have done everything in their power to have had the luxury of a world-class university education. That is when I made a concerted effort to attend office hours regularly to know all my professors and teaching assistants, a decision that paid dividends immediately. The more acquainted I became with my instructors, the more comfortable I felt as an undergraduate, attending events and completing assignments on campus as a commuter student who travelled at least one hour to the St. George campus sometimes from Mississauga and other times from North York. Kelly Library, Brennan Hall, and Robarts became sanctuaries. That St. Mike’s housed the Multicultural History Society of Ontario also strengthened my affinity for the College.
With this new sense of belonging and purpose, I moulded my courses and majors for a career in international diplomacy and security. Having developed a penchant for research and analysis under the tutelage of generous professors, I wrote three senior theses, two of which examined child soldiers in West Africa and global nuclear non-proliferation, respectively. My career aspiration changed, however, as I evaluated the consequences on my community of what the Toronto media infamously called “the Year of the Gun” in December 2005. This watershed event culminated in a record number of gun-related homicides, most of whom were Black boys and young men from inner-city neighbourhoods. That sophomore year remains a standout for me: I enrolled in my first Black history class, a yearlong lecture course (HIS 294) on the Caribbean Basin, which unearthed and illuminated the Indigenous past before European contact, transatlantic slavery, and the enduring African imprint on the region and Hemisphere. Incidentally, my first and only undergraduate Black professor, Dr. Sheldon Taylor, taught that class. He became a beloved friend and mentor.
After my sophomore year, which overlapped the Year of the Gun, I went from thinking and dreaming internationally to planning and acting locally, founding an after-school program to mentor the youth in my housing complex and to steer them away from gang culture. It helped, too, that I belonged to a College that inculcated a spirit of service. Combining my interest in community development and social change with my burgeoning passion for African Diaspora and United States history placed me on my current career path. I had the fortune of receiving several scholarships and honours, including St. Mike’s Father Robert Madden Leadership Award at the June 2008 commencement.
Despite my somewhat precarious start, I remain thrilled about the rigour of my undergraduate education. Unbeknownst to me then, St. Mike’s and U of T prepared me to compete not only with Canada’s best and brightest, but also the world’s. After earning my M.A. in Political Science and Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies in 2009, also at the U of T, I worked full-time in youth gang prevention and intervention in north Toronto, advocating in behalf of friends, family, peers, and some of the city’s most forgotten and disadvantaged teenagers. These seminal years in the trenches taught me that I must buttress my education with intensive doctoral training on the genesis and struggles of African peoples in North America—if I desired lasting impact. And thus began my seven-year doctoral, pre-doctoral, and post-doctoral odyssey in New England that took me across North America, Africa, and Europe, conducting scholarly research, and building institutions to champion the most marginalized.
In my travels—and travails—I returned to campus intermittently, always visiting St. Mike’s, reflecting often on how much I have grown, and appreciating my struggles as a low-income, first-generation high school graduate. And, now as a father, I relish any opportunity to bring my son to the campus where instructors inspired me, where I played intramural basketball with fellow hoopers from St. Mike’s, and where I began flirting with the thought of pursuing an academic career—a possibility that I had never considered. How one starts a journey, indeed, is no indication of where they will go and when or how they will finish. The journey is how we find our stride.
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