B. Denham Jolly

Jolly was born in Negril, Jamaica, where he attended Cornwall College. He studied at McGill University, graduating in 1955 with a degree in science.

Jolly returned to Jamaica after graduation and conducted research about nutrition for the government of Jamaica. He later moved to Canada and gathered information about air pollution for Metropolitan Toronto. After studying and obtaining a teaching certificate, Jolly taught science at Forest Hill Collegiate in Toronto.

Jolly started into business by buying a rooming house, in which he lived. He went on to purchase a Day’s Inn hotel, nursing homes in Texas and Mississauga, and two medical laboratories.

In 1982 Jolly bought and published of the newspaper Contrast. That year he also founded and led the Black Business and Professional Association. He was also active in the civil rights organizations and spoke out on social justice issues as a member of the Black Action Defence Committee.

Jolly launched Canada's first Black-owned radio station FLOW 93.5 CFXJ-FM through his company Milestone Communications. The fight to get the license took a dozen years and his struggle was featured in the Washington Post as an example of racial barriers in Canada. and the Toronto Star. The license was finally awarded in June 2000. It was supported by both the Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun, which ran an editorial saying that "At long last the dinosaurs at the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission have admitted Toronto needs a black-owned urban format station on the FM dial."

FLOW 93.5 went on air in February 2001. The station Black-owned, and played and actively promoted Canada’s Black musicians, including Drake and Shad. It aired as a mixture of talk and music, including O.T.A. (On the Air) Live!, a weekly interview program with hip hop artists. FLOW 93.5 devoted airtime to black-oriented music and provided opportunities for many black Canadians in the radio industry.

In 2005 FLOW won the Station of the Year Award in the Contemporary Hit Radio category at the Canadian Music Week Industry Awards. That year Jolly invested in a radio station in Edmonton, called The Bounce.

Jolly was on the boards of the YMCA and the Toronto International Film Festival and he has won awards for his cultural contributions including the Black Media Pioneer Award. the African Canadian Lifetime Achievement Award and the Canadian Urban Institute's City Soul Award in 2006. In 2007 he was presented with a Black History Award from the Markham African Caribbean Association.

In 2008 Jolly donated $50,000 towards the endowment of the Jean Augustine Chair in Education in the New Urban Environment at York University.

Jolly sold his radio holdings in 2011 for $27 millon. He then invested US$750,000 in a real estate development project in Barbados.

His memoir, In the Black: My Life is set to be published in February 2017 by ECW Press.

The City of Toronto, on February 28, 2017, the final day of Black History Month, announced the naming of a street in a new Scarborough sub-division in honour of Mr. Denham Jolly, a Black pioneer in Canada’s radio broadcasting industry. “Jolly Way” will commemorate the exceptional contributions to Canada of Denham Jolly. Jolly Way is located near the southwest corner of Midland Avenue and Ellesmere Avenue, in a residential neighbourhood under development by the Goldman Group. “It is most appropriate that approval to name a street after Mr. Jolly has come through today, the last day of Black History Month 2017,” said Councillor Michael Thompson, Chair of Toronto’s Economic Development Committee. “Mr. Jolly has been instrumental in giving voice to the culture, achievements, challenges and aspirations of Toronto’s Black and Caribbean communities when few channels for such messages were available,” Thompson added.