“Where anti-Blackness is not expressed as wanton violence against Black people, it is often expressed as a complete disregard for the histories, the lives and the voices of Black people.”

Philip S. S. Howard

This unit explores the largely unacknowledged role Black people played in the building of Canada as a nation state. The erasure of this history contributes to the denial of the history of anti-Black racism in Canada and its connection to anti-Black oppression and marginalization in present day Canada. In line with Afua Cooper’s “acts of resistance” (Cooper, 2007) this unit foregrounds the role of Black people as active agents in the making of their own history, highlighting historical figures and recognizing that Black history is Canadian history. 

Importantly, “Black Canadians and their communities have been a part of shaping Canada’s heritage and identity since the arrival of Mathieu Da Costa, a navigator, and interpreter, whose presence in Canada dates back to the early 1600s. The role of Black Canadians and their communities in Canada has largely been ignored as a key part of Canada’s history. There is little mention that some of the Loyalists who came here after the American Revolution and settled in the Maritimes were people of African descent, nor the fact that many soldiers of African descent made many sacrifices in wartime as far back as the War of 1812. Few people in Canada are aware of the fact that African people were once enslaved in the territory that is now known as Canada, or of how those who fought enslavement helped to lay the foundation of Canada” (Government of Canada).

Peggy Bristow notes, “Black  communities  emerged  in  Canada  during  the  period  of European expansion  and  empire,  the  conquest  of  aboriginal  peoples,  and  as  a  consequence  of  the transatlantic  slave  trade,  with  the  first  slaves arriving  in  New  France.  Historian  James  Walker points out that between 1628 and the first decade of the nineteenth century, approximately 3,000 people of African origin were held as slaves in what is now Canada, their status duly noted in the legal documents of the times” (Bristow, 2007, p. 19).

Key Concepts

• Systemic racism – Defining and addressing systemic racism as it relates to anti-Black racism is important to the course. Through examining the lives of key individuals in Canadian history, students will learn about the history of anti-Black racism, not in abstract terms, but rather its profound consequences for Black people in areas such as employment, education, political representation, and criminal justice, past and present.
• Black subjugation – We will explore how widespread anti-racism practices can lead to the silencing of Black voices. Different forms of segregation have functioned to maintain a separate and unequal role for Black persons in Canada  (Maynard, 2017). The ongoing subjugation or control of Black voices has been and continues to be justified by portraying Black people as a disturbance and linking them to negative stereotypes.
• Slavery in Canada – The existence of slavery within Canada is widely ignored throughout mainstream academia and Canadian history books. This has created a false narrative among Canadians that Canada is a utopian society. The norms established under slavery that positioned Black people as less than in society continued to be supported in Canada’s immigration and employment practices throughout and beyond the 20th century.
• Black resiliency – “Black resiliency meant that Black men, women, and children survived [and thrived] inside the nation despite being a largely unwanted population” (Maynard, 2017). While this unit will explore Canada’s violent past, it will also prioritize celebrating the achievements of Black Canadians in spite of the discrimination they faced. The history of Black Canadians is not only characterized by constant struggle. Writer and public speaker Bee Quammie says “Blackness isn’t a burden, the burden is living in an anti-Black society.”

References

Bristow, Peggy. (2007). A Duty to the Past, a Promise to the Future: Black Organizing in Windsor—The Depression, World War II, and the Post-War Years. Journal of Black Canadian Studies, 2(1)

Cooper, Afua. (2007). Acts of Resistance: Black Men and Women Engage Slavery in Upper Canada, 1793-1803. Ontario History, 99(1), 5-17.

Follert, J. (2021). It’s OK to not have all the answers: Bee Quammie has tips for talking anti-Black racism with kids. The Record. Available at: https://www.therecord.com/local-oshawa/news/2021/03/17/it-s-ok-to-not-have-all-the-answers-bee-quammie-has-tips-for-talking-anti-black-racism-with-kids.html

Government of Canada. (2022). About Black History Month. Available at: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/black-history-month/about.html

Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives: State Violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood Publishing.