Learning The Basics Of Canadian Black History

Filling in significant gaps in our national narrative should begin in the classroom

- Linton Garner

Who came to mind when you first heard the term Black History Month? Like many of you, I thought of Martin Luther King Jr., the American civil rights icon; Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man in the white-only section of the bus she rode home from work; and Jackie Robinson, who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball. Being a black man of American origins, that seemed perfectly natural to me—except for the fact I had been living in Canada for at least 30 years the first time I was faced with that question.

Now in my 53rd year here in Canada, I think of Viola Desmond, who nine years before Ms. Parks refused to give up her seat, refused to sit in the “coloured only” section of her local movie theatre in Halifax. In fact, I think of many others now, such as Lincoln Alexander from Hamilton, the first black person elected to Parliament; Rose Fortune of Annapolis Royal, N.S., a black woman who in the 1790s became Canada’s first policewoman; and Melville Duporte, a black man who is considered by the Canadian government to be “a Person of Historical Significance,” due to the fact that he trained more than 50 per cent of Canada’s entomologists during his 70-year teaching career at McGill University.