In 2018, Canada made a historic decision to feature Viola Desmond on the $10 bill. In 1946, Desmond refused to leave the implicitly whites-only section of a movie theatre, leading to her being fined and jailed. Her case is often credited with having helped kickstart the Canadian civil rights movement. She is the first Black person, and first the Canadian woman, to stand alone on one of Canada’s banknotes.
This was a watershed moment in the public perception and recognition of Black Canadian history. Unfortunately, there are still instances when Viola Desmond is referred to as “Canada’s Rosa Parks.” This is a common theme in Canada. Our proximity to a country with a sociopolitical influence like the US has often meant we adopt aspects of their history at the expense of learning about our own. During Black History Month, many of us will be exposed to stories of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the aforementioned Rosa Parks, due to their prominence in American media, which has a tendency to seep into our country. In Canada, these figures often take centre stage at the expense of championing the Black civil rights activists who fought for equality domestically. Viola Desmond, as well as many other Canadian civil rights activists, such as Charles Daniels and Lulu Anderson, who were both denied entry to theatres in Alberta, have for too long remained in the shadows of civil rights activists south of the border.
This isn’t to say that the US’ civil rights movement shouldn’t be taught — the stories of freedom fighters in the US should be acknowledged — but it definitely shouldn’t be the focal narratives in Canada. Centring US stories erases the champions of Canada’s civil rights movement and creates a situation where accountability for the oppression of Black people in Canada goes unaddressed. This gives Canadians a false sense of their state’s innocence, as it allows them to focus on the injustices abroad in which they did not explicitly participate. This serves to erase the long, uncomfortable history of systemic oppression of Black people in Canada. Centring American history comes at the expense of acknowledging that segregation in some Canadian public schools continued until the 1980s.
We talk about Harlem at the expense of Africville.
Centring Black Canadian history during Black History Month is crucial to rightfully celebrate Black Canadian civil rights activists whose contributions have not been recognized as much as the work by their American counterparts. In doing so, we situate Black Canadians who fought for civil rights in our country as being a visible part of our cultural fabric, rather than a mere spillover of the movement in the US. Finally, confronting these elements of Canada’s past creates important and necessary dialogue about the realities of discrimination still felt by Black people in Canada.
