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Research Prompt #5 - Anti/Blackness in Canada

Prakash Krishnan, Concordia University

Canada is a nation founded upon a legacy of colonial, imperialism, and the exploitation of wealth, resources, lands, waters. Included in this exploitation has been the extracted labour from Black and Indigenous people. The enslavement of Black peoples in Canada dates back to the early 17th century and was a legal and practiced institution until 1834. Through to present day, Black individuals and communities in Canada continue to be oppressed by systemic racism, which is perpetuated in part by legacies of Canada’s history of enslavement, racist and anti-Black immigration policies, stereotyping in media representation, and overarching white supremacy.

In 2020, there was resurgent mainstream and national media coverage of anti-Blackness protests and movements. While anti-Blackness ideologies are globally pervasive, experiences of Blackess are individuated based on various factors including, but not limited to, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. It is crucial to note the ways in which Canada’s unique history of colonialism, slavery, immigration laws, and anti-Black racism contributes to specific formulations of Black and anti-Black experiences. These experiences differ from the dominant media depictions of diasporic Black life that typical centre Black individuals and communities living in the Unites States, England, and the Carribbean. Consequently, it is especially important to consider how the lives, histories, struggles, and successes of Black communities in Canada, Black Canadians, and Black women and femmes in particular, have shaped our understanding of Canadian histories and societies altogether. For this reason, films centering non-Canadian Black experiences are not included in this list.

The list of CESIF films provided in this research prompt is short. In searching the CESIF site, only five films responded to the specificity of this prompt looking for traces of Black Canadian communities, histories, and movements. For that reason, I have listed additional film and archival resources to direct researchers to some of the existing materials on Black life and culture. It is important to note that the limited materials relating to Black Canadian life and history is not a result of an oversight. Rather, it forms part of the systemic erasure of Black Canadian history, identity, and community which in turn informs the larger projects of anti-Blackness and white supremacy.

The relative paucity of representations of ongoing Black struggles and fights for liberation and justice in Canada is symptomatic of this nation’s racist roots. Without an expansion of representations and documentation of Black life in Canada, we become complicit in these racist projects that continue to perpetuate harm to those already oppressed. Accordingly, this prompt and short guide is an attempt to begin to take stock of the existing record, to take account of the absences, and to reintroduce some of these films and stories into public, scholarly, and artistic consciousness. In this historical project, it is essential to ask,  whose stories are we reanimating and whose are lost?  


CESIF Films by Title

Fields of Endless Day

(1978, English, Sound, Colour, 16mm, 59 min)

Fields of Endless Day, 1978

Accession Number: 1978.0042
Sponsor: NA
Producers: Ontario Educational Communications Authority; National Film Board of Canada : Office national du film du Canada; Beryl Fox; Don Hopkins; Nick Ketchum; Terence Macartney-Filgate; Jennifer Hodge
Distributor: TV Ontario
Holding Institutions: University of Toronto, Toronto (16mm); York University, Toronto(16mm, VHS); Ryerson University, Toronto (VHS); University of Western Ontario, London (VHS); Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (3/4").
Description: According to Library and Archives Canada, “In a series of dramatic and documentary episodes, Fields of Endless Day outlines the presence of Black people in Canada, from the 17th century to the wartime participation and activist groups of the first half of the 20th century. The film seeks to uncover the “roots” of Canada’s Black population, tracing the history of their struggles and triumphs over a period of almost three hundred and seventy-five years.”
Commentary: The film offers a broad overview of the history and struggles of Black people in Canada as a result of racism. It uses overhead, omniscient narration, illustrations, dramatic reenactments, and historical talking heads to illustrate various moments from Black Canadian history that are often omitted in greater discussion of Black and Canadian history. Although there are moments where the historical trauma that Black people faced are undercut in the narration. For example the line “most worked as domestics are treated well… for slaves”. It also positions Canada as a safe haven from Black people, ignoring many of the other atrocities Black people faced in Canada which often resulted in former US runaways returning to the US due to Canada’s inhospitability.
Notes: The film is produced and directed by Terence Macartney-Filgate. Oscar Peterson composed the music.
Watch Online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drt1qvTOZIU
CESIF Link: Fields of Endless Day

Hate

(1981, English, Sound, Black and White, 16mm, 25 min)
Accession Number: 1981.0017
Producer: Ryerson Polytechnical Institute
Holding Institution: University of Calgary, Calgary (16mm)
Description: According to the University of Calgary, “The film examines racial tensions in Canada and features interviews with Alexander McWhirter, head of the Ku Klux Klan; Richard Dildy, Black Nationalist and Louis Feldhammer of the Committee for Racial Equality.”
Commentary: There is not much information available on this film. However, that the film features interviews with the head Ku Klux Klan could suggest that it frames “the racial question” (from the University of Calgary description) as a point of debate or something to be argued.
CESIF Link: Hate

Home to Buxton

(1987, English, Sound, Colour, 16mm, 28 min)

Home to Buxton, 1987

Accession Number: 1987.0003
Producers: Prieto-McTair Productions; Don Haig; Claire Prieto
Distributor: McNabb Connolly
Holding Institution: York University, Toronto (16mm, VHS)
Description: According to York University, “The film uses the annual Labour Day homecoming to explore Buxton's role as a major Canadian destination for Blacks fleeing slavery in the American South on the Underground Railroad.” It puts into conversation the activities of the homecoming with historical education through overhead narration as well as interviews with knowledgeable residents.
Commentary: North Buxton in Southwestern Ontario was established in 1849 as a community for and by former Black slaves who had fled the United States vis the Underground Railroad seeking to gain freedom in Canada.  
Notes: The film’s producer and director Claire Prieto is known as one of the first Black filmmakers in Canada.
Watch Online: vimeo.com/39493696
CESIF Link: Home to Buxton

Music from the Stars

(1938, English, Sound, Black and White, 35mm, 11 min)
Accession Number: 1937.0017
Producers: Associated Screen News; B. E. Norrish
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (35mm, 16mm, VHS, digibeta)
Related Title: “Canadian Cameo” (series)
Description: The film is a recorded performance of Canadian composer Horace Lapp performing with his orchestra and featuring William “Bill” Morton and Madelaine Peddlar. A segment in blackface is depicted.  
Commentary: While this film does not depict the experiences of Black life in Canada, it provides evidence of the influence American racial, prejudicial in theatre and entertainment has had on Canadian society. While blackface and minstrelsy originated in the United States, Canada has not been immune to this kind of racist characturizing of Blackness. Furthermore, as an influential Canadian filmmaker, and one of the few active in the Canadian commercial film industry in the 1930s, having director Gordon Sparling legitimize minstrelsy in this film in indicative of the common attitudes of the time of accepted racist attitudes in Canadian urban society.
CESIF Link: Music from the Stars

The Little Black Bag

(1937, English, Sound, Black and White, 35mm, 11 min)
Accession Number: 1937.0005
Sponsor: Victorian Order of Nurses of Canada
Producer: Associated Screen News
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (35mm, VHS, digibeta)
Description: The film depicts the story of the Victorian Order of Nurses and their contribution to caring for the sick in city hospitals as well as in remote locations across Canada. Various acts of nursing and home care are shown with various nurses and families in different parts of Canada including the services of a Black family on the West coast and an Asian family in an Ontario Chinatown.
Commentary: Through overhead narration, it is mentioned that the Victorian Order of Nurses of Canada treats all people, regardless of race, nationality, or colour. While the statement is true, the narration over the scene depicting a nurse treating a Black family states that, “dark-skinned aliens are taught to care for their babies."This is extremely significant as a stark example of the roots and instatiations of medical and institutional racism. While all persons may receive care, it is not possible to say that all people receive the same standard of care. It is well documented in historical and contemporary literature that pervasive misconceptions of the Black body has led medical practitionners (at the time as well as now) to believe that Black patients do not feel pain to the same degree as white patients. These racist attitudes are the cause of Black suffering at the hands of health care professionals and care providers and contribute to the disproportionate rates of mortality for hospitalized Black people.

The use of the language of “aliens” is also telling of the ways in which Black people are seen as less-than-human. Unlike in the United States and the United Kindgom, the term “alien” is not used in federal statuses. Even in reference to foreign nationals or migrant communities, the prefacing of “aliens” with “dark-skinned” highlights how the child rearing education being provided is not meant to be an introduction to Canadian-style parenting, but an indictment that Black parents are inherently incapable of infant care. These kinds of programs aimed at correctional education are forms of anti-Black violence in that they attempt to eradicate cultural knowledges and practices in favour of the standards set by white society.
Notes: The film's production was financed by Cairine Wilson, Canada’s first female senator.
CESIF Link: The Little Black Bag


Non-CESIF Films Relevant for Researchers: Black History and Anti-Black Racism in Canada


Related Published Works

Flynn, Karen C. Moving beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Henry, Annette. 2018. “Power, Politics, Possibilities Thoughts Toward Creating a Black Digital Oral History Archive”. Language and Literacy 20 (3):89-99. doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29411.

Lobo, Rachel. "Archive as Prefigurative Space: Our Lives and Black Feminism in Canada." Archivaria 87 (2019): 68-86. muse.jhu.edu/article/724728.

Maynard, Robyn. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018.

Siemerling, Winfried. The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the past. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2015.

Walker, Barrington. "Exhuming the Archive: Black Slavery and Freedom in the Maritimes and Beyond." Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region / Revue D’histoire De La Region Atlantique 46, no. 2 (2017): 196-204. doi.org/10.1353/aca.2017.0026.


Archival and Museum Collections of Interest

Black Heritage Exhibits
Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia
10 Cherry Brook Road, Cherry Brook,
NS B2Z 1A8
web1.bccnsweb.com
“Established in 1983, to Protect, Preserve and Promote the history and culture of African Nova Scotians. The Centre is a museum and cultural gathering place, where the rich history of Nova Scotians of African Descent can be discovered and explored.”

Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen’s Park, Toronto,
ON  M5S 2C6
www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/here-we-are-here-black-canadian-contemporary-art
“Here We Are Here presents a blend of contemporary and historic art and artifacts intended to challenge audiences’ understanding of the role Blackness has taken throughout Canada’s history.”

ON THE ROAD NORTH - Black Canada and Journey to Freedom
Virtual Museum Canada / The Parks Canada Agency
30 Victoria Street, Gatineau
QC. J8X 0B3
www.virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitCollection.do;jsessionid=3DB46DCC47B679C327A522136069CAED?method=preview&lang=EN&id=2999
“Slavery ended in Canada in 1833. The people, places and events that won that victory are remembered today in Canada’s system of National Historic Persons, Sites and Events. The learning materials presented here are based on Canada’s national historic designations. Their purpose is to introduce you to the heroic persons, the honored places and momentous events in Canada that helped to end slavery.”

Remembering Black Loyalists; Black Communities in Nova Scotia
Virtual Museum Canada / Nova Scotia Museum
1741 Brunswick St., 3rd Floor
P. O. Box 456, STN Central, Halifax
NS  B3J 2R5
www.novascotia.ca/museum/blackloyalists/index.htm
“Between 1783 and 1785, more than 3000 Black persons came to Nova Scotia as a direct result of the American Revolution. They came from slavery and war to take control of their lives, making choices within the limits they faced. More than two centuries later, descendants of the Black Loyalists are calling to the spirits of their ancestors and discovering the stories of their struggles and triumphs. Meet some of the courageous men and women who founded two Nova Scotian Black Loyalist communities, Birchtown and Tracadie in the late 1700s and early 1800s.”

Virtual Museum
Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum
Box 1171, Regina,
SK S4P 3B4
sachm.org/virtual-museum
“The Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum Inc. has made it their mission “To preserve and celebrate the heritage of people of African descent in Saskatchewan”. Through research, collecting and documenting, the contribution of African and African descent persons in Saskatchewan over the last 100 plus years is now available. Although there are several areas, many people have contributed in more than one area.”