Читать книгу A Sporting Chance - William Humber - Страница 9

1 THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN CANADA

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, the land mass we now know as Canada was home to the people of its First Nations. They had crossed into the Western Hemisphere from Asia and created distinctive lives of settled and nomadic character. They developed a multitude of varying tribal organizations, within which evolved unique cultures and languages. Then about 500 years ago a new settlement began. It consisted of white-skinned Europeans and shortly thereafter black-skinned Africans, the former having power and authority, the latter subjugated in positions of imposed servitude.

The first-known Black man to arrive in Canada was Mathieu DaCosta, Champlain’s translator with the Mi’Knaw First Nation in 1603. Formal Black residency came later. The experience of Black people in North America is inextricably tied to the long period of slavery in the western world dating back to Europe’s great age of discovery beginning in the 15th century. It lasted through first Great Britain’s and then America’s abolition of the institution in the 19th century. It was followed by a century of legalized segregation, particularly in the United States. Today it is characterized by a continuing pursuit of racial equality. Most of these turbulent events were centred in the United States but Canada’s proximity ensured its witness and occasional participation in this greater drama.

Great Britain’s absolute authority in its Canadian and American territories of North America was brief, lasting from the Treaty of Paris, under which the French government ceded New France in 1763, and concluding with the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, resulting in the loss of the 13 colonies.

Records in New France indicate that 1,132 Blacks were held in slavery when the British assumed control. Farther south slavery was an integral part of American society. The American independence movement’s professed support for liberty and freedom did not include their own Black slaves. The Revolution kept alive the institution of slavery in the face of a rising tide of British opposition to its continuance.

Britain exploited this hypocrisy as early as 1775 by inviting slaves to join the British side against the American rebels. Throughout the Revolutionary War they promised freedom for those who did. American victory, however, ensured slavery’s maintenance until Lincoln’s proclamation ending slavery and the resulting Civil War in the 1860s. It provided a foundation for American policies of segregation lasting into the second half of the 20th century.

It was a legacy that might have been prevented with a British victory. Instead British North America after the American Revolutionary War consisted of largely English-speaking Atlantic Canada, French-speaking Quebec and great expanses of wilderness and scattered settlements of First Nations in today’s western Canada and Ontario (then known as Upper Canada). The British moved quickly to subdivide and settle the latter territory.

Only in these places could their authority ensure that evolving and progressive British ideas on race received practical definition. In 1793 the Upper Canada Abolition Act, supported by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, freed slaves who came into the province and further said that a child born of a slave mother would be freed at the age of 25.

Britain’s enlightened policies were clouded, however, by political exigencies. On the one hand 3,500 free Blacks who had fought on Britain’s side in that American war settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and a further 2,000 slaves fled to Canadian freedom behind British lines during the War of 1812, but on the other hand, white British Loyalists, fleeing north in the late 18th century, brought 2,000 Black slaves with them.

This contradictory picture of free Blacks alongside those in slavery is a kind of metaphor for the Black experience in Canada—neither as absolute in its imposition of second-class status as in the United States nor as benign and accommodating as white Canadians have believed.

The British Parliament legally abolished slavery in all British North American colonies in 1834 and for fugitive Black slaves this was like a welcome mat. British motives were at least partially self-serving. Free Blacks were particularly eager conscripts in defending their new-found freedom against any American incursion. They supported the various militia units defending British North America against unofficial American attacks during the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions of 1837-38.

Canada was a land of promise. An “Underground Railroad” brought upwards of 40,000 fugitive slaves into Canada by the time of the American Civil War. This Underground Railroad was actually a series of “safe” houses, supported by “conductors” located along the way, throughout the United States, which protected fleeing slaves. Canadian courts, for their part, refused to extradite those who crossed the border unless they had committed crimes in the United States. Many Blacks settled in the Windsor and Chatham areas in southwestern Ontario while some opted for the larger centres of Toronto, Hamilton and the region around St. Catharines, while others went further north into the Queen’s Bush and even into the Owen Sound area.

They founded their own communities. Josiah Henson established the Dawn community near Dresden in southwestern Ontario in 1834, four years after his flight from slavery in the United States. It is generally assumed that he was the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s leading character in her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Black immigrants formed societies, cautiously participated in the larger community life and started their own newspapers. One escapee, Mary Ann Shadd, became the first female editor of a newspaper in North America in 1853. Other famous escapees included Harriet Tubman who returned to the United States at least 20 times to assist 300 other slaves fleeing to Canada.

By the middle of the 19th century, however, the British gradually transferred more administration to local control as the threat of American invasion receded. Canadian settlers were more equivocal than their British masters in matters of race. Like their neighbours in the northern United States, they rejected the institution of slavery but often supported separation of the races. Poorly educated in a wilderness environment, white Canadians in Ontario were like their counterparts in British Columbia who opposed Chinese and Japanese immigration. In both cases the white population claimed these minorities worked for lower wages when, in fact, it was their visible difference that offended them.

Canadians in Ontario had some degree of local control over education before Confederation. Segregation had been permitted with passage of the Common Schools Act in 1850. Toronto was an exception to this practice. William P. Hubbard, an honour student of the Toronto Model School in the 1860s, later became the city’s first Black alderman and acting mayor.

The 1860 case of John Anderson also brought the fugitive slave matter to a head. A Canadian court ruled he should be returned to the United States for having committed a murder during his escape from slavery. Behind the scenes, however, the British Governor General, Sir Edmund Walker Head, with the active support of the British Colonial Office had decided that regardless of the verdict they would not turn Anderson over to the Americans. These bewigged and often foppishly depicted British authorities had taken an extraordinarily bold stance. They would soon hand over local administration, however, as the colony achieved nationhood in 1867. From that point forward Canadians would decide the fate of their Black citizens.

Black settlement wasn’t limited to Ontario. Some slaves had fled to British Columbia at the time of the Fraser River gold rush during the late 1850s and early 1860s, but the longest established Black communities were in Atlantic Canada. Unlike Ontario, where both fugitive slaves and “free” Blacks arrived in large numbers in the 30 years before the American Civil War, Nova Scotia was home to Black Loyalists from the time of the American Revolutionary War, along with rebel Maroons deported from Jamaica following their defeat in 1789 Second Maroon War which had erupted in defiance of the island colonial government. Many were deliberately placed on unproductive land, however, and gravitated in time to their own communities like Africville in Halifax.

Africville was created in the middle of the 19th century as a separate Black community. Located in the north end of the city, it grew around its churches. These not only provided an unofficial link to the white community but also assumed a crucial role in educating students abandoned by the mainstream educational system.

Its citizens helped build Halifax and were an important part of its service industry. The placement of railroad tracks, sewage disposal facilities and other unwelcome urban infrastructure contributed to Africville’s decline in the 20th century. By the time of Canada’s centennial in 1967, the refusal of public officials to invest in the community’s maintenance ensured its decline. Residents were relocated and Africville was eventually demolished.

In the United States the American Civil War provided for the emancipation of its Black population. At first the prospects for newly freed slaves looked good. Black universities and schools were founded, state legislatures welcomed elected Black politicians, and constitutional rights were extended to guarantee citizenship and voting rights. The short-lived Freedmen’s Bureau was part of the process of rebuilding a stable union after the war. This reconstruction period generally lasted from 1865 to the withdrawal of federal troops from the American south in 1877.

One face of Canada—The all-Black Coloured Diamond Baseball Team of Halifax, Nova Scotia, circa 1920s. Courtesy of Photography Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

Gradually, however, a reaction set in among America’s white population characterized by fraudulent race science theories depicting Black citizens as intellectually inferior. Separate public facilities in everything from schools to washrooms became common practice. New polling taxes, literacy tests and intimidation by white terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan quickly reduced Blacks to second-class status. It was a policy later adopted in South Africa.

This dark period of discriminatory laws and customs known as Jim Crow, after an old minstrel song, culminated with the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson case legalizing educational segregation as long as schools were separate but equal, a standard seldom enforced.

Canadians deplored these more overt American apartheid practices but, as their actions dating back to the 1850s showed, they often betrayed a peculiar ambivalence when it came to condemning racism in all of its forms.

Another face of Canada—the integrated line-up of a Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, baseball team, the 1895 territorial champions.

Black Canadians were never certain as to how genuine their welcome had been. At the end of the Civil War many of them believed prospects were better in their former homeland. They began returning to the United States, a migration that continued even after the initial positive steps there were undone. From a high of around 60,000 residents at the start of the American Civil War in 1860, Canada’s Black population had shrunk to fewer than 18,000 by the turn of the century.

Black Canadians were discouraged by the experiences of groups like the all-Black Victoria Pioneer Rifle Company, formed from the ranks of those invited in 1858 to Vancouver Island during the gold rush days. Though they defended Victoria from potential American incursion and supported British Columbia’s eventual entry into Confederation, they were barred from public ceremonies. The British rejected their appeal for official status as an established regiment. When it became clear that the United States would not invade this part of Canada, the company disbanded.

Black communities, with a few notable exceptions, were separate from white society and became an almost invisible part of the country’s history. Over the next century, there was no great influx of Blacks as there had been prior to the Civil War. The majority of those who came did so as individuals or as family members. Some were Americans fed up with that country’s segregation practices; others were job-seeking emigrants from the West Indies.

There were only a few occasions when Blacks arrived as part of a larger contingent. At least 1,000 Black Oklahomans moved into the northern prairies between 1909 and 1911. Despite their small numbers, they encountered prejudice. Between 1921 and 1951 the small Black community in Alberta fell from just over 1,000 to 700 persons.

Many Alberta farmers were white Americans. In April 1911, their anti-Black sentiments were inflamed by the story of a 15-year-old Edmonton girl who accused a Black man of assault. Newspapers attacked the “Negro Menace” and the “Negro Atrocity” only to be silenced nine days later when the girl admitted she had made up the story.

In that same year Albertans sent a petition to the Prime Minister. It read, “It is a matter of common knowledge and it has been proved in the United States that Negroes and whites cannot live in proximity without the occurrence of revolting lawlessness and the development of bitter race hatred, and that the most serious question facing the United States today is the Negro problem…There is no reason to believe that we have here [in Canada] a higher order of civilization, or that the introduction of the Negro problem here would have different results.”

Descendants of early African-American immigrants to Alberta around the turn of the century are found in this photograph of the all-Black Amber Valley Baseball Club in Alberta, circa 1950. Courtesy of Glenbow Archives, NA-704-5.

Anti-Black sentiment flourished in other parts of the prairies. In Saskatchewan there were upwards of 10,000 Ku Klux Klan members or their sympathizers by the end of the 1920s. Likewise in the more urban areas of eastern Canada, the majority white population continued to oppose Black entry into jobs and integrated neighbourhoods, claiming it would cause social turmoil as in the United States.

Within their isolated communities, Blacks had few institutional supports beyond the church. They attempted to develop a self-sufficient economic base but their communities weren’t large enough to support either an independent farming lifestyle or their own businesses. Many Blacks were forced to seek manual labour in nearby cities or join the growing ranks of porters working for the various railroads.

During the First World War, an unwritten policy of the Canadian armed forces discouraged Black participation because it would, supposedly, drive away white volunteers. Despite this propaganda, the all-Black Number Two Construction Battalion was formed with a majority of recruits from Nova Scotia. During the war, a Black Canadian soldier Jeremiah Jones distinguished himself by capturing a German machine gun post.

American Blacks, meanwhile, were beginning to experience a cultural flowering of their own. The Harlem Renaissance’s geographic impact in the 1920s went far beyond New York City. It was sparked by literary, musical and artistic expression. The jazz and blues recordings of American Blacks of this age are part of a legacy reputed to be the only true American musical innovation. A renewed sense of Black pride found expression in organizations like Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.

In Canada, where numbers were small and spread over great distances, a cultural and organizational renaissance of this scope was almost impossible. Following an example from the American labour movement however, a Canadian union of sleeping car porters marked an important step forward for Black community organization. Their leaders included Winnipeg’s Piercy Haynes (whose non-railway interests included boxing and jazz) and his wife Zena, a jazz singer. Religion was also important, particularly organized churches like Winnipeg’s Pilgrim Baptist Church and the African Baptist United Church in Nova Scotia.

The struggle for racial equality, however, would be fought largely in the United States. It had begun with the campaign to end slavery culminating in the American Civil War. It continued through the imposed burdens of Jim Crow legislation and it included proposals by some leaders for a return to Africa.

By the time of the Second World War, the American Civil Rights Movement, through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), focused on removing legislated restrictions and creating opportunities for full participation in American economic life. Canadians were often bemused spectators.

Blacks for instance had to fight for the opportunity to join Canada’s armed forces in the Second World War. Ironically during this period Black American writers like Richard Wright found Canada a refuge from the unpleasant features of segregated American life. But in Nova Scotia, conditions differed little from those south of the border. Theatres in Cape Breton for instance maintained separate seating and as late as the 1950s restaurants in Dresden, Ontario, refused to serve Black patrons.

Organizations like the CBC provided Black American entertainers with a televised forum from which they were often shut out in the United States. At the same time Canadian Blacks remained outside the country’s mainstream. However, the Canadian Negro Women’s Association, founded in 1951, laid the foundation for future Black events like Toronto’s annual Caribana celebration and Black History Month. They protested policing practices and media improprieties and offered scholarships for promising students.

Canada’s small Black population lacked political clout but that soon changed. Great Britain began closing its doors on further emigration from the West Indies in the 1950s and encouraged other Commonwealth countries to open their doors. There was a clamour for Canada to loosen its restrictions.

Black activists also worked with members of other minorities, such as the Jewish community, to entrench human rights protection in Canadian law. By 1960 Canada had passed a new Bill of Rights rejecting discrimination based on race, colour, religion, gender and national origin.

The rising Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a powerful model for Canadian reformers. At the same time events in the British Commonwealth spurred further action. Canadians were appalled by the treatment of Blacks in South Africa, but their own immigration policy was cause for similar shame. The existing 1923 statute explicitly favoured white British applicants. In 1962 Canada adopted an immigration policy with greater regard for skill, merit and occupational needs, though often this continued to favour white Europeans.

The integrated line-up of Patterson Collegiate (Windsor) basketball team which won the All-Ontario basketball title in the early 1940s. Left to right Fred Thomas, Jack Shuttleworth, Charlie Wells, Lyle Browning, Clarence Britten and coach Eddie Dawson. Courtesy of Tony Techko.

The first significant Black entry into Canada since the pre-Civil War period began at this time. The arrival of upwards of 10,000 West Indian female domestic workers in the 1950s eventually led to a campaign for family reunification. Supporting legislation was passed in 1967. A more confident Black community began to assert its political identity. Explicit restrictions and segregationist practises were eliminated. The last legal vestiges of Black separation, such as segregated schools, were wiped from the books in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Black Canadians had become proactive citizens initiating campaigns for equal justice. They created cultural events to celebrate their heritage even though subtle and systemic racial discrimination remained.

The country gradually became a more diversified place. West Indian immigration reached nearly 160,000 in the seventies and 115,000 in the eighties. Caribbean immigration to Canada between 1967 and 1990 accounted for nearly ten per cent of the country’s three and a half million new arrivals. This immigration peaked in the mid-seventies with nearly 28,000 coming in 1974. Numbers declined in the eighties matching similar reductions from other countries. Jamaicans accounted for nearly 36 per cent of Caribbean immigration followed by Guyana at 21 per cent, French-speaking immigrants from Haiti at 17.4 per cent, and 13.6 per cent from Trinidad and Tobago. Sixty-six per cent of these immigrants went to Ontario followed by 26 per cent to Quebec.

There were expanded vehicles for Black entry into mainstream Canadian society. Emery Barnes was an Olympic high jumper and professional football player before becoming a long-serving member of the British Columbia legislature in the company of another prominent Canadian Black, Rosemary Brown. Abdi Mohamoud, a former member of Somalia’s national basketball team, came to Canada as a refugee from civil war and helped establish the Somali Canadian Sports and Arts Centre in Toronto.

Others entered the public arena through community channels. Barbados-born Anne Cools became the first Black appointed to the Canadian Senate in 1984. Nova Scotia-born Dr. Carrie Best earned the Order of Canada for her community activism and writing accomplishments. Lincoln Alexander became the first Black cabinet minister in Canada and achieved one of the highest ceremonial posts in the country with his appointment as Ontario’s first Black Lieutenant-Governor in 1985.

It may be pointless anymore to talk about a separate and united Black community, as it once was when it was generally ostracized within isolated rural and inner city enclaves. It has changed, through immigration from all over the world; disagreements among people of colour as to their identity within this description; the integration of Black citizens into the various class, income and employment categories defining the wider Canadian society; and even the problematic description of what it means to be Black, racially or culturally.

The latter has created a need for a new interpretative direction. It may be one founded on examining a rising generation described as “ethnically ambiguous” and a social context in which cultural symbols from music to clothes and language cross what were once accepted boundaries. Hence Bill Clinton was, ironically, described by some as the first “Black” President not because of his race but for his cultural references and interests.

As Lincoln Alexander has pointed out however, skin colour still makes it impossible for those broadly seen as Blacks to completely disappear into the great Canadian mosaic available to other hyphenated Canadians. The distinction of race and its particular history in Canada renders it a category, which still has meaning. There is a public tendency to assume that a level playing field exists but even successful members of the Black community often lack the kind of economic resources achieved by the white mainstream community over several generations. Blacks have had to remain somewhat wary of the larger white Canadian society. Nevertheless they have had enough confidence in their identity as members of this wider society to participate in its mainstream customs.

One of the most important of these has been sport.