Tag Archives: Black History

It Starts Here: Black Histories Research Guide at the Archives of Ontario

This is the final instalment in a three-part series on the use of content warnings in classrooms, archives, and museums. You can read the first instalment here and the second instalment here. Melissa J. Nelson & Natasha Henry-Dixon   Melissa J. Nelson : Making Description Remediation Visible The Archives of Ontario is the largest provincial archive in Canada. However, many… Read more »

Fear of a Black Nation – What’s Old is News

By Sean Graham Fear of a Black Nation | RSS.comA landmark work when it was first released a decade ago, David Austin’s Fear of a Black Nation is now out in its second edition. In this episode, David stopped by to talk about the second edition, what has been added, and how the societal context has changed. He also discusses what made… Read more »

Black & Immigrant Communities in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley

By Sean Graham Black & Immigrant Communities in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley | RSS.comIn the 1930s, Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver was home to a vibrant community, which was slowly displaced through the construction of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts. This is the settling for Junie, a historical fiction that explores the complexities of community, race, sexuality, substance abuse, and, most importantly,… Read more »

History Slam 191: #BlackinSchool

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https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/History-Slam-191.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham All across the country, students have either returned, or are gearing up to return, to school. While there is great uncertainty about what the school year will look like and the safety measures being implemented in the midst of the pandemic’s fourth wave. For thousands of young Canadians, they will also… Read more »

Black Identity and the Great War: History from the Bottom Up

by Roger P Nason About a dozen years ago, I began researching community identity. I was expanding on questions I asked as an historian and trained archivist who was studying the settlement of St. Andrews, New Brunswick (NB) after the American Revolution. While most tend to focus on military campaigns, political leaders, and elites, I wanted to figure out the… Read more »

The Diggs Family of Willow Grove and Saint John, New Brunswick

by Roger P Nason The earliest mention of the Diggs family is Charlotte Diggs, who is listed as a grantee of lands for Black residents at Loch Lomond in 1836.[1] The 1851 Census cites Samuel and Mary Higgs living in Simonds Parish with their four children: Joseph, George, Charles, and Alexander. Likely, Samuel is Charlotte’s son.[2] Charlotte would have been… Read more »

Eliza Taylor: Belle of Loch Lomond

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by Roger P Nason Canada Post just released a commemorative stamp for the community of Willow Grove, New Brunswick. Located east of the City of Saint John, it forms the core of what was the “African Settlement” set aside by the New Brunswick colonial government for Black refugees fleeing the United States during the War of 1812. For more than… Read more »

12 Black Scholars on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Canada

As millions around the world take to the streets to defend Black lives, decry racist police violence and structural racism, and articulate visions for a radically different future, a number of Black scholars in Canada have engaged with public audiences to help contextualize this moment and lay out how racism is very much a Canadian problem as well. The below… Read more »

Welcome to Canada: A Story from the First Year of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

Edward Dunsworth It started as the most mundane of requests. One evening in late September, after a long day’s work, a light bulb flickered out in the dormitory that housed Carlton Robinson[i] and twelve other Jamaican men for the duration of their contract work on a farm in Vanessa, Ontario, about 65 kilometers southwest of Hamilton. For unclear reasons, it… Read more »

Re-launching Remember l Resist l Redraw: RRR# 13, Anti-Colonial Lawyer Charles Roach

In January 2017, the Graphic History Collective launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as a year-long artistic intervention in the Canada 150 conversation. Our goal was to create a series of accessible radical history posters that can serve as a resource for activists to lean on and learn from as they struggle to bring about… Read more »