Last month in many large and mid-sized cities in Canada, including Windsor, London, Toronto and Montreal, millions of Canadians celebrated what has in recent decades become a highly anticipated annual event: Black History Month.
In Windsor, Black History Month kicked off at the end of January with various events that brought together people from all over the wind-swept city on the Detroit River, including the three main strains of Canada’s Black community: descendants of Canadian and American slaves; descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean, many of whom started arriving in Canada in the early 1960s in response to the country’s needs for skilled and domestic workers; as well as relatively new arrivals from Africa, from countries such as Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia.
Throughout February there were events celebrating people of African descent: films, lectures, art exhibits, author readings of Black children’s books, according to Irene Moore Davis, president of the Essex County Black History Research Society and herself a descendant of people who freed themselves from slavery as well as free people of color who immigrated to Canada during the Underground Railroad era.
Remembering the past
Interest in Black history has been surging in Canada since the early 1950s, inspired in part by a strong interest in Black history that began in the United States in the early 1900s. Organizations such as Canada’s National Council of Negro Women began lobbying for recognition of a period of the year honoring Black history, says Winfried Siemerling, a professor of English language and literature at the University of Waterloo.
In the early 1970s, as Canada became an increasingly diverse country, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau laid out a policy of multiculturalism.
Under this policy, Canada would recognize and preserve the growing diversity of its citizens, including language, culture, religion and race. In 1995, prompted by a Black member of the Canadian parliament, Canada’s government officially recognized February as Black History Month.
