Brandon University president to receive award at Black History Month event

By Neil Armstrong

Dr. Gervan Fearon, President of Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba.   Photo credit: Francine Buchner

Dr. Gervan Fearon, the president of Brandon University and the first and only black university president in Canada, will be the recipient of an award that will be presented at the Jamaican Canadian Association’s Black History Month event, a “Boonoonoonos Brunch,” this weekend.

The other award recipients are Ontario’s Education Minister Mitzie Hunter, retired Staff Sergeant Ezra ‘Tony’ Browne, and David Mitchell, assistant deputy minister at the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

Born in England to Jamaican parents, Fearon lived in May Pen for four years before moving to Canada in 1968 with his parents and siblings.

The former Dean of The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University was appointed the president of Brandon University in August 2014 to a five-year term ending on July 31, 2019. Before this appointment, he served as vice-president (academic and provost) at the university.

He has a BSc and MSc from the University of Guelph and earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Western Ontario.

In a 2016 study of Canada’s top research-intensive universities (U15), Professor Malinda Smith, a political scientist at the University of Alberta found that there was not a single woman of visible minority in the senior ranks, and visible minority men at only four universities.

In an article on the University of Alberta’s website entitled “The great Canadian equity fail” written by Geoff McMaster on January 31, 2017, he quotes Professor Smith saying: “Not a single university has any major structure for actually improving representation beyond lip service. They may have a senior adviser on women, or on Aboriginal issues, but not a senior adviser on visible minorities."
Smith said the composition of Canadian society is rapidly changing and “for universities to assume a leadership role, they need to more accurately reflect that diversity.”

She told the Gleaner that her research suggests Dr. Fearon is the only black university
president in Canada and she suspects that he is also the first. He is aware of this fact too.

At this year’s brunch, the Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA) will be examining “The Crisis in Black Education” as its theme. This focuses on the crucial role of education in the history of black people. 

In a press release the JCA says African American historian, Carter G. Woodson, once wrote that: “if you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race.” 

The organization notes that there are implications associated with the denial of access to knowledge and a crisis can result from persistently imposed racial barriers to equal education.

It says the crisis in black education first began in the days of slavery when it was unlawful for slaves to learn to read and write.

The JCA's role in helping to address this crisis with programs such as the Saturday Morning Tutorial Program, the Robotics Club, and the Scholarship Program will be highlighted at the event on February 12.

Peel District School Board trustee, Suzanne Nurse, will be speaking about her experience, as well as others such as Dr. Fearon. 

Educator Thando Hyman and Minister Hunter were previously scheduled to speak but have provided regrets.

The JCA notes that the important role of other local community-based organizations, academic and mentorship programs in inspiring a love of learning and thirst for achievement will be promoted.

“Addressing the crisis in black education should be considered one of the most important goals,” it says. 

JCA president, Adaoma Patterson, says the brunch is both an opportunity to recognize individuals “in our community who are making a difference while thinking critically about an issue impacting our community."

2017 African Canadian Achievement Awards of Excellence Recipients Announced

MEDIA RELEASE

Marie Clarke Walker - Excellence in Business Award                  Photo contributed

Delores Lawrence - Lifetime Achievement Award                       Photo contributed

The Heritage Singers - Excellence in Arts/Entertainment              Photo contributed

Monday, February 5, 2017 -- The Selection Committee of the African Canadian Achievement Awards of Excellence (ACAA) has chosen the recipients of the organisation's prestigious awards.

The 15 distinguished, accomplished individuals -- from a wide variety of vocations -- will be recognised and honoured as "contemporary Black history-makers", on Saturday, February 25, at the ACAA's 33rd. annual gala, one of the African Canadian community's most prestigious Black History Month events.

The 2017 ACAA recipients are:

Excellence in Arts/Entertainment

The Heritage Singers-Canada, a popular 40-year-old folk and spiritual choir -- renowned for spreading and promoting Caribbean and African culture and folklore, globally -- has performed in festivals in Canada, Holland, Taiwan, Germany, Mexico and Venezuela. The group, which has also presented many sold-out pantomimes for the Caribbean community, has received great acclaim for its artistic merit, family-themed entertainment, and exposition of the Caribbean and African culture to young people.

Excellence in Business Award:

Marie Clarke Walker, a passionate fighter for the rights of workers, a significant resource in any business, is the youngest and first Black to hold the position of Executive Vice-President at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). A former Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario equity vice-president and its first-ever national diversity vice-president, she is also, currently, an executive member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.

Excellence in Community Service:

John O'Dell, a national representative of Unifor, one of Canada's largest unions is, since 2005, the co-chair of the Toronto Police Service's(TPS) Black Community-Police Liaison Committee. He is also a former President, Alliance of Guyanese Organisations; President of the Guyana Ex-police Association of Canada; a member of the Association of Black Law Enforcers; and a former member of the Board and choir of the Church of the Nativity.

Excellence in Education:

Dr. Rinaldo Walcott, an interdisciplinary black studies scholar, whose work is widely published in journals, books, newspapers and magazines, is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at The University of Toronto, and the director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute. The author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada -- published in 1997 with a second revised edition in 2003 -- Dr. Walcott is also the editor of Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism.

Excellence in Law:

Ingrid Berkeley-Brown, the highest ranking female Black police officer in Canada, is Superintendent of 21 Division, at the Peel District Police Service. A past president and current secretary of the Caribbean Canadian Association of Waterloo Region, Supt. Berkeley-Brown also sits on the board of directors of Peel Family Mediation Services. She has an honours diploma in social services and is a graduate of the University of Guelph School of Business and Economics with a Masters in leadership.

Excellence in Management and Leadership:

Mark Beckles, Head of RBC Insurance Advice Centre, has national responsibility for managing and leading over 600 licensed insurance advisors, who provide insurance advice and solutions to 750,000 RBC insurance clients across Canada. Previously, he was regional vice president of retail banking at RBC, with responsibility for north Mississauga, where he had P&L responsibility for a portfolio in excess of $5.4Billion. A former President and CEO of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund (Canada), Beckles was also vice-chair of World Relief Canada and a director of the United Way of Peel Region.

Excellence in Media:

Anthony Joseph, a successful investor, entrepreneur and marketer, is President and Publisher of The Caribbean Camera newspaper, Canada's third oldest Caribbean/Black newspaper. In 1993, a difficult year for the paper, Joseph says there were real fears that it would fold, but he "came to the rescue as an investor" and, using his marketing skills, "saved the paper from going under". A self-proclaimed master baker, Joseph is also the owner of Papa Joe's Bakery, and was a successful carnival masquerade costume designer.

Excellence in Medicine:

After working in the management and senior leadership levels of hospitals for more than 20 years, Sheryl Bernard recently launched her own consulting firm, Bernard Consultancy. A Registered Nurse and a certified health executive of the Canadian College of Health Service Leaders (CCHL) -- with clinical and administrative experience across various healthcare sectors -- Bernard, the former Director for the geriatric and neuropsychiatry program at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, is the founding president of the Jamaican-Canadian Nursing Association.

Excellence in Parenting:

Rev. Mr. Royston and Mrs. Claire Jones, who have been married for 47 years and who their children describe as "exemplars of parenting", have, despite the physical challenge of blindness, raised four successful, university-graduated adult children. The loss of his sight changed the family dynamics, but Royston continued to work in ministry and social services for as long as he could. Claire became the breadwinner and has been working in the childcare sector for over 35 years. Their children say their father is a strong patriarch and a very prominent spiritual leader for them, and describe their mother as being “quiet and reflective”, noting that, “her strength is powerful.”

Excellence in Politics:

Eric Williams, former President of the Malton Black Development Association, is a veteran Trustee for Mississauga Ward 5 at the Peel District School Board, for over 20 years. Williams was the chair of the Instructional Program/Curriculum Committee for the past eight years and represented the board on the Mississauga Traffic Safety Council also for eight years. He sat on the Ontario Public School Board Regional Council for 19 years, was a director for 13 and is currently the enrolment vice-president – the first racialized person to serve that organization in these capacities. Williams was one of the four Black Peel school trustees who successfully proposed the idea of naming a school in Peel after former Ontario Fairness Commissioner and Federal Cabinet Minister, Jean Augustine.

Excellence in Religion:

Pastor Kay Morris, an ordained minister and internationally acclaimed multi-award winning Reggae Gospel Hall-Of-Famer, is President of the Kay Morris Foundation, which provides humanitarian services to African countries. Her humanitarian work through her Foundation, based in Canada and Ghana, has resulted in her being enstooled as Her Royal Highness Queen Nana Oye Sika I of The Royal House of Berekuso Aquapem, Ghana, West Africa. This happened after she brokered $1.5 million in anti-retroviral medicine for people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Excellence in Science:

Dr. Tabo Sikaneta is a researcher, general internist and nephrologist at The Scarborough Hospital whose professional interests include clinical research and teaching at the hospital and at the University of Toronto. He supervises resident and graduate student research projects, and has published 18 peer-reviewed, science research articles.

A founding member of the African Caribbean Kidney Association, a chapter of the National Kidney Foundation, Dr. Sikaneta has served as a member of the Ethics Review Board of The Scarborough Hospital since 2005, and as its vice-chair since 2016.

Excellence in Sports:

Jeffrey L. Orridge is the 13th. and first African Canadian Commissioner of the Canadian Football League (CFL), where he is repositioning the CFL for the future. After taking the helm two years ago, the first black commissioner in North American professional sport has introduced a progressive and inclusive approach, designed to further engage avid CFL fans while attracting a new generation of fans. Prior to the CFL, Orridge was the executive director of sports and general manager, Olympics at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), where he successfully secured the media rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, the 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games, and the 2018 and 2020 Olympic Games.

Youth Achievement Award:

Remi Ojo Jr. is an all-round achiever who has excelled in academics, sports, entrepreneurship, and giving back to the community. His passion for robotics initially led him to pursue studies in engineering and, while he specialized in biochemical engineering, he has continued to fuel his interest in robotics through involvement with the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition as a mentor to high school teams. Ojo currently plays with two of North America's top Ultimate Frisbee teams in both professional and club level leagues, and has represented Canada on the world stage in Italy in 2014, Dubai in 2015, as well as Colombia, China, and England in 2016.

Lifetime Achievement Award:

Delores Lawrence, O. Ont., MBA, RN, is the Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nursing and Homemakers Inc. (NHI), a multi-million dollar company that offers healthcare staffing and homecare services to clients in hospitals, long term care facilities, insurance companies, dentists and other healthcare companies. The award-winning company employs over 500 temporary, permanent, casual and contract workers across Ontario, who speak over 70 different languages. Her strong civic engagement is demonstrated in her appointed roles: Honours and Awards Secretariat - Order of Ontario selection committee (2013 to present); the Ontario Judicial Council (2010-2014); board member and chair of Seneca College board of governors (2000-2006); member of the board and chair of Academic & Patient Care Committee of Sunnybrook & Women’s Hospital; board member of the Toronto International Film Festival Group capital campaign; chair of United Way of Greater Toronto (Caribbean Committee) and the Bishop Strachan School board of governors (1995).

The ACAA gala will also celebrate Canada's 150th. birthday and the significant contributions, made by thousands of African Canadians -- from Matheui De Costa, in the early 17th. century, to Viola Desmond, to Rosemary Brown, to the Hon. Lincoln Alexander, to hundreds of contemporary, hard-working, industrious persons of African ancestry -- to the development and success of their beloved country.

The venerable organisation will acknowledge and recognise the 50th anniversary of the launch of Caribana, the Caribbean's exposition of its culture, in 1967, by paying tribute to the founders of the venerable organisation -- in person.

The 33rd. annual African Canadian Achievement Awards of Excellence gala will be held at the Jane Mallett Theatre, inside the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street, East, in downtown Toronto.

                                                                        -30-

Media contact:

Michael Van Cooten,

ACAA Chief Executive Officer

Tel: (905) 668-8869

Email: acaa@bellnet.ca

Website: www. africancanadianachievementawards.com

Labour and civil rights advocate Bromley Armstrong's 91st birthday is on February 9

^{By Neil Armstrong}

Bromley Armstrong with Herman Stewart who received the Bromley L. Armstrong Award initiated by the Toronto & York Region Labour Council and presented at the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Canadian Chapter gala in 2014. Photo credit: Eddie Grant

 

Bromley Armstrong is a leading figure in human rights, race relations and labour relations in Canada.

Born on February 9, 1926, Armstrong arrived in Canada on December 13, 1947 after a nearly two-day journey in which he and his brother, George, flew from Jamaica to Miami and touched down at several airports before getting to their destination at Malton airport (now Pearson International airport). 

It was while at a Miami restaurant that Armstrong experienced racism and this fuelled his determination to challenge discrimination -- something he has done for over six decades.

Armstrong and his brother were ushered to a dingy section in the back of the room and he writes in his memoir, Bromley: Tireless Champion for Just Causes, “Later on I came to realize that this and similar experiences were part of my preparation for my life’s work as a fighter against discrimination and intolerance.”

His fight began as a rank and file member in the Jamaican Trade Union Congress where he challenged Jamaica’s classism.

In the 1940s, the member of the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario and Order of Distinction, Jamaica, took up the case of the plight of Jamaican domestic workers who were brought here in the early 1900s by wealthy Canadians.

Without proof of age o birth certificates they were unable to apply for Canadian pensions. 

Armstrong researched their identity and helped to secure documentation from Jamaica’s Office of the Registrar General which meant that these women could now adequately support themselves in their retirement years.

In the 1950s, Armstrong was in the vanguard of movements to change Canada’s immigration policies and challenge discrimination in housing in Ontario.

As a founding and the youngest member of the Negro Citizenship Committee, he accompanied the first recorded official black delegation to Ottawa in 1954 to seek changes to Canada’s immigration policies.

He is the only surviving member of that delegation led by Donald Willard Moore and included the late Stanley G. Grizzle.

Armstrong is one of several civil rights activists featured in the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary, “Journey to Justice,” which pays tribute to a group of Canadians that took racism to court. Made by filmmaker, Roger McTair, it also features Grizzle, Canadian Olympian Ray Lewis, Fred Christie who challenged racism in Montreal, Viola Desmond who fought racism in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia; Hugh Burnette, Don Carty, Ruth Lor Malloy, Gus Wedderburn and more with the analysis/comments of historians such as Sheldon Taylor and James Walker.

At Kuumba 2017, the Harbourfront Centre’s Black History Month celebration, there will be a presentation, “In Celebration of Viola Desmond,” in partnership with NFB on Friday, February 10, 10-11pm and 11pm-midnight.

Almost ten years before Rosa Parks’ landmark civil rights protest in the United States, Viola Desmond challenged racial segregation in Canada. The two documentaries in this film program, “Journey to Justice,” and “Race,” are dedicated to Desmond and all the unsung heroes in the fight for Black civil rights.

[Wanda Robson, Viola Desmond’s sister is in Toronto and will participate in “Black Canadian Trailblazers – Then and Now” today (Feb. 8) at The Royal Conservatory; tomorrow morning (Feb. 9) she will meet with students at a school in the city. “Students will learn about Viola Desmond's fight for justice as she challenged racial segregation at a local theatre in Nova Scotia. Her sister, Wanda Robson, will focus on her sister's impact in the shaping of Canadian history as a human rights activist,” notes the Toronto District School Board.

Viola Desmond was granted a posthumous pardon and will be the first Canadian woman to be featured on the front of a bank note. She is slated to appear on the $10 bill in 2018.

Also on February 9, female community leaders and their
friends and families will come together to celebrate the accomplishments of
one of Canada’s best known human rights champions, Viola Desmond.

Robson will be in attendance to celebrate Viola’s place in history as the first Black female Canadian to appear on our currency, along with past recipients of the Viola Desmond Day awards and the Viola Desmond Bursary. The Viola Desmond Awards at Ryerson University <http://www.ryerson.ca/equity/events-workshops/viola-desmond-awards/>honours Ryerson students, faculty and staff in recognition of their commitment to diversity in their daily lives. Now in its ninth year, this year’s awards night will take place on campus on March 6.]

Meanwhile, as part of its Black History Month programming, the Toronto Public Library will present the NFB film, “The Ninth Floor,” on Thursday, Feb. 16, 6:30-8:15 pm at the Riverdale Library. Written and directed by Mina Shum, the film focuses on the Sir George Williams affair and Canadian race relations 40 years later.

Africentric school finally has a new principal

By Neil Armstrong

Luther Brown, Principal of the Africentric Alternative School    Photo contributed

Curtis Ennis, Superintendent, Toronto District School Board     Photo contributed

After being without a principal for the first half of the school year, the Africentric Alternative School (AAS) in Toronto now has one whose appointment has been welcomed by many in the African Canadian community.

Luther Brown, who was born in Jamaica and came to Canada in the late 1980s, has been with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for more than 25 years.

He has been a principal for approximately 15 years and just before taking on his new role at the alternative school yesterday (Feb. 1), was the principal of O’Connor Public School in east end of the city for six years.

Curtis Ennis, TDSB superintendent of the Africentric Alternative School, says the selection committee felt that Brown was the person that brought the most to the table in terms of leading this school in the next while.

“He was a very strong candidate. All of his references were just outstanding. I have certainly, like you, come across and heard from many community members how ecstatic they are that he was the candidate chosen,” says Ennis.

He notes that Brown has a strong sense of community and lots of grassroots organizations know him and know of his work.

“They know him as someone who is a strong listener and who is a strong supporter of our young people. They know that Luther, and I know, that he has led his school very admirably both at O’Connor Public School where he was last principal and his school has done very well in comparison to other schools in TDSB even though it was a school that had significant needs and challenges,” says Ennis who is also the superintendent of O’Connor.

Yolisa Dalamba, a parent who actively participated in the realization of the AAS, says she is thrilled that major changes have finally come. 

“It is our hope Mr. Brown will work with us to restore academic excellence, healing and cultural pride in our school that makes up for all the turbulence, especially our students, have endured since the school doors opened.”

She says she has heard many wonderful things about Brown and knows that he has been working to uplift our students and community for many years.

“We have very high expectations of Mr. Brown to work in partnership with parents and other stakeholders to uphold and realize Africentricity in our philosophy, pedagogy, and political and cultural practice, infused with the pan-African and anti-colonial legacies of resistance left by our ancestors. Some of those include anti-oppression, decolonization, resisting white supremacist values and breaking down systemic barriers.”

With Brown having done such a good job at O’Connor, Ennis said within five minutes of the letter that he sent home with students hitting their knapsacks, he got a phone call from a parent saying how upset they were and wanting to know what his plan was “to replace such a person like Luther.”

“It’s devastating for the O’Connor community but we’ll work through that piece. But it’s exciting for the Africentric community and we had a great need there. The school had been without a principal for the first half of the school year and so we’re just ecstatic that he is the chosen candidate.”

Ennis says Brown is going to work closely with the parents and him, in terms of the vision for the school, and “working with the elders in the community, working with the school council – we’re really going back to some of the original mandate of the school which really is high student achievement, high motivation for students and high student wellbeing.”

“We want our students to excel and to do well and I know Luther is a proven leader in that regard, in addition to leading and learning through an Afrocentric lens, and applying that to learning but still having high expectations for the students and having high achievements as a result of that. That’s what I want to see.” 

Explaining why it took so long to find a principal, he said the TDSB was actively looking for candidates to be the principal and was not successful in finding the right candidate until they decided to take a fresh approach.

Ennis said the parents agreed that they should post a position both internally and externally and through that process there were people within the TDSB, like Brown, “who decided, hey, maybe it’s time to step up.”

However, according to Dalamba, “parents and community members attempted to exercise our right as stipulated by the TDSB's alternative school policies and ensure a hiring process that is inclusive, transparent and equitable but were sadly disappointed by the TDSB as this was not honoured.”

She said there remains much work to be done but “we embrace the spirit of change and will continually work toward legacy-building for the future of our diverse Afrikan communities.”

Brown is married to Reverend Paulette Brown and they are the proud parents of three adult children.

Show higlights the resilience and courage of Toronto's Black community at KUUMBA 2017

Tiki Mercury-Clarke                                             Photo contributed

By Neil Armstrong

Musicologist Tiki Mercury-Clarke is promising a lot in her solo performance, “Toronto Black Then,” a musical storytelling presentation about “growing up in Toronto, Black-in-the-day. “

She’ll be singing, playing the piano and storytelling in this autobiographical piece which showcases instances of her life in Toronto in the late 1950s and 1960s, and putting them in historical context.

“So they’ll be trying to paint a sense of not only what personally I experienced but our community as well, and the community’s response to the times,” says Mercury-Clarke.

She says it’s an area that she thinks hasn’t had enough of a voice and the Canadian-born Black community in the city was almost invisible and not listened to because their numbers were so small.

“And then when the immigration laws were finally changed and allowed in more folks who look like us, we were again overwhelmed just in sheer numbers because within a very short time, within a generation we went to an even smaller minority position. So a lot of the experiences of the community at that time just got sort of got lost in the shuffle.”

The jazz artist, singer-pianist, storyteller, lyricist, composer and cultural historian says she recognizes that mainstream media has never been open and truthful about white supremacy in Canada and how it impacts on minority groups.

“So that kind of thing filtered into the mindset of our own people where things that they experienced that they should actually celebrate because it's a story of courage and dignity in the face of a lot of hostility they have kept it very quiet as well.”

As it turns out this is the year of Canada’s 150^th anniversary and Mercury-Clarke says, “sometimes the ancestors work things out that way” for this musical creation to happen now.

She has done bits and pieces in a number of her nightclub shows and did a teaser in November at the “When Blackhurst Street” exhibition at Markham Gallery.

She has designed it so she can plug in various events and experiences of her eventful life at different times depending on what the audience is.

Inspired by her grandfather who was a church minister and scholar, Mercury-Clarke says he “inoculated me or vaccinated me against a lot of attempts to have me accept an ideology of black inferiority and its corollary, white superiority.”

“When other kids were getting stories about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all these other things, I was actually getting stories about Queen Nzinga, Hatshepsut and very aware that there was a time when we ruled the world and ruled ourselves. And it really changes how you react to attempts to try to take that away when you’re taught that at a very early age and that becomes part of your mindset. You look at the world in a very different way than when you haven’t had anything and other people are actually filling your mind.”

She remembers in Grade 1 going to a new school in the suburb of Sheppard and Bathurst area at Christmas time.

In the public schools, students had to colour nativity scenes and things of that nature but in her family her grandfather was a minister of the British Methodist Episcopal church and a Marcus Garveyite.

He taught them that at the time of the bible the people depicted in the bible were people of colour. “And not only people of colour, they were very dark people of colour and in fact, that whole area of what is now called Palestine and Israel was an extension of the ancient Egyptian empire which is a black empire.”

In her house, Jesus, Mary and Joseph were all black people so when she was asked at school to colour in a stencil of the nativity scene she made the people black because it never occurred to her that they could be anything else.

“And the teacher lost her mind. She just lost her mind and I didn’t understand what was happening. She was saying things like ‘you make them dirty; you make them filthy, how could you do that?’ And I’m thinking in my child’s mind, okay, I must have been sloppy when I was colouring them, I went outside the lines and I smudged it somehow.”

The teacher yanked the picture out of her hand, ripped it to shreds and brought another black stencil and told her to do it right. She carefully did so and do it black again.

Mercury-Clarke also shared a story about the book, The Story of Little Black Sambo, being read by the teacher in the classroom and she was made to sit on a stool at the front of the class with the teacher making references to her appearance and what the book described.

“But I don’t want people to think that it’s an entirely depressing show; it’s a very positive show. I also look at the church and its influence but also its activities in very much a close-up way. I want to pay tribute to our African spirit.”

Her show will take place on Feb. 4, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m. in Miss Lou’s Room at the Harbourfront Centre.

It is presented by A Different Booklist in collaboration with the Harbourfront Centre as part of the 2017 KUUMBA Black History Month celebration.

New poster and booklet focus on STEAM

Artist Robert Small                                       Photo contributed

By Neil Armstrong

Artist Robert Small, who has been creating posters to celebrate Black History Month since 1995, has this year turned his focus on science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM).

The theme of the Legacy poster matches that of an educational activity booklet for children highlighting these disciplines that he started in 2016 and continues this year.

The poster features veteran retired politician and civil rights activist Howard McCurdy in Science, tech pioneer Leesa Renee Hall in Technology, Somali-Canadian civil engineer Nasra Agil in Engineering, singer/songwriter Jully Black in the Arts, and Nova Scotian educator Kenneth Fells in Mathematics.

“I wanted to get people who have excelled directly in that field or use an aspect of that field in the work that they do,” says Small.

McCurdy, a former MP in Windsor and co-founder of the National Black Coalition of Canada, was educated at the University of Michigan in science.

He became the first tenured African Canadian faculty member in Canada when he became a microbiology and chemistry professor at the University of Windsor.

Small says he felt there was a void in the posters he had created and wanted to outreach and focus more than just on African Canadians and Caribbean people.

“Painting her wearing the hijab and everything, given the times that we’re in, is an important message to say that Muslims within our community are part of our community too,” says Small about Agil who is in her 20s, excelling in engineering, and has opened up the first Dollar Store in Somalia.

Black is a successful artist who has been in the music business for over 20 years and uses social media to promote her work.

Small included her to show young people that “even if you want to get into music you still have to be adept in a lot of different areas. You can’t just be a singer or you can’t just write. In order to be able to keep on promoting yourself you have to be knowledgeable about getting yourself out on social media and keeping yourself relevant.”

He says Hall is an author and technology pioneer in Canada who has written seven books related to social media and other areas.

Three years ago, Small went back to teachers’ college with the aim of wanting to create something that relates to what he is doing right now.

“It wasn’t really to go to there in order to start get a job as a teacher. So I thought of creating this booklet that focuses on science, technology, engineering, arts and math that ties in arts to those disciplines, and that it could be a useful resource for teachers and parents.”

The new edition has different activities that relate to the history of Blacks in Canada, such as one about Viola Desmond that challenges students to draw a $10 note featuring her. 

The late Desmond was a civil rights pioneer whose image the federal government recently announced will appear on the $10 note, starting in 2018 – the first Canadian woman to be on Canadian currency.

“I tell her story and the person has to image creating a $10 bill based on the story that they’ve read.”

There are also three pages related to financial literacy and educating youth about the stock market, word searches and math games.

This was created so they that get to understand how stocks go up and down, that the price fluctuates, and that they could start buying stocks from now.

“And that it doesn’t matter how much you put in right now, it’s really that you just do it consistently. And that I felt was a good message to be sending out to the Black community to get ourselves more financially aware,” says Small noting that his parents never talked to him about stocks.

Small says he decided to sell the booklets for $2, digitally and physically, because “a lot of people in our community don’t have access to technology as much as they need to so they can easily get lost in the shuffle.”

He created the booklet to provide practical exercises for those who might not have access to a computer so that they are not left out.