Bruns EIC Ally Buchanan | Illustration by Jules Keenan
February marks Black History Month, also called African History Month, a tradition that originated in 1926 and was first acknowledged in Canada in 1978. It was recognized at the federal level in 1995 when Jean Augustine, Canada’s first Black female Member of Parliament, introduced legislation cementing it in Parliamentary consciousness.
Failing to learn and understand Black history is to uphold a system of violence that has oppressed a community of people for hundreds of years. Canada likes to delude itself in saying that it does not have racism ingrained into its history and institutions, often positioning itself as the refuge from the racism of the United States. That is not true; this country was just as much built on slavery, colonialism, and oppression as our neighbours to the South. We don’t learn about it in school – at least, I didn’t – allowing this myth to carry on for those privileged enough to be able t