News Archives: Black History Month: A Look into History
Wednesday, February 9th, 2022
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For much of the past century, there have been efforts to bring attention to the often-overlooked historical experiences and contributions of Black Canadians. Today, February is officially recognized as Black History Month by the Canadian Parliament.
In the Peace Region, history has tended to emphasize the homesteader period of the early 20th century. While there were Black Canadian homesteaders on the Prairies and communities such as Amber Valley north of Edmonton are well-known, the stories of the Black Canadian experience in the Peace Region are challenging to find. Last year, I shared the stories of Allen Kelly and Benjamin Washington, two early homesteaders.
Why are the stories challenging to find? In large part because the Black Canadian community in the Peace was very small. The 1941 Census recorded just 10 Black Canadians out of a total population of 47,833 in divisions 15 and 16 of Alberta, which approximately cover the Peace Region. Trends suggested Black Canadians would become an even smaller part of the population in the years that followed. The 1941 Census showed that only 0.19% of the population (22,000 out of 11.5 million people) were identified by the enumerators as “Negro,” down from 0.32% in 1901 (17,000 out of 5.3 million).
Decisions by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics have also made it difficult to even get a picture of how large the Black Canadian population was. For decades, published census tables did not identify numbers of Black Canadians but listed them under “Other.” For example, Question #26 from the 1981 census (shown in the below image) does not list a relevant option and requires the individual to specify it.
Image from Walton O. Boxhill. A User’s Guide to 1981 Census Data on Ethnic Origin. Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Housing, Family, and Social Statistics Division, 1986.
The “What,” however, does not explain the “Why.” Why has Canada only seen growth in the numbers of Black Canadians in more recent decades? The answer lies in Canada’s historically discriminatory immigration policies. During the “Wheat Boom” years at the turn of the 20th century, when the Prairies were being promoted across Europe and the United States as “the Last Best West,” Canadian immigration agents actively discouraged Black American immigrants, even those trying to escape race-based violence. Black American immigrants who arrived at the border often found themselves scrutinized until a pretext for exclusion could be found. At a time when hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrived each year, an annual average of 150 Black American immigrants, chiefly bound for the Prairies, was enough to raise outcry in Edmonton and prompt the government of Wilfrid Laurier to consider banning Black American immigration for a year.
While the Second World War generally marked a turning point in attitudes towards immigration, Canada was still slow to open its doors to people of colour. The federal government objected to Black American servicemen being stationed in Canada as part of Cold War defence projects and immigration officials continued to deny entry to prospective Black immigrants. Incremental change did occur, but it was not until the 1976 Immigration Act that Canada adopted its modern immigration system which has produced the current Canadian diaspora.
Still, as they often have, immigrants followed economic opportunity. The Peace Region, and Alberta more generally, went through an economic downturn in the 1980s. By the 1991 census, divisions 17 and 19 (covering most of the Peace) had only 75 people identifying as Black Canadians. With brighter economic times in the 21st century that number had grown to 450 by 2001 and then to nearly 2,000 in the 2016 census (a fifty-fold increase in the share of the population over 1941). That more substantial community will undoubtedly author a very different history of Black Canadians in the Peace than those smaller numbers who came before them, but there are a few stories which I hope to share with you in the coming weeks.
