Black History Month - February 2025

 

Image Credit: UFCW Canada Local 1006A

From an article by Wayne Hanley
published in the UFCW Canada Local 1006A Newsletter

Black History Month

Learn more about famous Black Canadians

Viola Desmond
A businesswoman who was jailed and charged in 1946  for refusing to sit in the racially segregated section of a Nova Scotia theatre. She is pictured on the $10 Canadian bill. 

Mary Ann Shadd
In the mid-1800s, Mary Ann became the first female publisher in North America and founded an anti-slavery newpaper and established a racially integrated school.

Carrie Best
In the mid 1900s, she co-founded the Black newspaper, the Clarion. She and her son were also arrested and charged in 1941 for trying to sit in the non-segregated section of a theatre. She filed a civil suit, citing racial discrimination which ultimately failed.

William Hall
He fought with the British and was the first Canadian sailor to be honoured with a Victoria Cross in 1859.

Josiah Henson
Author, abolitionist and minister. The character, Uncle Tom, in Uncle Tom's Cabin is based on Henson. 

*****
From an article by Wayne Hanley
published in the UFCW Canada Local 1006A Newsletter

Thank You Bingo Volunteers

 

Newmarket Charity Bingo

SSVP Newmarket was approved to participate in Newmarket Charity Bingo in early 2024. 

Since then, our Bingo volunteers have earned enough funds to purchase almost one thousand $20 grocery store food cards to be distributed to families in need in Newmarket and East Gwillimbury.

#ThankYou #BingoWorld #BingoWorldandGamingNewmarket #CharitableGaming #CommunityGood #NewmarketCharitableGamingAssociation

The Debate Over Indigenous Land Acknowledgement

 

Two Row Wampum

Not everyone thinks that making an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement (ILA) at meetings is necessarily a good idea. For example, on Jan 5th the New York Times published a guest essay titled, "Enough With the Land Acknowledgments." In her essay, Dr. Kathleen DuVal, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, who makes no claim to being Indigenous, makes some good points, most of which I have made myself on various occasions, including this one about the point of an ILA: "The point is to make us more aware of the dispossession and violence that occurred in the establishment and expansion of the United States. But they’ve begun to sound more like rote obligations." The point applies equally to Canada, of course. Generally, I do not disagree with the points she raises but rather with her conclusion: therefore we should STOP making Indigenous Land Acknowledgments. That's quite a leap of logic when there is a host of alternatives to consider.

A decision to make an ILA should be researched and decided with forethought and consultation, and then implemented in an intelligent and meaningful way. At a minimum, it must include a commitment to learn more about Indigenous history and issues. I know someone who works for a local health organisation. They make an ILA at all their formal meetings with the understanding that whoever reads the ILA follows up by taking one or two minutes to tell attendees about some fact or issue pertaining to First Nations, Metis or Indigenous Peoples that they have learned. This person I know is from Winnipeg and told her colleagues about Louis Riel and the Métis Rebellion of 1885 and the present day follow-up which honours Louis Riel. More recently I heard the president of the Peterborough Particular Council, after he read the local ILA, share how the development of the Trent Waterway flooded vast areas of agricultural land reserved for local first nations, in violation of treaties, making them dependent on 'hand-outs' which White people today consider 'charity'. This is one easy way you can overcome an ILA becoming rote, and a better way than simply abandoning the practice which will take us backwards.

Indifference - The Opposite of Love

 

“The opposite of love is not hatred, 
it’s indifference…

and the opposite of life is not death,
it’s indifference.”

Elie Wiesel, quoted by Pope Francis on July 25, 2022 when the Pope apologized for the role of the Catholic Church in the abuse and forced assimilation of Indigenous Peoples:

"I think back on the stories you told: how the policies of assimilation ended up systematically marginalizing the Indigenous Peoples; how also through the system of residential schools your languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed; how children suffered physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse; how they were taken away from their homes at a young age, and how that indelibly affected relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren.

I thank you for making me appreciate this, for telling me about the heavy burdens that you still bear, for sharing with me these bitter memories. Today I am here, in this land that, along with its ancient memories, preserves the scars of still open wounds. I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry. Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous Peoples.

I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools."