Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 24th, 2011

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Because they're doing the cannons out there, and everybody is going to want to be turning around, might we suspend for just a minute?

[Rosemary Sadlier]

Okay.

Is this going to go on for awhile?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

It shouldn't be for very long. I think it's just a 21-gun salute. I have a sense that maybe somebody wants to take a look at the ceremony that's happening out there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Okay.

We'll suspend for one minute.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Sorry about the interruption. As you can see, everyone was keen to see the flyover.

We were talking a lot about the public school system. It reminded me a bit of being in school at the moment, all the excitement around the planes.

Anyway, Mr. Cash, it was your round and you have about two minutes left.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Well, I'll hand it back to Ms. Sadlier.

[Rosemary Sadlier]

What were we talking about?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You said you hadn't lost the question....

[Rosemary Sadlier]

Okay.

I think what I started out by saying is that no matter what this committee should opt to do, we're not going to be successful in ending poverty. That's just a given, unfortunately.

The other part of it is that there is poverty, in part, because there is racism. We have racism, in part, because we have a hegemonic knowledge of what and who people of African origin are supposed to be about. That's informed by what we think we know about them, which may or may not be correct.

If we have a centre for African Canadian history and heritage that helps to put out the real stories—I'm not talking about, necessarily, the Paul Bunyan stories, but real experiences, real incidents that have occurred, real accomplishments that have been made by people of African origin, not just in 1604, but yesterday—that helps to inform people who do the hiring, people who do the admissions, people who make the selections about who should get...because that is also where and how poverty develops and is extended.

It also does something in terms of the person of African origin. I mentioned at the outset that here I am, a person of African origin. My family has been in this country since 1783. I won't tell you at what age I found out that my family, people who look like me, had actually done things because everything around me told me that we had done nothing. And it applies to me, and I'm from this place.

So how does that help somebody who's new to this country, who doesn't have that kind of knowledge that their grandfather...? How do you get that foothold and that sense that there are people who've done things?

They have a negative opinion about people of African origin or people who look like themselves. People who are doing the hiring have a negative image, and that all feeds into not just a poverty of finances but a poverty of experience and understanding.

[Anthony Sherwood]

I think the Department of Canadian Heritage has realized for a long time that systemic racism is a fact that causes social problems, as Tyrone mentioned, like a sense of worth that leads to youth violence and crime.

One of the things they created in the early 1990s was the March 21 campaign, which I was involved with. March 21 is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Why we started programs like the stop racism video competition for students across the country is because I think the Department of Canadian Heritage realized the importance of eliminating racism in Canadian society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Cash.

[Rosemary Sadlier]

Perhaps I could just add one other thing. In 1967 I think one of the wonderful things that came about from that particular celebration was a greater sense of Quebec and issues around Quebec. I think this is an opportunity for us to add that other piece to the founding peoples, so that we have a fuller and more complete sense of who we are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Mr. Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you both for your submissions. This has been tremendously exciting. I want to congratulate you all for bringing some specific recommendations, because that's a framework we can build on as a committee to make recommendations to the department, coming out of this study.

I embrace the “We are one” theme. I think it's a great direction for Canada to take and something we should strongly consider. As far as the museum goes, I also think that's a tremendous project, something we definitely should consider strongly as part of our celebrations of Canada 150. We have to embrace our past if we're going to move forward. We must celebrate our victories and the good things about Canada's past, but also remember the mistakes we have made as a country.

I'm going to talk briefly about one of those mistakes, but I'm going to go back to something I talked about in the last committee meeting. The year 2017 is also the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which I think was a pivotal moment in Canadian history. At Vimy Ridge, there's a tremendous story about an African Canadian named Jeremiah Jones, who is from my home town; this is like what my colleague talked about in relation to his area.

Jeremiah Jones was a soldier in the 106th battalion of the Nova Scotia Rifles. During the Battle of Vimy Ridge, he crossed the German lines, became separated from his platoon—we fought in platoon style at Vimy Ridge, which is probably the reason we won that battle—single-handedly captured a German machine gun nest, and, I'm sure you are aware of this story, brought the entire crew of Germans back with him, carrying their machine gun, and then presented the machine gun to his CO and asked, “Is this thing any good?”

There was great celebration in town, because the Jones family was very popular, and he was a high-profile community member before he entered the war—and a great friend of my grandfather, who also fought at Vimy Ridge. I am going to read you a quote from the Truro newspaper from the time:

Jerry Jones...captured a German machine gun, forced the crew to carry it back to our lines, and, depositing it at the feet of the C.O. said;-

“Is this thing any good?”

The report is that he has been recommended for a D.C.M. I hope it is true. [We] All [need to] honor...this man, who is ready for the front again [after recently being wounded].

May he live to return to Truro and [may he] receive the welcome and awards he deserves.

We are glad for these encouraging lines for the boys from a Military Camp in England and...what if “Jerry Jones” returns to Truro with a D.C.M., he'll be the lion of the hour.

Well, in one of the great tragedies of Canadian history, he didn't get the DCM. I was pleased to attend a ceremony two years ago at which that wrong was righted and he received the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously from Peter MacKay and Mayann Francis, who is the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, his daughter, who had really worked hard celebrating history and who was a former teacher of mine, passed away the evening before he was to receive this medal.

That's the type of dedication and service the community has given to Canada. That's also the way that Canadians have treated some of this community in the past. Things like this, in a history museum all about black history, would be a tremendous thing for all Canadians to see—not just African Nova Scotians and African Canadians; I think it's something that all Canadians should see and experience, to know that we are one and that we are going to move forward together.

So I think the museum is a great idea.

The other answer is education. Education solves what Mr. Cash was talking about concerning poverty. We have talked about moving people around and about youth exchanges. But I think as part of Canada 150 we have to re-embrace a scholarship program for all students and all youth in poverty to support their going on to some sort of post-secondary training, because education is the great leveller. We talked a bit about that during our break.

So what are your comments on some sort of program we can put in place to support education to help relieve the problem of poverty in your community, and in fact the poverty of all Canadians?

[Anthony Sherwood]

I wanted to comment that in my film Honour Before Glory about the No. 2 Construction Battalion, we went to Truro, and I interviewed Jerry Jones's daughter, whom you spoke of. I had the honour and pleasure of meeting her, and I was so crushed when I heard that she passed away the day before her father was recognized with this award.

I was telling Mr. Simms why I cited the War Museum of Canada as a possible model for this centre. Why was the War Museum created? The War Museum of Canada was created so that Canadians could understand the contributions and the sacrifices made by Canadians in the First World War and the Second World War, to feature the individual stories of heroism and intense human sacrifice that were made by Canadians, to instill a sense of pride in Canadians, and to educate people about the contributions we made to the world during those two huge encounters. That's why the War Museum was created. On the same philosophical lines, the African Canadian Museum should be created to give a sense of pride to all Canadians, and to give a lasting monument to the contributions that community has made. That in itself will be an education for Canadians.

I have to reiterate that this educational process stems right from the grassroots, from teachers groups, to school boards, to parents associations, to ministries, to the provincial ministries of education. We need to change the teaching of history in our schools, because Black History Month now is just optional. Sure, it's popular and a lot of large inner-city schools celebrate it, but there has to be a change in how we teach history in school. Certainly a museum would be a step in that direction. It would provide a lasting monument of pride and education as well as an opportunity for Canadians to come and learn about Canadian history.

[Rosemary Sadlier]

The need for a museum is well documented. But no matter what the model for a centre or museum of African Canadian history is, at the end of the day it would be a place where people can come, learning can take place, and a foundation of memory can be laid. Between now and 2017, we should be creating more materials. Those films, those vignettes, can all be part of what would be in the museum, as well as exhibits, as well as the artifacts that raised awareness might help to create. All of this is to say that the potential is there for finding a way to better reflect who we are as Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Mr. Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

First, when I hear you say that it would be good to have an African-Canadian museum for 2017, one thing concerns me. I wonder if we should not blend black history into existing museums. The same reasoning applies to Black History Month. There should be no need for it to exist, we should have blended black history in everywhere, just like we should perhaps try to blend black history into our existing museums for 2017. But I am not knowledgeable enough about the subject to have a well-informed opinion on it.

But I have one question for you. When the plan is for a title “We are one”, aren't you really interested in a program with the title “To be one”? The 150^th anniversary could be very embarrassing if we still have the problem of African-Canadians being excluded from our history. If we want to be really ready for the celebrations without feeling bitter about them, I feel that doling out buckets with the maple leaf emblem on them so that the people of Attawapiskat can have drinking water is not the way to go about it.

We were talking about crime-related issues just now. I also don't think that passing Bill C-10 is going to help kids proudly drape themselves in a Canadian identity.

Don't you think that we should establish a list of priorities, attainable goals, so that everyone can feel comfortable about the 150^th anniversary?

[Rosemary Sadlier]

I understood you correctly; I think the priorities would include....

First, let me go back to say that black is not a colour; it's an ideology. And I think that black is synonymous with African Canadians. So do people see themselves as African Canadian or black? I don't know.

Next year, 2012, marks the 50th anniversary of Jamaica. What a resurgence of pride there is now for people who are of Jamaican ancestry.

It's also the 50th anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago. What a resurgence of pride there is in that particular anniversary.

So do those people see themselves as African Canadian first, Canadian first, black first, or do they see themselves as Jamaican first, or whatever? I suspect they see themselves as Jamaican first, or what have you.

The reason for that is that we, as a country, have not affirmed our community of African Canadians. Why would I come to Canada? And I'm taking a lot of impressions and putting them together, so please excuse me. But why come to Canada and identify yourselves, and feel a connection to these people here when you come from another place where you are known to have made a contribution, as opposed to this place where you are invisible and, if anything, you are poor, uneducated, and many other things that are just assumed to be true?

It is a challenge we work on in terms of trying to help people feel a sense of pride in being African Canadian, and part of that would be in having them acknowledged as being founding peoples. Part of that would be in the process, because it can't happen at once; it's a process. Having the materials, a series of films, a series of vignettes, a series of exhibits, having more written, more research done, more photographs brought to the forefront, and having those artifacts collected would be one of the ways of drawing attention to what we have, who we are, and what we can become.

[Anthony Sherwood]

I think you also asked about the priorities of, say, a different series of events leading up to 2017. Again, I think it's already an ongoing process. Certainly my company is just one of the companies that is continually doing projects for the Government of Canada to raise awareness of the contributions of African Canadians.

Certainly the Ontario Black History Society is always in the process of informing Canadians about the contributions of our community.

It would be great to collect all this work for the purpose of creating a centre or museum of African Canadians in 2017. I think this would be ideal. As Rosemary mentioned, all these pieces of artifacts and films and information would be accessible in this centre or this museum, to be run very similarly to the Canadian War Museum, where people can go in and access.... When you go to the War Museum you can access information, history, articles, and photos. It can be a source of education, of pride, of culture, of tourism—all these things. It could even be a source of substantial revenue to whoever decides to operate and own it.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

But just like the bronze in front of the Chateau Laurier that's missing, don't you think that all that you've described, which is so enlightening, should be encrypted at large in all museums in Canada, instead of having a separate museum for this?

[Rosemary Sadlier]

Of course, it should be, but it hasn't. If you continue to do the same thing over and over again, you're going to get the same thing. What is that expression?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Procrastination?

[Rosemary Sadlier]

It hasn't happened. Is it going to happen? It's unlikely, so that's part of the reason for the advocacy, and the interest is still there because if we don't make that claim and make sure it happens, it isn't going to happen. It hasn't happened in 400 years.