Mr. Speaker, today marks the beginning of Black History Month. It is an opportunity for Canadians to learn more about their neighbours of African descent, their full, rich, unknown and undiscovered stories. It is a history that stretches back as far as Mathieu Da Costa and the so-called black Loyalists, the men and women who stood by their British brothers and sisters as free persons and built a nation known as Canada.
There are names such as Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first black Canadian-born licensed surgeon, who also served with thousands of other African Canadians in the American Civil War, and who was part of select few who stood vigil over Abraham Lincoln, keeping notes on his condition until his death.
African Canadian history did not start with the immigration wave of the 1950s and 1960s, nor did it start with the underground railroad. African Canadian history is older than Canada itself.
This Black History Month, I urge all Canadians, from the House and beyond, to take a moment to learn something new about their neighbours. They might just be surprised.