"Not of the Nation": Canadian History Textbooks and the Impossibility of an African-Canadian Identity

Abstract

The historical experience of blacks in Canada has continued to be one of partial remembrance and recognition set against a highly developed and dominant Anglo portrayal of Canadian history. This partiality has greatly limited the development of identity for Canadian blacks due to general non-recognition of them on the part of the white Canadian majority. Historiographically, the historical presence of blacks in Canada has been constructed as distinctly provisional. This study will illustrate the historical exclusion of black Canadians from the Canadian historical narrative by examining pre-Confederation Canadian black history as it appeared in thirty-two intermediate level (grades 7-10) textbooks authorized for use in Ontario between 1950 and 1985. These textbooks were evaluated based on their coverage of slavery in Canada, the Loyalist migration, the War of 1812, the Rebellions of 1837, and the Underground Railroad. These events are helpful in this assessment because they exist at the intersection of noteworthy events in Canadian history and significant moments in the history of black migration and black contribution to the nation. By uncovering these omissions, this study will also discuss the extent to which "black Canadian-ness" was constructed within these texts as a contradiction in terms. Informed by anti-racist pedagogy concerning the hegemonic effects of curricula on racial identity formation, it will focus on where such exclusions affected the process of identity formation of Canadian blacks and how it contributed to the alienation of black children's sense of belonging to the Canadian nation, curtailing the development of an identifiably black and Canadian identity for indigenous black.