If I asked you what country comes to mind when you hear the words, Jim Crow. The Ku Klux Klan. Enslaved persons, I bet you a US dollar that you would say ’the United States of America.” While you are not completely wrong, you may be surprised to learn how my guest Laurelle Harris educates the listener on how those terms of racism are also very much a history of the place we call home – Canada. Laurelle shares that one of Canada’s most prestigious universities is named after a well-known man who personally owned enslaved persons and his business interest were intrinsically intertwined with the slave trade. Anyone guess Montreal businessman James McGill?

As she says in this episode “it’s not comfortable for people to remember the uncomfortable parts of their own history, so we simply don’t think about or talk about those things.” On this episode with Laurelle Harris, we definitely talk about those things and more.

Laurelle Harris’s resources on Black History in Canada:

The Canadian Encyclopedia (online) numerous articles that are constantly getting updated. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca

Notable Canadian historians: Afua Cooper is a professor at Dalhousie University. https://afuacooper.com/

Charmaine Nelson is a professor of Art History and is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transatlantic Black Diaspora Art Community Engagement at NSCAD University in Halifax. [email protected]

Natasha Henry is the President of the Ontario Black History Society. [email protected]

Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives (State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present) https://robynmaynard.com

Laurelle Harris;  https://equitablesolutions.ca

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