From the Desk of the Secretariat of the Black Community Forum (BCF)

Join us at the Black Community Forum in congratulating the Black Theatre Workshop staff, Board and supporting technical team in the progress over the years and the contributions of the BTW to the enrichment of the Black communities, to Montreal, Quebec and Canada as the Country strives to make Multiculturalism as a state policy work. You are a great example of how it can be done. We are proud of you as a member of the Black Community Forum and your mission. You remain committed to telling stories and teaching the human condition through the lenses of the Black Canadian history and experience; but you engage the Country through your inclusiveness to participate and use it to enrich all our lives. It has taken many years. We wish you luck in the final selection on the 21 March 2019, the eve of your fiftieth Season.

January 9 2019

Finalists for the 34th Grand Prix du Conseil des arts de Montréal revealed

The Conseil des arts de Montréal is pleased to reveal the finalists for its 34^th Grand Prix, which will be awarded on March 21, 2019. The finalists made exceptional contributions to the vitality of Montréal’s arts community in 2018.

The finalists are:

Black Theatre Workshop, for its efforts to promote inclusivity among various Black communities in Montréal, Québec, and Canada and for its outspoken acceptance of sexual, linguistic, and cultural identities. The first French-language reading of Angélique, a work involving artists of diverse origins and echoing the problems of systemic racism, is representative of this broad artistic vision that builds bridges between communities, in keeping with Montréal’s social and cultural reality. The many 2018 METAs earned by their production of The Mountaintop also reflects the arts community’s interest in the Black Theatre Workshop’s outstanding projects.

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Language Courses – DESTA Black Youth Network

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Social Sciences Black History – Learn

Black Presence — Tracing Ongoing Contributions and Participation Throughout History

From the earliest explorers who brought slaves in New France to migrations from the United States and elsewhere, the threads of Black Experience and History in Canada are varied, often lost in the margins, and often just mentioned but not really explored in any depth in our provincial programs.

As we at LEARN curate and build learning materials (for the new History program, for example) we are allowing ourselves to wander into various margins. Expanding on the program’s “knowledge” lists, we are beginning a process that traces the contributions of different groups, over time and into the future, in Quebec and elsewhere too.

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Lutter contre le racisme par le théâtre, 50 ans après les émeutes de 1969 – Publié le lundi 11 février 2019 à 12 h 48 Mis à jour le lundi 11 février 2019 à 15 h 21

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The untold story of Canada’s black train porters – CBC Radio · February 8

At the beginning of the twentieth century, being a train porter in Canada was a job reserved for black men only.

It was a thankless job that consisted of hauling luggage, folding down beds, shining shoes and serving passengers. These porters earned meagre pay, got little-to-no-sleep, and were constantly separated from their families, zig-zagging the country.

So why did they do it?

Stanley Grizzle worked as a train porter for 20 years. He said he did it because he needed to eat, and there wasn’t other work available for black men at the time.

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Sekouba Bambino in spectacle at the National on Saturday, February 16, 2019 – Spectacle de Sekouba Bambino au National le samedi 16 février prochain – Productions Nuits d’Afrique

Please click HERE to view the original flyer in PDF

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The BCF Third General Meeting and Joint Conference (BCRC-ICED)

Community Education and Development: perspectives on English speaking Blacks and other minorities

Members of the Black Community Forum (BCF) and its Secretariat was active in 2018 building a network system of “collaborative unity and existential responsibility”.

General Meeting of the Black community Forum 6 December 2018 Inspirational

The third General Meeting of the BCF was held 6th December 2018 at Concordia, MB –Building, 9^th floor. MNA Jabarri represented Deputy Christopher Clarence Skeete, head of the Secretariat for Relations with English Speaking Quebecers (SRESQ). He reassured the meeting of the firm commitment of MNA Skeete to initiate a dialogue with the BCRC and the English speaking Black community. He described the meeting as valuable and “inspirational.”

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Conference on Community Education and Development: Perspectives on English Speaking Blacks and other Minorities in Quebec

by

The Black Community Resource Center (BCRC) in collaboration with the Institute for Community Education/Entrepreneurship and Development (ICED, JMSB), Concordia.

John Molson Building, Concordia, University
1450 Guy St, Montreal, QC, H3H 0A1
MB Building 9th Floor Section CD
December 7th, 2018 – 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Refreshments and Lunch will be served.

The purpose of this Conference is to bring practitioners and policy makers in the public and community spheres together to present, discuss, and share information on the problems of community education and development in the Quebec context: perspectives the Black and other official language minority communities.

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Meet Cornwall’s first female mayor. She’s Black – Egbert Gaye — November 9, 2018

Bernadette Clement is a former Montrealer with roots in Trinidad and Tobago

Twenty-seven years ago, Bernadette Clement, a former Montrealer, finished her studies at the University of Ottawa and landed her first job as a lawyer at the Legal Clinic in Cornwall.
Never did she expect that in November 2018 she’d be getting ready to occupy the Mayor’s chair as the first Black person to occupy the office in Ontario’s easternmost city. She is also the first female of color to serve as mayor in any municipality in that province.

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Skeete wants to change the conversation in Quebec – Egbert Gaye — November 9, 2018

New Head of The Secretariat for relations with English-speaking Quebecers is proud of his heritage

Heaped with the responsibility of maintaining the Secretariat for relations with English-speaking Quebecers as an important link between the Anglophones community and the newly elected Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government, Christopher Skeete feels primed for the job.
“The challenge is for English speakers in the province to see themselves as full-fledged Quebecers,” he says. “After so many decades of acting as saviours of Canada in the struggle between the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois, one federalist, the other separatist, Anglophones have been for the most part disengaged from Quebec.”

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