 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to tonight's virtual lecture with Dr. June Francis, Hidden Histories, the Local Impact of Slavery on Contemporary Society. My name is Kate Kun-fihan, and I am a librarian at West Vancouver Memorial Library. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening, I would like to acknowledge that for those of us on the North Shore, this evening has taken place on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish, Swaylatuth, and Musqueam nations. If you are uncertain as to what ancestral territory you live on, I encourage you to visit who's.land to learn more about the traditional lands on which you reside. As we talk today about how public and private institutions and corporations continue to benefit from the role they played in transforming Black labor, imperial expansion, and colonial disposition into intergenerational wealth and privilege, it is important to consider how Coast Salish peoples have been custodians of the land since time immemorial, and that colonialism and imperialism has sought to take their lands and eliminate their cultures and traditions. We could not present this presentation without the amazing partnership between North Van City Library, North Van District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library. I want to thank all of our North Shore libraries for making this happen. Now, to introduce Dr. Francis, I'll hand things over to CJ at the North Vancouver City Library. Thanks, CJ. Thanks so much, Kate, and good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Just before we hand things over to Dr. Francis, I just wanted to quickly introduce her and introduce myself too. My name is CJ Pentland and I'm a librarian at the North Vancouver City Library. So Dr. June Francis is co-founder of the Co-laboratorio, special advisor to the president of Simon Fraser University on anti-racism, director of the Institute for Diaspora Research and Engagement, co-founder of the Black Caucus at SFU, and an associate professor in the Beattie School of Business. She is also board chair of the Hobens Alley Society, an organization whose mission is to advance the economic and cultural well-being of people of African descent through the delivery of housing, build spaces, and programming. Through her consulting, research, and media, and as a volunteer, she advocates for equity, diversity, and inclusion for racialized groups, as well as human rights. June has been recognized by the province of British Columbia and the National Congress of Black Women as a trailblazer and was recently named to the Vancouver Magazine's 2022 Power 50 list. The City of Vancouver has recognized her for her contributions to education and to the city. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rosemary Brown Award for exemplary work to bring equity or equality for girls and women, and she's also received the service award from the Beattie School of Business for her contributions to the community. She served on SFU's Board of Governors and on the Board of Directors at Mosaic, a key immigrant and refugee settlement society. June is also an advisor and member of the Black North Initiative Education Committee, the International Decade of People of African Descent Steering Committee, the Canadian Preview Council Office COVID-19 External Advisory Committee on Communications, and the WASC Center for Dialogue. So without any further ado, I'll pass things over to Dr. Francis. Thank you very much. And first of all, I want to really thank everyone who has joined me on this sweltering afternoon. Certainly if you're here in British Columbia, you are sweltering. So the fact that you're here tells me an awful lot about your commitment to this topic. I also want to just shout out to the organizer that I just heard from our co-panelists that they do not have the correct links. So if you could just send that to them again. I will be sharing my screen for most of this presentation, but I just want to really lift up the North Shore libraries for being courageous enough to open the door to this topic. I also must say that they came to ask me to do this a very long time ago, showing how much they were committed to not only this conversation, but also in recognition of the Emancipation Day, they wish to have this lecture. So I just want to thank all of you. I know there's three different groups, the City Library, the North Shore District Library, and the West Vancouver Memorial Library. And so I just want to say thank you to all of you. I was once a resident for many, many years of North Vancouver. So it is a city that was very dear to my heart. It was the first place I moved to when I came to British Columbia. We are going to be talking about hidden histories. And I would like to say there are two sets of hidden histories that we want to talk about. We want to talk, we will be talking about the ways in which slavery and the historic legacies of slavery has been hidden from Canadian contemporary consciousness. In the last while, of course, things have changed, but I just want to point out that that's the first hidden set of ideas that we're going to be talking about. The second set has to do with the ways in which Black contributions have also been hidden. So we have a double impact of not only having the history of slavery hidden, but the Black contributions also hidden. I want to start by introducing myself. And I chose to introduce myself in this way today. You have heard about my other life, my professional life, but I'd also like you to know that I am a product of the very forces that we're going to be talking about today. My ancestors were in fact taken against their will. Taken is a very mild term because there is no words to describe what happened to them. And forced through the middle passage that we'll talk about today, into the land that was called by the Tain of First Nation, Examaica, and today's called Jamaica, the Isle of Springs. Of course, it was no spring or Isle of Spring for either the Tain of First Nations or the African slaves that enslaved that land. It was one of the most brutish slave society. And I just wanted to say that at one point, at one very important, at a point in British history, it was the most, the wealthiest crown, colony that the crown had, the British crown had. And it was reflected in the ways in which slavery was put, you know, exercising the most brutish of ways in Jamaica. The other thing I wanted to say as we talk about emancipation is that it's very critical to recognize that while there are a number of people of European descent who did in fact work towards emancipation, the real quest for emancipation started not only when we got to the Americas, but in fact started at the very moment that we were kidnapped. We were resisting this process from the very get go, and the record is really clear. Those of us who ended up in the Americas were involved over many, many decades in a number of slave revolts. Jamaica's Christmas of uprising being credited as one of the most significant uprising that eventually ended British slavery. So I just want to make that clear because we have to start to reorient our thinking and understanding about how history has been portrayed to us, who has been hidden from it, and who has been lauded. And I want to also look at this picture in the second in the middle, who it's a picture that was painted to portray emancipation in Jamaica. And there are a number of symbolisms in it, including the woman on the left lifting up her child in jubilation as a symbol that her child would be the first on these lands not to be enslaved. And a number of other symbolism is included in the bearing of the shackles and chains. Now emancipation did not stop the brutality, but it was an important step. And I also want to say that I come from a country where I was born in the country where our motto is out of many one people. I'm not fond of this coat of arms because it has a lot of symbolism that I'm not sure we would identify with anymore. But what you see here at least is an acknowledgement of the primacy of the time of First Nations. And also this logo was adopted at independence to acknowledge that we were one, we were a people that came from one people that came from many, many different backgrounds. So we'll be talking today about the very issue of slavery. We'll talk about the contemporary impacts. I will get to what I think libraries and we as individuals and institutions and organizations can do. I want to also say that we are in for a real treat and a surprise. And that is that both Guy Hayward and Christine Best will be joining us at the end. And for those of you who read the article, you will know why this is in fact quite a treat. I want to thank you for being here because I want to recognize that it is indeed a privilege that you have to educate yourself about racism instead of experiencing it. Let me just make this really, really clear by another analogy. I remember when I was growing up, my mother would often say, if you can't hear, you will feel for many people racism was something that was felt, not because we caused it. And I mean, I'm misusing her phrase a little bit. But she always advised us to try to hear. And this is what I am asking you today as you come into this space, I am joining you from the land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Slaylaton peoples. I know you're joining me from different places. But as you enter into this virtual space, I want you to count it a privilege that you get to listen rather than feel the impact of racism. Because I know for many of you as the Black Lives Matter protest erupted in Vancouver and across the world. And you saw the global impact with Black Lives Matter from Japan to Brazil, to the United States, of course, where it started. But importantly, to Canada, I knew I knew at that moment, there were a lot of Canadians who were a little bit surprised at the level at which Black community here and elsewhere in Canada were coming or going into the streets and trying to raise awareness for the historic ways in which Blackness has been erased from Canadian history. I want to start this talk by thanking Christine Best and Guy Hayward, who are the real motivations for this talk today. You see, Guy Hayward and Christine were quoted in an article, and I also want to thank Brent Richer, because I do think this article is a very important document. In it, an amazingly clear account, Guy portrays the historic ways in which North Vancouver was founded and sits today. Let me say that again, North Vancouver District, I mean North Vancouver City, which was carved out of North Vancouver, sits today on the privilege, the lands and the prosperity that traces itself all the way back to the blood and sweat and tears of slavery. And as you enter into this conversation today, I think we all need to take this very, very seriously. So I want to thank Guy, but also in that article, I got to learn a lot about Christine Best and her family and the ways in which many of us are ignorant to the Black contributions in Canada. We will hear from them later, and so I will just keep going. Now I'm trying to, I tried to put together what I thought was a major genealogical analysis that Guy presented from the research that was done by him, his family, and also other academic researchers. And if you can bear with me for just a minute, the key thing here is to recognize that what he has done, he has traced back to this point on this slide, and there's a second slide, the investment in 1970, starting at the bottom, in the bank, in banks in Manchester in the United Kingdom. These two people, Arthur Haywood and Benjamin Haywood, started this bank. Both of them then, through a number of bequeats, ended up bequeasing 1.2 million fortune from the family bank in Manchester, where John Pemberton worked, and the uncle gave it to his nephew. That's the point. The main point here is that 1.2 million dollars was bequeathed, and this is a large sum of money, if you think about it, it is in fact a major fortune. Guy goes on to describe how that formed the investment of into the first white settler society, which was led by, a syndicate was led by Arthur Pemberton, and it was called the Moody Soul Mail, and it was the first industrial development surrounded by a settler society in North Man, first. As we move forward, what happens is that there's a bankruptcy, the debt becomes consolidated, and that ends up in the Lonsdale estate, owned by both James Pemberton Fell and Henry Haywood Lonsdale. That investment into the Lonsdale estate, along with Holdings of the North Vancouver Land Improvement Company, became much of the investments that formed the city of Vancouver. I'll just leave it at that. The key thing to understand is to trace the money. If you're sitting in North Vancouver today, you are sitting on investments that started with this first settlement. It's unavoidable. You have benefited from this. Some have benefited more than others, but you have benefited as a city and institutions and organizations from this investment. Now, where did this investment come from? Well, I'm showing you a picture of a slave boat. This actual image became quite important, because of course, as you can imagine, there are not a lot of accounts, physical accounts or pictures, and this was an attempt made to try to portray how slaves were enslaved people from Africa, enslaved people from Africa were brutally carried across the Atlantic for up to two months in this kind of condition. It is a story of absolute, absolute abject brutality and barbarity. And I think that if you're looking at this picture and you're not having a visceral impact, it's because I'm failing to convey that those were human beings that were taken away and put in shackles at the bottom of a boat, not knowing where they were going to go. Well, the father Arthur Haywood and Benjamin Haywood, forget the father and uncle, their father and uncle to the people before, who established the bank got their money from the fact that they had at least two slave ships named Feeb and the Prince of Wales, if I got that right, that sailed between West Africa and the West Indies. There's an account that Feeb carried 280 slaves from the Gokos in 1753, and the Haywood brothers invested in up to 133 voyages up until 1780. If my calculation is not off, and it could be, this is a brutality against 75,000 human beings that were taken from their homes, their families under the most brutish condition in order to create the economic investment that you now sit on in North Vancouver, in the North Shore. The middle passage, and I'm going into details, because I want everyone to leave here being clear about what this investment was. And it was no stock market investment. This was an investment in human suffering. This was an investment in the most barbaric of circumstances. The middle passage was called the way of death by the historian Joseph Miller. It was called a floating tomb. They were seen as commodities that died with ease. So many of them died. Of course, there were frequent rebellions, and the few that succeeded simply ended up in more brutality. They were shackled together lying down, and we have a first-hand account from Equino, who was one of the last enslaved people who became able to read and write, literate, and wrote his own autobiography. And so we are blessed at least, and I don't know if blessed is the right word, but at least we have something from a slave-owned account of these issues. And when you read his account, it is actually harrowing. African captives were shackled together lying down side by side, head to foot, or even closer. Deaths from suffocation, malnutrition, and disease were routine on the death, as were arbitrary torture and murder by the crew. The closeness, the fear delivered many into madness and suicide attempts were often. Other ships could smell slaves from far, other ships could smell slaves from far away. And the Portuguese sailors called them the floating tomb. And he recounts, when I looked up, when I looked around the ship to and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenance expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my faith, and quite overpowered with sorrow and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. I asked if we were, I asked if we were not to be eaten by those white men with such horrible looks, red faces, and white long hair. He had no idea what was going on, and he feared he was going to be eaten. You see, English voyages made large profits, and again, that's the investment. That was the investment that found its way into North Vancouver. English voyages made large profits considerably above the norm for other investment options. Most voyages made over 50% in profits. Others sometimes made very large profits. So this was an investment that brought great returns to the people who invested in it, and slavery money circulated and supported not only the, not only just the transport in slave ships, but slavery itself has been fundamental for the development of corporations, the development of finances, of what we call financialization. This is really important to understand. So things like credit notes were developed because they needed a way to get payments for these long voyages, and more and more they became sophisticated in developing these instruments around to finance slavery. So credit notes, limited liability were syndications between people who emerged as a way to finance ships. Insurance, the first set of insurances were on our bodies. Black bodies were set as the collateral. We were luggage. We were commodities. We were not humans. And so our bodies formed the collateral. So it's important to see the knock on effects, right? Because in fact they transform human lives into profit bearing opportunities. And if you look at the great finance centers as they call them, I don't know what great would be a good term. Certainly they're washed in the blood of money that's been tainted. London, Liverpool, many of these stock exchange. America's first bond market was backed by enslaved human beings. So when we talk about the circulation, the way in which the investments produced what we now see as a very basis of capitalism and the capitalist structures that we inherit is really important to understand that that itself is based on slavery. And it's attracted people from all walks of life. Every, every monop that I have looked at in the UK that they that was invested in slavery, the queen invested in slavery, queens invested in slavery, people, surgeons, people from all walks of life invested in slavery. But when it's slavery, because, of course, at the opportunity they saw, it didn't matter that it was human lives that were the cost. And if you have heard this a lot of times and you're sitting here today feeling I've heard this before, I want you to deeply hear it again, because it's important for you to understand that when we look at what's around us, the very, very, very roots of the trees, if they're the very roots of some of this rotten tree is based on its very inception in the blood of slaves. Now, let's think about the thinkers like John Locke, who espoused that all men by nature are equal in that equal rights that every man has is their natural freedom. Let me just also remind you that Locke owned slaves, a stock in slave trading company, and was Secretary of the Lord Proprietor of Carolinas, where slavery was constitutionally permitted. We were no longer seen as part of that equation. And the long reach of that denial of our humanity is still what we are inheriting to this very day. The extraction did not only relate to our labor and our bodies, but our intellectual property. We were brought to the Americas as slaves that could mining slaves. They specifically asked for tradespeople. We were brought to develop the rights industry in the United States. Chocolate milk that went on to provide the basis for the Cadbury organization's great wealth is reputed to have been, and there is research to show that it links to the information he extracted from slaves in Jamaica, where he went as a surgeon. And the British Museum today has a great deal of debt to many of the plants and their uses that were in fact taken from the Americas, but based on the intellectual understanding by the enslaved people as to their uses and their properties. So the intellectual life, and I could go on to talk about the ways in which we were used for scientific discovery. It's too painful to say what really we were cut open to see how we would do various things. The brutality, as many of you know, that we were used as guinea pigs for a variety of things. And some of that impact is with us today as COVID-19 shows, with many black people continuing to lack trust in the system that would have produced this kind of brutality. Slavery fueled the British industrial revolution. We often think about the industrial revolution as a European achievement. It is really important because I know most of us will have a pushback in our brain, but it did more than create a source of labour for Britain. It built a systematic network of exploitation. And this would lead to an entire lecture, but that was a backbone of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution does not happen without slavery. And so when often European powers come to the Caribbean or go to the continent and say you should do exactly what we do if you want to become rich because you should follow our industry, the only retort we could have is are you suggesting that we engage in slavery? Are you suggesting that we dispossess indigenous people of their land? Are you suggesting that we colonize a continent? Because that was the source of your wealth. So if you look at the British Museum, you look at Barclays Bank, you look at Lords of London, you look at some cities, the one to the right is Liverpool, Glasgow. If you look at the CN Rail, for example, these have all benefited from the institution of slavery. And it goes on. One estimate about the value, the modern value of just the US slave labour, just labour, ranges from $5.9 to $14.2 trillion. In other words, if you were to value the labour that went into products that were sold but the labourers we were not paid, that is the debt that's owed for just the labour. Now I'm coming to Canada because it's really important when we talk about slavery not to think of it as something over there because as Canadians we like to think always something that happens, we forget we were part of British North America, we forget our complicity and our benefits there and we often like to think of it as something that happens elsewhere, not in Canada. And what the Guy Hayward's analysis reminds us of and shows and why it's such an important document is because it shows us something we knew which is that Canada, there is something called the integration of the Atlantic system. So European slavery and colonisation created a system where the economies of Europe, West Africa and the Americas were closely tied by trade, the movement of finances and the movement of people. Canada was locked into the system of the circulation of money, of money, the circulation of people and the circulation of wealth. Let me say this again, Canada was embedded in the same system of slavery that we're talking about and the North Vancouver example illustrates this and let me be clear why it's so important is that so little research has been done to reveal this in Canada. I know that as we invest more and more, more of these stories will emerge. I will simply say that it's important to also recognize that not only did it enrich European powers, industrial revolution doesn't happen without slavery and colonisation, but it underdeveloped Africa. Of the 6.5 million, and I'm sorry, I'm quoting Rodney at this point, I like Rodney, not Rodney, I don't like the term immigrants, so let me just, I'm quoting it, I should have taken it out, but of the 6.5 million people who survived the crossing of the Atlantic and settled in the Western Hemisphere between 1942 and 1776 and I know why he used immigrants because they were including the white immigrants. Only 1 million were Europeans, the vast majority of everything that was accomplished in the in the in the Americas were on the backs of slaves. Let me say this again, the vast majority of whatever you see around you, except for of course we all always acknowledge that we have settled and stolen indigenous lands and I usually remind people that I'm a stolen person that was placed on stolen lands, but all of what you see that is often claimed by the white settler population, not all, but a substantial amount if you look at these numbers had to have come from the backbreaking work of slavery because the ultimate goals and means of colonisation and slavery was the dispossession of labour, lands, property and rights and this is the important thing and the transfer of these to white ownership through violence, brutality and genocide and this is just a fact okay and the reason I say this is that I think that we will all move forward if we accept what may feel like an uncomfortable truth but it is a truth nonetheless even if it's uncomfortable it doesn't deny the truth right and so this is what we need to start with what we think about Canada's relationship to this trade beyond the ways in which I've already shown the circulation that went through the Atlantic, it's important to remember that Canada was a colony and was connected to the two of the largest most profitable slave traffickers and as I said and I'll say it again investment flowed in every direction in pursuit of profits and the investment in North Vancouver is an example of the way in which investment flowed from blood money all the way in to our contemporary benefits today. Canada was connected and integrated throughout all those activities with particularly strong ties to the slaveholders and the trade in the Caribbean and if we look at this dish that's in the middle that makes its mouth water for me because it's called ackee and saltfish and it's Jamaica's national dish. Do you know what it is? It's ackee and saltfish. Do you know why? Because saltfish the maritimes supplied the saltfish to feed the slaves. The maritimes economy was strongly influenced by the money and investment they made in slavery. There's no other way to think about this okay. Remember that Canada also traded for slave-grown products so rum, molasses, tobacco, coffee. West Indian slaves were also brought by Canadian slaveholders and merchants and the harbors, Quebec City, Montreal and Halifax ports received ships so there was a shipbuilding activity and a port activity that depended on the investments in slavery and more recently Cooper has indicated that there's some research I haven't been able to dig into it anymore showing that 60 slave ships were used in the British slave trade that were used in the British slave trade were actually built here in this country. You see when we talk about hidden histories slavery was always Canada's hidden history and how do you hide two centuries of slavery? You do so by taking 30 years of the underground railroad and erasing your 200 years and substituting that. So we all know about the underground railroad and Canada quite, I mean I agree that this is a source of pride. However it doesn't go anywhere to even put a dent in the hundreds of years of slavery but yet this is what our children learned. This is what we learned as immigrants. This is what many of you learned as the true relationship between Canada and slavery was the underground railroad because the hidden history in Canada exists because Canadians have clung to the myth of being disconnected from slavery as a non-racist society. It is what is called what I'm Nelson called Charmaine Nelson calls strategic ignorance strategic ignorance. Let me say this again it's strategic it's not ignorance the evidence is there but it's strategically helpful for us to think that way and the recognition we have to have is that structural and institutional racism of compounding and contemporary impacts. So we no longer can think of it as a historic fact in fact if we look across the economic fortunes or lack of fortunes of black Canadians if we look at the small numbers of Black Canadians that exist despite the fact that at one point the colony of Victoria had a large population and Salt Spring and others had large settlements about the Black community we know that these historic forces continue to be reflected in contemporary society. We see it in public safety over policing and and and under housing and segregation and make no mistake right Canada was a segregated society. Financial institutions continue to deprive Black Canadians from mortgages at equivalent rates. People who make assessment for houses continue to undervalue the properties when a Black Canadian is is present. Renters continue to demand a premium from Black Canadians. Workplace employment continues to be an issue. Economic opportunities not only did we not get land grants so not only did many European settlers in Canada white settlers and get the benefit of all of that investment in slavery but also were handed land grants that were much very few Black Canadians got any grants at all and the ones that did did not get it in equivalent but the vast majority of early settlers in fact could benefit white settlers from a variety of benefits that Black Canadians have never ever so you think about it we're robbed of our our labor we are put through slavery and we do not even get the benefit of a single bit of reparations to address this inequity. We know in this part of the world there was the arrival of the Black pioneers invited up to British Columbia and you must ask yourself where are they why did they not say they met with racism they met with exclusion in British Columbia as well. This was a picture in Salt Spring Island to remind us of the promise that was squashed. There was a promise of a truly integrated multiracial uh I don't know if the word is integrated but a place where all could thrive nonetheless the racism that was experienced by many of these pioneers led to their departure. The hidden history seen in the economic impact of the displacement of the Black community and many of you know the story of Hogan's Alley the quick story is there's a Black community because of the segregation that existed in the city of Vancouver at the time. There is the so it's the end of the railway the porters are excluded the only job Black men can get is on the porter system they find a place at the end of the line here to live in the in Strathcona a Black community emerges there's this is a picture of a family their businesses there's Vice Chicken Shop there's a fledgling support of a Black community and like all Black communities across this country and most across North America they were displaced they were always characterized as evil as red light districts as morally decayed communities and people lost all of their investments much of their investments they lost their community they were fragmented by the direct action of the federal government and the city of Vancouver what does the city of Vancouver or and we've been going through a process of redress and I will bring to you that this example of the redress that's taking place in Vancouver is something that the city of North Vancouver needs to consider what do you owe to the past what do you need to do these were social networks and proximity to their employment this was a church had 800 people on their role this was a real place it's important that people get this slavery was real this place was a real place where people put their lives their hopes their dreams and were squashed we see the erasure of the Black community but we also see how this plays out in the hidden history and the erasure and silencing of Black Canadian contributions many of you noticed I hope the Prime Minister apologised in a couple of weeks ago for the anti-Black racism experience by the number two construction for Italian and and many people said there were Black people in the First World War and I say if you if you knew anything about Queens University you would know that men many people came back from the First World War and and they they refused to be treated by the Black medical students at Queens and Queens actually banned Black medical students from going to Queens for a very long time so this battalion I encourage you to read about the contributions they made but why don't you know about this and why is it now in 2022 that their contributions are being acknowledged and what you should take away from this is if this is so hidden what else is hidden what else don't you know because it takes a lot of effort to hide all these things and I remember the way in the article that was written in the North Shore news that Guy Haywood contrasted what was the names the you know the the the Lawnsdales and the names in North Vancouver and the Herald Inn of the White Settlement Society and he contrasted this to his partner Christine Best family that has made significant contributions to Black history in Canada her ancestors for example joined the first Black settlement on the east coast in 1787 she her roots are deep in this country and yet why is it that we know so little this is not an accident hidden history are our heroes and heroin that have been often left unheralded Viola Desmond is finally on the front of a one of our bills but we don't know people like Christine Best grandmother Kerry Best who was arrested in 1943 for sitting in the white section of a segregated Nova Scotia theater and later she established a new glass blow clarion the first Black owned newspaper in the province I want to also squelch a certain perception that people have the research shows that Canada if you look at the way it's impact these these compounding structural racism and time deleterious and compounding negative impacts on the Black community in Canada and in British Columbia I want you to know that the research shows that the gap between racialized and non-racialized people the average income for Black and non-racialized Canadians which is being shown here here is the deal there is a gap first of all one knows that you look at the purple it's the it's the it's the non-racial sorry if you look to the left it's a non-racialized and you look to the right it's the Black population and you'll see a specifically large gap for Black males between non-racialized males and Black males in terms of their income gap when you control by the way for all the factors that are can account for some of these gaps between the United States and Canada the income gap is almost identical let me repeat that the income gap between Black and white Canadians piece of research demonstrates when you take into consideration a range of factors is almost identical between the two countries and you know what many of you think about the racism in the United States why is that many if you've seen a previous lecture I like to show this slide because it shows the specific ways in which anti-Black racism as a specific form of racism that needs to be acknowledged because of its its its history with slavery and enslavement anti-Black racism creates intergenerational poverty if you look at that line in red what you see is in the first generation 29 percent of Black Canadians are in low income in the low income bracket second generation 26 percent and in the third generation it is still 24 percent it hardly moves no matter how many generations Black people are in this country let me tell you there's nothing wrong with Black people there is something wrong with the system they encounter it's the structures that exclude them clearly the issue do you look at other racialized groups and that's the dotted line they arrive in Canada and even in the first generation they do a little better it's not non-racialized right this is other racialized groups 26 percent but by the second generation is 14 percent and the third generation is 8 percent you have only to reach two conclusions one of two conclusions either there's something wrong with the Black people or there's something wrong with the system that other people are finding fewer obstacles that they are encountering why is that it's something to think about it goes all the way back to the ideologies and the structures that were meant to enslave and exclude the Black population exclusion from power and influence is the result so if you look at visible minorities and governments board in Metro Vancouver some research that I've done the blue line is the number of visible minorities not Black people the rest are white people non-racialized there is this triangle hold in this in Metro Vancouver no matter where you look that has excluded racialized people from leadership and decision-making and that itself and Black people are almost you can't even find it okay so this is important who gets to make the decisions in the society the people who came here with wealth and privilege and continue to have that wealth and privilege exclusions occur and I'm going to speed up now because I'd like to turn this over soon to to my colleague's guide Christine so I'm going to go quickly bear with me if you look at housing the Black community pays more for less adequate housing our housing are less adequate and we pay more sorry I'm going too fast let me go back here where am I going am I going the wrong way what's going on no no I'm going the wrong way if you look at British Columbia let me make this clear on most pieces of research British Columbia exhibits the highest level of racism this is our online racism direct racist or prejudice remarks about Black people how often do you encounter online and unless British Colombians are just much more honest than everybody else they are reporting 43% yet it's the and it is the highest across the country okay likewise for I could go in likewise for a number of other measures racial exclusion persists at the local level and I draw your attention to the history of the Jerome family and Harry Jerome himself the great runner that you're redeveloping a nice beautiful center in his honor and in his name but but but do do honesty to that honor to honor him you've got to honor the truth of his existence you've got to be truthful and I ask you is the story for the subsequent generation in that building in that development in the way about that you're going about it centering the Black people in North Vancouver just to and in the North Shore to center their perspective to ensure that this doesn't just has his name on it but in fact you reflect the fact that you're redressing his own exclusion he talks about going to school one day where a hundred boys were pelting him he talks about taking up running because he was so excluded from team sports when his family went to North Vancouver there was a riot in a protest let me use that term in North Vancouver because the family was biracial and they did not want Black people in their community so let me remind you of that history and it's not that long ago so as we it was great to see how many people turned out to save the Harry de Rome center to keep it open as you do that do not dishonor his legacy ensure that the truth of his past is embedded as you look at yourself as libraries and I am not picking on any library in particular but I am asking you to think about leadership as you think about that chart where I showed who is in charge leadership matters who is who makes the decisions for whom and this history you know plays itself out here and I'm telling you I'm not picking on this leadership board the board of North Vancouver district I and not everybody here is non-racialized but I'm just saying it is you see the same pattern you certainly don't see and you might think there are no Black people in North Vancouver but I have to know that they are you do not see how does a how does a library who creates our knowledge who brings to us the world and who has historically excluded our knowledge indigenous and Black histories from our knowledge curation in favor of your eccentric focus not recognize the need to ensure that the Black voice is represented at the very highest level now let me say this it is you the libraries that brought me to this talk so I know your planning to do something about it but I think you would also appreciate my honesty here when I look at the city and its official plan where is racial equity redressed reparations embedded in your city if you believe what I said at the beginning that North Vancouver is dripping with the blood and the heritage of investment in slavery where are you going to embed the redress for this how are you going to embed this in your very mission and what your vision for north bad how do you change the trajectory not only of the people who are there but the many people who will come after because many people have left because of this very exclusion are organized you have to ask yourself are your organization really living up to the stated commitments this is another this is the west van memorial library board of trustees and I'm saying they're racialized people here but I'm also saying there's some things people missing from this picture and and again you know what is your obligation here once you know better you got to do better and nobody can walk away from this talk today and from the article that guy has written and not say and and say they do not know now that the history is hidden no more what should we do I think that there are choices we may and choices we must make because if you if I have in any way opened your eyes if I have in any way opened your eyes to the the real barbarity and the history and the deep suffering and the human toll and the ongoing toll of that history if I've in any way communicated to you the reality of that history and the contemporary reality you as human beings that aspire to a community where we all belong I'm assuming at this very moment will be driven to ask yourself what am I going to do now that I know so if we think about it from at the I always think it's helpful to think about things you know at the interpersonal level what can I do for my family and friends but to also recognize that the various structures of policies programs practice leadership who is invested the history where it came from all of that has been structured to protect white lives against indigenous and black communities and others as they came you know yourself that you had restricted covenants in north vans nobody could live in british properties that across north vans west and west vancouver black people and other racialized groups were excluded that's why they're not there today and that you know that many of you enjoy that you went there because you feel safe and insecure but I ask you to think about those decisions you make because those decisions reflect your privilege to be able to exclude others and if that's what you're doing be at least clear that's what you're doing if that's not what you intend then do something about it so what are you going to do personally to address your own blind spots I hope today I wet your appetite a little bit to all the things you some of you may have heard about and others may not know so how are you going to educate yourself how are you going to change your perspective and address your own blind spots and your own cultural hegemony what I mean is the way in which you impose perhaps your own way of seeing on others because you never stop to realize that's what you're doing and that perhaps others are being excluded who are your friends to seek out and center the perspectives of those excluded not center yourself I see this way too often where I have a talk like this and the immediate reaction is well you know white people have suffered too remember structural racism doesn't mean that people don't suffer we all suffer but at least you don't suffer because of your race right that's one less thing you need to think did not worry about okay so so just just instead of centering oneself if you're in the privilege group de-center yourself a little bit it's not about you these things are about a community you want to create where do you invest your money and are you willing to give up some of your privilege so the privilege to white only spaces clubs and other things and boards we need to also make changes at the structural level we need to again center the experience and perspectives of those and the actual capacities and and and expertise of those most affected so it cannot be done without us right you need to equity you need to analyze and audit your organizations for structural problems they're there and you need to make a demand that the organizations you're in and dress on the representation and exclusion because failure to address race and privilege will lead to a miscarriage of justice that means you have to address your own advantages that advantages that you gained and also demand that others gain those advantages and demand that your organizations whatever but it's a school school board wherever you are in a private company wherever you are that they're going to they have an action plan that makes sense and address racism and anti-black racism and at the at the society level is an official apology due from the city of north Vancouver for the investments and slavery on which it's based is there an acknowledgement that you need to make and here's why some of you we don't want class be clear that's not what I'm saying but it always starts with acknowledgement because many times we don't get anywhere because we never stop to acknowledge redress is important you've got to have a variety of things like we've done in Vancouver where the city of Vancouver is in negotiations in the final stages to create a MOU to return the block that was taken to the stewardship of the black community it will take no less we have to be serious reparations redress you should know where every politician stands on this issue and to support targeted reparation and as you come to this day Emancipation Day I want you to remember Emancipation was drawn primarily on the backs of the backs of the very black enslaved people and that it enslaved okay so always remember that not only did we win our own emancipation but the white population the slave owners received received reparations for the loss of their property because the act you should always read out the entire name of an act it's the act for the abolition of slavery throughout the British colonies semicolon for promoting the industry of manumitted slaves that was to get us to continue to work and that's another day's lecture or talk but here's the thing for compensating the persons hitherto entitled to the service of slaves also known as a slavery abolition act let me tell you we will hear a lot about the slavery abolition act we hear less about the other part of that act so while emancipation formally ended chattel slavery as a property system it failed to disturb the real estate as a property system and by that I don't mean just land I mean the the properties on which it was built whiteness on that went to transformation it was no longer it's no longer associated and I and that is something to really bear in mind nobody believes no these days nobody is owned in slaves I get that you're not you know using various slurs on the road that's not what this is about because we know that it's transformed into wealth so when it's no longer the it's no longer directly associated with the ownership of enslaved sorry let me say this again whiteness on the went a transformation it is no longer directly associated with the ownership of enslaved people but it's transformed in a form of ownership of generalized share of the dividends and limited liabilities arising out of black suffering and indigenous dispossession so you can no longer see the relationship yourself but it exists in the wealth and the limited the ways in which you have benefits obtained from whiteness per se as well as the access to power access to privilege as well as living in a in a in a community on which the wealth was based so let me start there I just say to remember in this talk I tried to show that the rise of modern corporation the rise of the link between the historic ways in which slavery was invested in and the rise of the modern corporation and it today shapes the infrastructure of financial capital that entrenches black indebtedness to white shareholders future this was taken from a paper I wrote I hope I read it well but my point is is that invested in the futures is this historical legacy legacy today's a great start that you came to this talk that the library has agreed to this and I must say you should ask yourself if not us then who if not now then when let us act now I'm going to stop sharing my screen and then I am going to if I can figure out how to do this and I'm still sharing my screen stop sharing okay thank you for those of you who persevered through this and really thank you for listening I hope you've sent some questions I would like now to share to turn this over and ask that both Guy and Chris Beth um uh on on do their microphones and their cameras if they're if they wish thank you uh chris and guy and and thank you dr francis uh so much for this fantastic lecture I and for the passion and care you delivered it with I'm hoping that I speak not on you know not only on behalf of myself but um just in so much gratitude for continuing the discussions that we've been having and hopefully we'll continue having and the the call to action about you know such a vitally important issue not only in the north shore but all over the world and not only on a mass in patient day but every day so my name is victoria I'm the one librarian left to introduce myself I am from north Vancouver district public library and I'd like to transition us now to the q and a portion of tonight's webinar thank you to those who submitted questions ahead of time um you are welcome to submit more using the q and a function in zoom just at the bottom of your screen I'll be reading questions roughly in the order that I have received them and and I encourage everyone to submit thoughtful respectful questions because we are so fortunate today to be speaking with uh dr francis and also with our guests um chris best and guy heywood I would like to I mean were we going to give chris and guy a moment to to come on yes absolutely yeah I would um I would love to invite maybe I'll just pick it in the order that I see on my screen but um chris best if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself that would be lovely hi thank you well uh my name is christine best I have been a resident of the north shore for about a year and a half before that I lived in Vancouver I'm originally from Ottawa which is where I was born in bread and I've been in the Vancouver area for I think 23 years before that I lived in Calgary before that Toronto and um I just want to say June that was really really powerful stuff that you talk about and I'm sure it's difficult for a lot of people to hear it's difficult for me to hear you know because it's it's it's mind-boggling that that that people could be so inhumane towards one another but I also feel that it's incredibly important that the kind of work that you do uh gets shared because we have a tendency to be quite smug here in Canada and think that the issues that we hear about in other countries particularly the US don't really affect us and we love to be smug and we really don't have that much to be smug about but at least in starting to have these conversations there's a chance for people to perhaps widen their perspectives and and and think about um you know the kinds of actions that they want to take if they're interested in creating a more a more just and egalitarian society Christine before you go I just wondered if you could just I just want I I know your background that I know it's illustrious and I was just in awe when I read um just the ones I heard about and I just think it might if you could just tell us a little bit about your family history and um you know any comments on the way in which sometimes black history has been um you know obscured sure okay so my background is not at all illustrious I work in the tech industry I'm an executive I do sales and marketing for a fintech but um I have enormous pride in in my parents my grandparents um June mentioned my grandmother Carrie Best and uh she was absolutely a pioneer and an advocate and she supported not just black people but also indigenous people in Nova Scotia I have memories of being a very small kid going to visit her in the summer and being in the car when she went to meet uh with the head of a native band to advance to advance causes but um my my father was a much quieter hero and he was a very humble humble person but he he had he achieved impacts that um that relate to every person in Canada and and that's because as the the founding president of the civil service association which is today PSAC he and and and uh several other people brought together what had been individual departmental unions in the federal government and the government used to negotiate one off which each department until they created this union and they brought collective bargaining into the federal public service and as a result of that as a result of the civil service unions we have things like maternity leave right which they don't have in the US you're lucky if you're a woman if you get two weeks right but we have that here in Canada and part of the credit goes to a black man people don't know that you know the other thing that my father did he worked for a long time in the department of employment and immigration and uh he was he was uh instrumental in bringing uh vietnamese boat people into canada uh so it's everybody was a very quiet person who did not seek you know the limelight my maternal grandfather he was one of those soldiers who fought in world war one and he was very proud of his medals my paternal grandfather was a porter he worked on the railroad so i think people have uh tendency sometimes to have stereotypes about black people and if you're black you know what it's like when someone says where are you from because they don't really mean where are you from they mean where are you really from because you couldn't possibly be from here and yet my family's been here since i think it's actually 1786 so um i i think that's really all i want to say it's just that black people make contributions day in day out that tend not to get recognized and uh i think it's important that we start to do that thank you and uh we'll we'll we'll turn to you guy um you know what i was going to ask you you you came out with this um piece of research you know how you know grateful we are to you for doing that um because it's that you didn't have to and you didn't you did and i guess i wanted to ask you what motivated you and what you hope to achieve but you can answer anything you want well first of all i've got to give the article was written by brent richter yeah and um and i really have to give him credit for doing it i i haven't been involved for for for well i guess eight years now but i was on school board for a decade the rec commission and then i followed my father on north anchor city council and he um i grew up here with no knowledge of the connection of the family to the founding to the the financing of the sawmill or the streets dad took that on as a genealogy project after he retired from the rcmp he was a detachment commander here his father never talked about it they were unlike chris our family came in the 1920s were late comers um and there was really no knowledge of the impact other branches of the family had here um so just when the city's history was being written dad surfaced all this stuff about um henry hayward lawnstale consolidating the depths of moodyville taking over basically all the land in the north shore sending over a cousin who was john pemberton fell um james pemberton fell to manage the estate which was called lawnstale estate okay there are some funny little sides in that because henry hayward lawnstale isn't a direct descendant of the haywards he was a lawnstale which was a cousin and he had to change his name to become an heir but he was very opportunistic and quite a socialite in england i guess and you know this was a great way to make to get several million dollars or pounds millions of pounds of the family capital that had come down from the original slaving business which we always knew was first represented it's just they were very successful bankers you don't make that much money banking um so dad did this research and it's in the history that talks about how this james pemberton fell just used all the hayward place names for the streets keller hall shrub cloverly shavington they're all hayward estates there and there is a side of the family he went back there to visit them now um nothing like having a cousin a supposed cousin from the colonies show up at your door when you were a you know a secretive wealthy english landowner but dad was very charming and as xrcmp he had these great red red mascots and he charmed his way in and did all this genealogical research he kind of finished that up in the early 2000s but it was right about that time so there's all these stories about we became a founding family which was kind of weird um and then around that time you the internet kind of blew up if you put in hayward and slave trade you got all this information because the banks that the benjamin and arthur hayward founded in liverpool and manchester took really good records and arthur's bank was bought by barclays and the records became the basis for the reparation cases against barclays benjamin did the same in manchester and his bank eventually ended up in the royal bank of scotland and there's a reparations case there these hayweds apparently were much better accountants than i am and you kind of now these were not minor traders they were they ranked number five and number nine on the top 30 all time british slave traders that's a pretty big uh they each were in the business for 30 years but in the original reading of the family history they were just bankers and slave traders maybe on the side no i they were slave traders and the money got legitimized um and histories got written um as banking not not slave trading so it was after the last election that brent said let's do this for black history month and i said well actually i didn't do the research my father did he was not really happy about that but when chris came along it was all fine because chris and i dated back in university at queens that remembered chris when we ended up getting back together and got married just last month um it just made everything much smoother so um and also i think for a much nicer story than the one that was just about the hayweds frankly um so that was the motivation to do it was predated chris but my dad being okay with it was really only you know i think when chris came along and brent is the one who so that story took two years to write so it's not i i those two people deserve more of the credit than i do the motivation is kind of you know there was a lot of obliviousness in the way power was used economic power was used and after all these years in quote public service being elected to school board and boards most of the time north Vancouver was the logical community for the school board for the rec commission for every sport culture organization we live in north Vancouver when we got to the city of north Vancouver there was a boundary i didn't know anything about and it just cut across every single activity and i'm thinking who's more important here all these nonprofits that struggle have to deal with two jealous governments that guard their turf and make them dance to their tunes there is no city or district there's just north Vancouver and so i just came out of city politics really you know thinking that boundary was simply drawn around the property holdings of my relatives and the guys they sold property to there was no other reason for it and are we just too lazy to fix it i don't know so it's not just it's not just the the racism and it and i i think we really need to live and absorb the consequences of this my dad grew up dirt poor in Abbotsford so our ability to fund reparations limited but to create the awareness that what we have is all the result of historical circumstances that we have been oblivious to and should understand better if we're going to live together in the future i think that's a wonderful note to to leave that thank you so much both of you by the way thank you again for coming and and sharing your time with us i know that it was very impactful the library in particular that the article and happy to have a chance to expand on it here i would love to hear from you know from dr francis and you too as well i have some questions here that were provided ahead of time that i would love to read aloud if that's all right with you sorry these are also very big questions so i'm going to unfortunately have to pressure you to to try and answer them in a concise way but the first question is what does reparations or redress look like for individuals is it something that needs to be mobilized within a community to have an impact and maybe i'll just start with dr francis here yeah i think in general unless you can have you know you have a historical group of people that have been harmed directly that you can look at and point to in terms of a direct tracing it would normally be i would suggest that it's it's looked at as a community response and a community response to the community you know that many many ways to go a long way ago and it's not a direct isn't it i'm not expecting guide to pay for it i'm saying that the city of vancoupe that north vancoupe benefited from the settler investment and that on which it was built and that's the that's the entity that needs to start to think about the redress that was wonderful thank you i was i was really wondering if we would be able to to get a concise answer but i think that was extremely well said um christine or guide do you have anything to say on that note couldn't say it better it's there is a very legitimate case there and if you look at some of the most egregious things like the country of Haiti that has been so victimized by western powers has such a strong moral case for help uh that it isn't self-interested help um so you know we kind of deal with structures and and start by understanding that you know is it history was written by victors and profiteers um and we need to write the future history for people wonderful i'm actually going to negate what i said earlier and i'm going to jump ahead and these questions here um so someone uh my recaster has asked i am interested in working with the community i belong to in order to overcome systemic racism at a high level could you advise what you think could be a good start i'm going to is it's the community of north van is that i didn't quite know which community it's not specified but maybe we can talk about north van i'm gonna defer to to die and and best chris christine maybe christine any ideas uh i think it it starts with uh just educating yourself right and and learning what's happening i don't think it's up to uh black people to educate everybody else i think there has to be some effort on the from the part of each individual and then june mentioned it earlier when she talked about the different pillars of what you can do is to take a look at where do you invest where do you go look for connection you know what kinds of activities do you support i think everybody making a little individual efforts actually has an impact we can each we had built into the actual deeds of the title so much racism the frankly there and we drove people like dr francis away there aren't that many black people will live here which is why i talked chris into moving here with me um our racism problems are i'll send you therapy chris no no i'm just i just love the way i told him if he was jogging you over here we had to be close to the sea bus so yeah i love north van is such a beautiful place in the west van but it is an isolating place for a black person there's no doubt about it you you get asked way too many questions about your existence in the space and why you're there and it's the hyper vigilance the feeling of never belonging it's difficult it's a difficult way to live your life yeah chris has managed it very well oh for love she'll do everything i'm giving her a hard time i do have a correction here that it was about a community in south america so maybe you know we can't necessarily speak to that in particular that particular context but i think we still can extrapolate some of that you know across different situations can i do something very quickly i'll just say that racism i've worked in peru and so i will say that latin america has a particularly insidious form in which racism is completely hidden latin america's tend to tell you that we are all black and we're all indigenous it's a way of erasing blackness and yet in many of those communities there's extreme exclusion so i would encourage you to really just if you're a member of the racialized community to to meet with others if you're from the dominant group to work to redress and to to address some of the ways in which you know this is happening wonderful thank you yeah it's um yeah a topic close to my heart as well um i'll sorry i know we are running late uh today so i'm i'm not going to be able to get to all of the questions i think here but um there are some questions here specifically for example about how we can change those who are in charge and elect those who are in the power structure when they are not represented on the election ballot this is a bit of a specific question so um any insight so i always think that it's it's difficult to manage up right it's always you know i didn't quite get the reference to the not on the ballot so maybe i'm not going to have maybe somebody else should answer if you got that reference because there was something about not being on the ballot did i hear that correct me i think the question was about yeah i think it was about representation right how do you change things when we don't get elected to these power structures that i think that's what you saw meant and the thing about racism and i'm going to speak to the dominant group now we cannot undo it this whole structure of racism was built by the dominant group you is constructed rules for yourself and you have to be the ones this is your responsibility if you are if you're not complicit if you're complicit with the system you're supporting racism i'd be always clear on that if you're not fighting against a system that is clearly racist you're supporting it there is no neutral position so the the critical thing here is to speak to uh the people who have today and other places have heard recognized injustice and are committed to themselves but let me tell you another place to go and it's always the best a good place to start people in power like to say a lot of things so every single organization said they were committed to anti-racism they're committed to diversity they're committed to inclusion they're mandates that's where i always start say show me the goods you made a statement saying that you're anti-racist can you show me can you demonstrate can we start to talk about how this is actually working what have you done specifically and who are these people from the groups that's excluded that's helping you make these decisions where are they so a good question and approach and i usually start with the fact that people are so quick to claim all sorts of things and hold them their feet and as they say i don't know what that means but make i always i'm afraid when i say those things that it's going to turn out to be some slavery reference so i'm always so i'm just like make sure they're committed to it fantastic yeah some great advice i'll maybe i'll end on a couple of these kind of outro questions here so the question this is maybe more for dr francis here is there any funding to research this this work further they're referencing specifically the graphs that you shared from 2017 as well as the others that show the huge impact on black people and minorities through generations and someone else also asked where can they see some of your lectures besides this one of course so first of all we are in fact working very hard with the tri council and the funding agency because one of the things that has never happened is we've never received enough research funding and this is across cities across provinces across organizations the research is not there and that's why i come back to the fact that you know the research that you did helps us because we don't have the funding to be able to do this at this point so it's really important but we're working to make that very transparent especially in universities because universities of all signed up something called the black charter that commits them to spend in more but also you know school boards and other things so i hope that we'll see this funding emerge um i do give a lot of public lectures and so maybe if you google maybe you'll see one that you find interesting to watch i often do allow them to be recorded because i think it is in the public interest from i am very committed to seeing change and if i can help in any way to do that i want to do it um you know and i anything else that i can think of right now i can't think of anything else but certainly i'm i'm so glad that people are committed and interested wonderful thank you um chris and guy i don't know if you have anywhere that you'd like to direct to at this time uh any of your lectures you might have online okay i don't have any either yes we're in the in the presence of professionals here um okay so i'll unfortunately have to cut it there i think give us all some time to cool off um so i'd just like to thank everyone for joining us this evening um on a kind of a programming note for um more library events you can visit our respective library websites and uh just once again thank you so much dr francis and christine baston guy heywood us so much for joining us and having this very thoughtful and caring conversation about this and thank you everyone for attending and have a great rest of your evening bye keep cool get cool take care thanks for being here