Introduction

Sandra Brewster, From Life 1, 2015.
Mixed media on wood.
Courtesy of the artist

"Since what I might be is uncontainable."

—Dionne Brand, "Verso 11"

In this 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation and ongoing colonial violence, it's well to remember that Black presence in Canada boasts a legacy of over 400 years, exceeding not only the brute history of the settler state, but likewise any definitive notion of its cultural landscape. One might speak, indeed, of Black Canadas, following Rinaldo Walcott's observation that "Black Canada is not one thing. It's multiple moments of Blackness. It's multiple relations to the nation space. It's multiple points of arrival. It's a set of different histories." In these pages, it's but a fraction of a robust living archive of critical thought, cultural memory, formal innovation, and radical intimacy channeling the global sweep of the diaspora.

At the same time, it is crucial to acknowledge the way Black writing in Canada is often unnamed in critical discussions both in Canada and throughout the diaspora. In the essay by M. NourbeSe Philip included here, a philosophically complex reflection upon Canadian blackness is occasioned by the shout "You fucking people are all over the place!"—an everyday injury but also the simple truth of Black life in the Americas. Yet for specific readers, this statement resonates with further irony since official histories and popular culture oftentimes perpetuate the myth of a Canada devoid of Black people. In 1905, J. S. Woodsworth, a founder of the Canadian welfare state, wrote "we may be thankful that we have no 'negro problem' in Canada." And only last year, the prominent rapper Drake could, in a Saturday Night Live skit, appear on the fictional game show Black Jeopardy as the most implausible and inscrutable of contestants: a Black Canadian. Little wonder, then, that many Black writers in Canada, such as George Elliott Clarke, Wayde Compton, Afua Cooper, and others, have been compelled to recuperate and assert the longstanding historical presence of Black people in Atlantic, Western, and Central Canada—when this very presence has been casually denied and violently erased.

At the same time, Philip's essay reminds us of another enduring myth about Canada: "a racism-free space" where Black migrants could find freedom. Historically, Canada could have it both ways: practicing white supremacy through legal and extra-legal means, while also flattering itself with illusions of moral superiority vis-à-vis the powerful Empire to the South. Yet the Black diaspora also, at times, cultivated the myth of a racism-free Canada, with generations of writers from Mary Ann Shadd Cary, to Frederick Douglass, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to the otherwise canny Malcolm X ("Mississippi is anywhere South of the Canadian border")—each imagining Canada as a space of exception from the troubles of the United States. The historical reality of Canada was oftentimes markedly different: slavery, mob violence, and official segregation. And one notable feature in the writings of Black Canadians has been the disabusing of any illusions about a "post-racial" Canada. An early example is Martin Delany's Blake (1859–61), a contender for the first Black Canadian novel, since it was likely written in Chatham, Ontario. In one section of the book, a man named Andy journeys from Mississippi to Canada hoping to escape the fugitive slave laws and find freedom. Andy expresses delight upon newly arriving in Canada; but the narrator intrudes to describe at length the

Sandra Brewster, From Life 4, 2015. Mixed media on wood. Courtesy of the artist.

unanticipated discrimination Andy is now poised to experience. This includes, ironically, the withdrawal of certain privileges—like going into the gallery of a public building—that he could have freely enjoyed in the U.S. More recently, Austin Clarke's The Meeting Point (1967), the first novel by a Black author published in Canada, details the lives of Black Caribbean domestics and labourers emigrating to Canada in the late 1950s to 1960s. Arriving with...