SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Black History Month

Honourable senators, I rise today to celebrate Black History Month, or as we call it in Nova Scotia, African Heritage Month. We have marked this important month for 30 years now.

This year, we are honouring Black Brilliance, and we are fortunate to be surrounded by the Black brilliance of our Senate colleagues, including two from my province of Nova Scotia, Senators Wanda Thomas Bernard and Tony Ince.

Today, I also ask you to celebrate two other brilliant African-Nova Scotians George Elliott Clarke and Viola Desmond. George Elliott Clarke, former poet laureate of Toronto, former parliamentary poet laureate, professor of English at the University of Toronto and former political staffer to M.P. Howard McCurdy, was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia and raised in Halifax.

Viola Desmond, also from Nova Scotia, depicted on the Canadian 10-dollar bill, showed her brilliance and civil rights leadership in a movie theatre in New Glasgow and later in a court of law.

To honour them both and all Black brilliance and leadership in Canada, I will read you George’s poem on Viola.

Witness for Viola Desmond

That affray was cinematic—

stark black and polar white, eh?

The usher and the cop grappled the flailing beautician

as if they were morticians desperate to claim

Christ’s cadaver. . . .

The trio—all as disorganized as is shaking—

manhandled the struggling lady

across the accidental, immediate theatre

displaying posters for Coming Attractions—

plus black-and-white snaps of the Now Showing marquee features—

plus ads for Hot Buttered Popcorn and Ice-Cold Soda—

and past the concession stand and the ticket seller’s booth—

right on out into the November eve—

maple leaves driving at Viola like ruddy arrow-heads—

to bank her into the drunk tank.

Her crime? She’d sallied forth undramatically

to feel jolly viewing Hollywood fare

via a Bluenose, New Glasgow picture-show,

but had plunked—buff-coloured, sepia-toned—

in a Whites Only seat,

and chose to remain after being informed

of her faux pas.

So, what’s-his-face, that farce,

dialled up a constable—

in a by-play show-piece of tragicomic Disgrace—

to frog-march Viola summarily to the Town Gaol

for disrupting Jim Crow,

that pasty-faced minstrel aping blind-lady Justice.

But Viola’s incarceration

canonized her,

marked her investiture in the Pantheon of Liberators

alongside Nanny-of-the Maroons, Harriet Tubman,

Josephine Baker, Rosa Parks—

she—

A First (Canuck) among Black Equals.