L I S A TAY LO R a n d

KIRSTIN BOUTILIER

I walk Bathurst Street until it

come like home
Studying Black Canadian
Literature and Critical Citizenship
in the English Classroom

rancis Henry and Carol Tator (2006) remind us that were livFterm,
ing in a society characterized by democratic racism. By this
they suggest that while many in our society may wish to

think that racism is over, our societys every power relationship,

issue and institution are racially structured; our most intimate
sense of self and possibility across the space and time of belonging and becoming is unequally racially conditioned. Most insidiously racialized in impact are the privatization of the public
sphere and the asphyxiation of institutions like the social safety
net, health care, and education. Antiracism education, a project
dating back to the 1980s in the Toronto School Board, has been
under continual attacks; most often under the guise of budget
cuts (McCaskell, 2005).
In this contemporary context of the denial and spectacularization of contemporary politics of race in Canada and particularly in debates about education, this article looks at one example of Africentric, antiracism education in an ethnoracially
diverse, downtown Toronto vocational high school. Specifically,
we report on a qualitative study of antiracism critical literacies
pedagogy in an Africentric grade 11 English course (ETC3M
Studies in Black Canadian Literature). The course was designed

O U R S C H O O L S / O U R S E LV E S

by the teacher-researcher (Kirstin) to develop students critical

fluency in the multiple literacies they bring into the course (different dialects, genres, media and modalities of oral, written and
visual texts, including Patois and hip hop literacies), as well as
their critical skills of civic participation; to do this through
engagement with African diasporic literary, popular and commercial expressive forms.
This article is written in two voices: Lisas contextualizing the
course within writings on the importance of integrative
antiracism and Black-focused education in the literature classroom; Kirstins analysis of the precarious history and pedagogical intentions behind the course; and, based on these, our shared
consideration of student work that speaks to some of the possibilities of Black-focused curriculum.
As two white antiracist feminist educators, we hope to contribute to the growing body of scholarship and committed practice that argue for Africentric paths to Black students personal
and academic success. This study began during the years of consultation and research leading up to the Toronto District School
Boards January 29, 2008 decision to pilot Africentric curriculum
and an alternative school (TDSB, 2010a). These initiatives build
on a long history of African Canadian parental and community
activism pressing Ontario schools to better serve racialized
youth (Black Educators Working Group, 1993; Brathwaite &
James, 1996; Canadian Alliance of Black Educators, 1992; Dei,
2006; Dei, James, Lawson, & Wood, 2005; Glaze & Wright, 1998;
Lewis, 1992; Toronto Board of Education, 1988).

The struggle for integrative anti-racism education and

the study of writing Black Canada

The attacks on equity education in Ontario over the past 15

years have been like boiling or bombing a frog: sometimes a
lightning bolt, sometimes a mounting simmer. The centralization
and channeling of property tax-based school funding through
Queens Parks mercurial agenda, the merger of school boards
(and internal administrative takeovers) and the vicissitudes of
shifting funding prioritization have created a scorched earth
environment for equity leadership, curriculum development,
staff training, student extra-curricular programming, and the
power and latitude of community supported advocates inside

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SPRING 2010

and outside the school board to insist that the school boards
ground-breaking equity policy (TDSB, 2000) mean something on
the ground.
This Black Canadian Literature course needs to be understood, then, within the context of the TDSB ethnoracial equity
policy that calls for principles and practices of antiracism to permeate the curriculum in all subject areas to promote critical
thinking to challenge racism and discrimination [and to] accurately reflect Canada`s Aboriginal, racial, ethnocultural, and
faith communities [and their] contributions to Canadian and
world history and historiography in all aspects of the curriculum (TDSB, 2000). Equally important have been broader discussions spurred by the boards consultation, by community and
academic advocacy arguing for the potential of an Africentric
approach: in these discussions, Africentric education is grounded
in an African-centric curricular focus, an attention to cultural
forms of knowledge and particular instructional practices, community and parental partnerships, and holistic approaches to
learning (TDSB, 2008). This perspective goes beyond two-dimensional notions of Black identity as something that can be neatly
encapsulated and mirrored in school curriculum: what is argued
for is that schools take seriously the symbolic knowledge and
community capital that racialized students bring into the classroom as an intellectual and cultural resource rooted in racialized peoples historically situated practices of resistance in
search of alternative visions of educational success (Dei, 2008,
p. 122).
It also matters that this is a literature course in a school located on Bathurst Street. One of the most corrosive ways racism
works in Canada, according to scholars like Rinaldo Walcott and
Kathleen McKittrick, is the construction of the Canadian nation
as not just White but blackless (McKittrick, 2006, p. 96): this
requires the ongoing, consistent and insistent forgetting, erasure
and denial of almost 500 years of Black Canadian history. This
is a nation that erases and demolishes black places and spaces
and refuses to acknowledge the long-standing history of black
peoples within its borders argues McKittrick (2006, p. 94-5) referencing the demolition of Africville in Nova Scotia and Hogans
Alley in Vancouver; threatening and administering black diaspora deportation; the renaming of Negro Creek to Moggie Road

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O U R S C H O O L S / O U R S E LV E S

in Holland Township, Ontario; the silence and concealment of

Canadas largest unvisible slave burial ground, Nigger Rock, in
the Eastern Townships of Quebec; racist immigration policies;
the ploughing over of the black Durham Road Cemetery in
southwestern Ontario; the relocation, and recent renaming, of
Caribana; and the commonly held belief that black Canada is
only recent and urban.
By systematically concealing Black Canadian histories while
simultaneously portraying Black cultures as American,
Caribbean or inevitably from elsewhere (Walcott, 1997), media
and school curricula leave no doubt that Black students can be
either Black or Canadian but not both: black Canada is simultaneously invisible and visibly non-Canadian (McKittrick, 2006,
p. 99). Yet black people in North America continue to make both
space and place theirs argues Walcott, focusing in particular on
Black authors who struggle to create a language of blackness in
Canada: one that is at once mindful of black migrant cultures,
but also recognizes and acknowledges the true geneology of
black existence in Canada (1997, p. 44-5). Language, long a
weapon to dehumanize and deny Black diasporic people, is a tool
in Black Canadians hands not only to claim identity and belonging, but to rewrite and reclaim space (Walcott, 1997, p. 48).
Dionne Brands walking Bathurst Street (quoted in this articles
title) is a practice of writing Black Canada, Walcott argues,
asserting a black presence in Canada, or, more bluntly, staking
out a territory in the context of a national narrative which
seeks to render her the thin/mixture of just come dont exist
(1997, pp. 48-9). These are exactly the community resources of
memory and critical analysis Kirstin hopes to offer her students.

History of the course

I started teaching in the year 2000. My first job followed directly on the heels of my convocation from OISE/UTa summer
school gig at Central Technical School where I had done my first
practicum. My experience at OISE/UT was heavily informed by
what was at that time strong initiatives from equity and antiracist education. I was inspired by academics like George Dei
and Carl James. I was also shocked by the statistics cited, for
example, by Braithwaite and James, (1996, p. 17): "Black and
Caribbean students were the only groups who rated education

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SPRING 2010

as the most important to them; however, there were the two

groups with the largest percentage (35% Blacks and 19%
Caribbean) in special education classes". The Toronto District
School Board had an equitable schools mandate and I embraced
the work of Tim McCaskell and did an internship at an Equitysponsored ESL day camp, organized by Lisa at OISE/UT and
Tim at the TDSB. When I secured my first teaching job at
Central Technical School I was deeply honoured by the appointment as this is a school I loved and one where I thought there
was fertile ground for what I perceived myself to be a transformative educator. As an English teacher who has taught under
the auspices of both the Ontario Secondary School and the older
OSIS curriculum, I was always intrigued by the open nature of
the English curriculum. While expectations are defined, the
vehicles one uses to attempt to meet those expectations are not
prescribed at all. As a new teacher, this presented to me a world
of exciting possibilities; one can choose to teach a variety of texts,
bringing a variety of voices and perspectives into the classroom,
triggering discussion and inciting social change!!! The practical
application of my lofty ideals met with a few challenges. First, I
discovered that there were core texts for each of the courses and
all teachers who teach the same course must use the same texts
and develop common assessment tools. Those texts, already purchased, stamped and counted have been in circulation for years
and teachers were comfortable with a largely canonical library. I
was surprised to find that books like Salingers (1951) Catcher in
the Rye were still taught. I find Holden Caulfield difficult to
relate to. As a teenager, I just did not understand what
Caulfields problem was. To me, he seemed to have everything;
there was the matter of his dead brother but other than that,
everything that was wrong with his life was his own fault. If I, a
privileged suburban female in 1992, could not understand privileged suburban Holden then I cannot imagine what the urban
clientele I was teaching would make of Mr. Caulfield.
Fortuitously, I had landed in a large school with a wonderful
faculty who were for the most part supportive and themselves
committed to life-long learning and whole heartedly agreed that
we needed to contemporize our text collection. With budget limitations and the impossibility to reach consensus, I decided to
propose a new course. Every year, teachers are invited to draft a

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O U R S C H O O L S / O U R S E LV E S

new course proposal and present to a committee of administration and faculty. With the assistance of my colleagues and chief
among the Assistant Department Head at the time, Chris
Chandler, we located the code ETC3M, Studies in Canadian
Literature. The Ministry guidelines for the course suggest that
the course could be designed to focus on any particular school
community. The example given was if a school had a large First
Nations population, the course could be tailored to feature First
Nations writers.
Central Technical School has a significant population of students of African descent (TDSB, 2010b). This is in keeping with
the research of Carl James on the over-representation of Black
students streamed into the General/Applied level and into
Special Education classes. The achievement gap was very apparent to me. Students were a largely disengaged and few stood out
for their academic success. I wanted to encourage them to not
only finish high school, but to attend post-secondary school. I
wanted them to see themselves as academics, as members of academia, as people who had a right to higher education. Thus the
inception of ETC3M1, Studies in Black Canadian Literature at
Central Technical School.
At first glance, many of my colleagues balked at the idea of a
Black-focused program. There were concerns around the exclusivity of the message that sends. Why dont we have Portuguese
Literature? Literature of Latin America? Asian and South Asian
studies? This is true, and for a brief time I considered structuring the course around two week blocks within which different
cultures could be represented. This approach however, was eventually dispelled for being tokenistic and not necessarily serving
the very large population of students we have who are most at
risk. We are still the only school in the Toronto District School
Board to offer ETC3M with a Black focus. The other Blackfocused course in existence is CAS331, Canadian-African
Studies. This course will be offered here in the fall and I am looking forward to working on a cross-curricular approach to delivering my course in concert with its history counterpart. The existence of ETC3M is ever a precarious one and is contingent upon
the unrelenting work of individuals who find money and time to
make it happen. Once the course was up and running for example, came the task of filling it with students and of purchasing

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SPRING 2010

texts. One guidance counselor in particular, Louise Baldacchino,

believed in the importance of the course and encouraged students to take it. Without her, I believe there would have been no
enrolment. In a large school like Central Technical School, teachers vie for student interest. Competition is toughthere is an
entire building devoted to visual art, a music program, dramatic arts; not to mention plumbing, auto, carpentry, and cosmetology. An Ontario Secondary School Diploma requires 30 credits.
Eighteen are compulsory. The remaining credits that students
are allowed to select are few. ETC3M has been running since
2002. Every year, however, the courses existence is threatened
by cuts. Im warned I have to get at least 15 students to enroll
or the course wont run. I always secure more than 15 students,
usually closer to 30, but rarely by the date the administration
requires this confirmation (four months in advance of the course
commencing). Often students shop around and are very noncommittal about their course load until the very last minute. A
significant percentage of our population is students who transfer from elsewhere and that decision is rarely made 4 months in
advance of a semester.
Budget cuts loom constantly over us. Where, for example, will
the money come from for the books I want to buy? Jacqueline
Allen, who was the Department Head when this course was conceived, gave me free reign to purchase texts for the course. I
bought two anthologies: Testifyin: Contemporary African
Canadian drama (Sears, 2000); and Fiery spirits and voices:
Canadian writers of African descent (Black, 2000). These were
expensive books, and to her I am grateful for the support.

Pedagogy

A literature class can empower students in ways that other

courses cannot because students can have emotional access to
texts and change the way they feel about themselves and the
world, and the relationship between the two. I wanted to give
students the opportunity to read texts that validate their existence, that are written in a linguistic register that students use
in their daily lives, thus affirming their place in a world of text.
I feel strongly about the importance and currency of non-fiction
and I use a lot of news items. So often, the novels that I was seeing the students read were of the Sista Soulja and Eric Jerome

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O U R S C H O O L S / O U R S E LV E S

Dickey varietynovels that perpetuate a narrow and ghettoized

version of Black existence. I wanted to introduce students to novels that offered a different perspective on the Black experience
and a perspective that is Canadian. As I worked through the
first few semesters of teaching ETC3M, I found that students
had little information about history and the contributions of people of African descent to contemporary society. It then became
difficult to place texts in this larger context. For example, I wanted to teach students to question the content of Black
Entertainment Television (Jones, 2001) and to see that its white
male ownership is a continuation of a history of oppression that
goes as far back as the Transatlantic Slave Trade. To this end, I
introduced Afua Coopers (2007) Canadian history of the transAtlantic slave trade. To illustrate the ideas communicated in
Coopers paper, I take excerpts from Lawrence Hills Book of
Negroes (2007). The segments I focus on are Aminatas abduction
(highlighting the participation of fellow Africans in the slave
trade), the march to the coast and branding of the slaves, and the
horrors of the middle passage (which includes a dramatic slave
rebellion).
This discussion led us right back to where we started: the first
text I use in the course, Tim McCaskells A History of Race/ism
(1996).
It is important for our class to address the idea of diverse
Black identities. I question students theories about the definition of Blackness because I have found that what it means to be
Black is a very personal, subjective narrative. There is not one
single definitive Black community in our city, for example. Not
all Black people are Christian. Not all Black people are from the
Caribbean.
Another important objective of ETC3M is to inspire students
to see themselves as agents of change, and as individuals who
have agency in their own lives. By showing students models of
writing by people who use their same vernacular and write
about issues that they can relate to, or who may share their origins ethnographically and socio-economically but write in standard and academic English, students can see themselves as writers and change-agents. To this end, I expose students to an array
of texts. Examples of texts written in Black linguistic registers
include Trey Anthonys (2005) Da Kink In My Hair, poetry by

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SPRING 2010

George Elliot Clarke (2000), Afua Cooper, Faith Nolan and many
others.
I like to make students the experts and put their knowledge
on a pedestal. An interesting on-going exercise we engage in is
the maintenance of an urban dictionary. When students use a
word that is not used in standard discourse, I pretend (and often
no pretence is required) that I do not know what the word
means. I keep a large pad of chart paper and have students write
words and their definitions and we post them in the class. The
definitions have to conform to dictionary conventions, so students have to identify the words part of speech. For example, the
students recorded, catty, n. a promiscuous female We also discuss etymology of these words and terms. Students prepare and
administer a vocabulary quiz for me: the tables are turned and I
am the student. This is a fair exchange as I also teach and test
students on vocabulary encountered in our examination of more
academic texts. For example, students learn words and terms
like patriarchy, systemic racism, and xenophobia, as access to
this language can empower students to further learning.
Our physical location, downtown in a major city, gives us access
to many resources, including after-school programs, and theatres.
I take advantage of as many of these opportunities as I can.
Purchasing theatre tickets can often be an obstacle when budgets
are tight. Fortunately, most local theatre is accessiblethe tickets
are inexpensive or, as was the case in 2009 with Secrets of a Black
Boy (Anthony, 2009), financed by the Equity Department at the
TDSB. Theatre experiences are rich ones, and always provide
material for students to respond to. Anthonys play introduced and
attempted to dispel issues such as gang violence, relationship violence, womens hair and bodies, sexual stereotypes, homosexuality
and homophobia, and fatherhood. For me, much of the play was
offensive: fat girls need love too; the impossible standards of
beauty and conduct the play upheld for women; and the over-simplified causes and effects supplied to rationalize male behaviour.
That said, it inspired lively discussion and writing, highlighting
messages that get a lot of air-time in popular culture. One of the
after-school programs that I recommend to students with an interest in theatre (particularly didactic theatre) is Suite Life (visit
http://www.stchrishouse.org/children-youth/Youth-programs/SuiteLife.php). This programme culminates in a show at

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Harbourfront. One students monologue was inspired by course

material, shouting out strong Black female authors and deploying
Black expressive language forms to dramatic effect: her performance exemplifies Shannelles interest in social change. Her monologue is an example of her critical analysis of racism, sexism, and
a new ism that is shaping the lives of young people that I have
come to call anti-paternalism. Students have a keen awareness of
the prevalence of single parent households and the weight of
responsibility carried by predominantly single mothers.
This year, I wanted the students to select the material for our
Black History Month assembly and created an assignment for
groups to work on naming and creating what they would like to
see. While the standard fare was offered, the class created
Power Point presentations and passages for the MCs contextualizing the Black cultural forms (e.g. on step and krump dance)
within Black histories of slavery, resistance and invention. As
one student wrote and the MC announced: In order to know
where we are going, we have to know where we are coming from
It is important to remember that the wealth and excess of
our daily lives, can be attributed to our African brothers and sisters who worked as slave labour for 400 years to build the economy of comfort that we enjoy today (Dana, 2010). I hope this
reflects the heart of this course: I have learned much more than
I have taught.

Conclusion

While space doesnt allow comprehensive reporting, our recursive analysis of triangulated samples of student writing and participant observation attest that an integrative antiracism and
Black-focused curriculum has the potential to engage students
in reading diverse Black expressive literate forms in order to:
Affirm diverse Black identities and linguistic/cultural forms
within a longer trajectory of Black histories of struggle;
Develop students critical thinking skills in analyzing racism
(systemic and individual) and other isms as these play out in
their worlds; and
Acting in their worlds, communities, relationships and democratic societal processes.

Student engagement suggests to us that a particular kind of

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learning happens when antiracist, Black-focused education is

approached through a language and literature courselearning
that involves particular ways of being and belonging as well as
knowing. Remaking language is the way to come to terms
with the past in the present to disclose the discredited histories of black peoples (Walcott, 1997, pp. 48-9).
***

Lisa Taylor is xx
Kirstin Boutilier is xx
E N D N OTE S
PAGE 13
Ive a concern that capitalizing the word Black in this citation means I am
misquoting McKittrick (who consistently uses the non-capitalized form)
Actually Im not quoting Brand at all in this passage (I quote her in the
articles title so Ive inserted a parenthesis here and the Endnote for the
title cites a longer passage from the poem).
Charles: (Im having difficulty with this passage. Where does Brand end
and Walcott begin? If youre to use the Brand reference, then you need a
bit more to contextualize and explain the comment and then consider the
transition to the Walcott comment which follows) From Dionne Brand
(1990), No Language is Neutral, p. 30: I walk Bathurst Street until it
come like home /Pearl was near Dupont, upstairs a store one / Christmas
where we pretend as if nothing change we, /make rum punch and sing,
with bottle and spoon, / song we weself never even sing but only hear
when / we was children. Pearl, squeezing her big Point / Fortin self along
the narrow hall singing Drink a rum and a ... Texts studied in the course
include: Anthony (2005); Brand, (2005); Cheney (2005); Clarke (2000); Hurt
(2006); Jones (2001); Klein, (2002); Lee (2000); McCaskell (1996); the spoken word of Faith Nolan and lyrics from selected hip hop songs. A pseudonym.

REFERENCES
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http://www.secretsofaBlackboy.com/.
Anthony, T. (2005). da kink in my hair. Toronto: Playwrights Canada
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descent. Toronto: Harper Perennial Canada.
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Commission on Learning. Toronto: Author.
Brand, D. (1990). No language is neutral. Toronto: Coach House.
Brand, D. (2005). What we all long for: A novel. Toronto: Knopf.
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Toronto: J. Lorimer.
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Cheney, P. (2005). Regent revival: Changes at Canada's first social-housing
project. Globe and Mail, April, 2.
Clarke, G. E. (2000). Whylah falls. Toronto: Polestar.
Cooper, A. (2007). Invisible Histories: The TransAtlantic Slave Trade in
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McCaskell, T. (1996). A history of race/ism. Toronto: Toronto District
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22