Seeing Colour: Animating BC’s Black Pioneers
This new collection brings movement and colour to the black pioneers of Victoria, British Columbia, whose histories have been erased from official historical accounts.
When I started this project last month, I was disappointed to find only 16 digitized photos of black pioneers in the BC Archives catalogue – a system that holds 142,996 digital objects. Black pioneers played a key role in the early years of the colonies that became British Columbia, yet there is scant visual evidence of their existence.
I selected five photographs of Black individuals from the catalogue and began researching the circumstances that brought them to British North America. There was a wealth of information on the BC Black History Society website and I even located a descendant who advised me on the colour of the dress worn by her great-grandmother (Nancy Alexander). I’m now reading the latest edition of Crawford Kilian’s book Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia, which tells the stories of many of the important figures in B.C.’s Black history.
As I learned more about the contributions of first-generation Black settlers, I was overcome with a deep sadness. Why was this the first time I was learning about these courageous pioneers who helped shape our province?
I realized that I grew up in an educational system that exposed me to a whitewashed version of Canadian history told from the perspective of its European settlers. My elementary school textbooks glossed over the history of Canada’s indigenous population, who were forced off their land and pushed to assimilate into Euro-Canadian culture. When living in Vancouver during my university years, I had no idea there was once a thriving black neighbourhood – known as Horgan’s Alley — near the Georgia viaduct.
As a mixed-heritage woman — the daughter of a West Indian mother and English-Scottish father — I did not see many people who looked like me when I was growing up. As a child and young adult, some of my peers made it clear to me that I did not belong, a notion that was often reinforced by the now-cliché question “where are you from?” The assumption, of course, was that a brown-skinned person could not be from BC. People of Colour still experience racism today, as demonstrated by a racial attack my mother experienced last year when a neighbour told her to “go back to her country” as “coloured people do not belong here.”
To create a more inclusive history, and to address anti-Black racism, we need to tell the stories and celebrate the accomplishments of historical and contemporary black pioneers. By animating and colourizing photos of these black pioneers, I’m asking my audience to see colour; to see that both historical and contemporary Black Lives Matter.