There are women whose names become monuments, and there are women whose work becomes the floor somebody else gets to stand on.Black Canadian women
There are women whose names become monuments, and there are women whose work becomes the floor somebody else gets to stand on.
Black Canadian women have been both.
They came from old Black Canadian communities and from islands across the Caribbean. They were daughters of Nova Scotia and Ontario, Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad. Some arrived in Canada carrying the memory of another home. Some belonged to Black communities whose Canadian roots reached back generations.
They did not all think alike. They did not do the same work. Yet across decades, they kept finding ways to build something larger than themselves.
A newspaper.
A women’s organization.
A political opening.
A sexual assault centre.
A shelter.
A national gathering where Black women could finally speak to one another about their own lives.
Sometimes history calls this leadership. Sometimes it calls it activism.
Women who have survived violence may recognize another word for some of it.
Making a way.
1. Gwen Jenkins: She Helped Build Somewhere for Women to Turn
In London, Ontario, there was a Black woman named Gwen Jenkins who understood something every Survivor deserves to know: a woman in crisis should not have to carry everything by herself.
Jenkins was a nurse, community worker and advocate. In 1975, she became instrumental in establishing London’s Sexual Assault Centre. Her work included fundraising, serving on its board and providing 24-hour on-call counselling.
Think about what those words mean beyond the résumé.
Somewhere, a telephone could ring in the terrible hours.
Somewhere, there could be another human being on the other end.
Years later, Jenkins founded the London chapter of the Congress of Black Women of Canada. Her vision was deliberately cross-cultural. She wanted Caribbean, African and Canadian Black women in London to work together as a community while strengthening Black women and supporting Black youth through education.
She did not ask women to come from identical places before they could build together.
There is a lesson hidden there for women who have spent too much of their lives believing they must explain everything perfectly before they deserve help.
You do not have to have the perfect words before you reach for somebody.
Sometimes safety begins with simply knowing there is somewhere to call.
2. Kay Livingstone: She Built a Room Big Enough for Black Women to Speak
Kathleen “Kay” Livingstone was born in London, Ontario, into a family already deeply involved in Black community life. Her parents, James and Christina Jenkins, founded The Dawn of Tomorrow, a newspaper serving Black Canadians.
Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that their daughter became a builder of platforms.
Livingstone founded the Canadian Negro Women’s Association in Toronto in 1951. In 1973, she became the driving force behind the first National Congress of Black Women, bringing approximately 200 Black women together in Toronto.
There is an important reason that gathering belongs in women’s history.
Black women’s concerns were not receiving adequate priority in either the Black civil-rights movement or second-wave feminism. Instead of waiting indefinitely to become somebody else’s priority, Black women built another table.
Women came together to discuss education, immigration, family life, media portrayals and other concerns affecting their communities. The gathering helped spark additional congresses in Montreal, Halifax, Windsor and Winnipeg and contributed to the development of what became the Congress of Black Women of Canada.
Livingstone also worked across communities and institutions, including the YWCA, the United Nations Association’s Toronto women’s auxiliary, the Canadian Council of Churches, Legal Aid and other organizations.
Her life leaves women with a useful piece of wisdom.
If the room keeps discussing everybody except you, perhaps the answer is not to spend another decade begging for the microphone.
Sometimes women build another room.
3. Carrie Best: Nova Scotia Gave Us a Woman Who Refused to Surrender Her Dignity
Carrie Mae Best belonged to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.
Her Black Nova Scotian story is important because Canada’s Black history is not solely a story of recent immigration. People of African descent have lived in Nova Scotia for centuries, building families and communities while confronting deeply entrenched racial discrimination.
Best became a journalist, broadcaster and formidable human-rights advocate.
Years before Viola Desmond’s famous confrontation at the Roseland Theatre, Best herself challenged its segregated seating with her son. They were arrested and convicted. She later founded The Clarion, a Black-owned Nova Scotian newspaper, and used it to bring attention to Desmond’s case.
That is worth remembering.
A woman fought.
Then when another woman fought, she used what she had built to make sure people heard about her.
Best later served on Nova Scotia’s Task Force on the Status of Women and founded the Kay Livingstone Visible Minority Women’s Society of Nova Scotia, an organization she described as devoted to interracial understanding and participatory democracy.
Her life teaches something useful about boundaries too.
Being told that you are causing trouble does not necessarily mean you are doing something wrong.
Sometimes “trouble” is simply the name an unjust arrangement gives to the woman who stops cooperating with it.
4. Rosemary Brown: Jamaica Raised Her, Canada Heard Her
Rosemary Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1930.
She came to Canada in 1951 to study at McGill University and eventually settled in British Columbia. Her encounters with racism and sexism helped shape a lifetime of advocacy for human rights and equality.
In 1972, Brown became the first Black woman elected to a Canadian provincial legislature.
But a “first” is only interesting if we ask what a woman did once the door opened.
Brown championed better working and social conditions for women and pushed measures against gender discrimination. She advocated for immigrants, people with disabilities, disadvantaged communities and older people. She also helped found the Vancouver Status of Women Council and served as its ombudswoman.
Her work eventually stretched beyond Canada. She supported women’s advancement internationally and later became a prominent figure in women’s development and human-rights work.
Jamaica was not something she needed to leave behind in order to become part of Canadian history.
It was part of the woman who entered it.
For women rebuilding after harm, there is something quietly powerful in that. Starting another chapter does not require amputating every chapter that came before it.
You are allowed to carry home with you.
5. Jean Augustine: From Grenada to Canada’s Parliament
Jean Augustine was born in Grenada and came to Canada as a young woman.
She became an educator, community organizer and advocate, eventually serving as national president of the Congress of Black Women of Canada. Her work over decades included advocacy for women, immigrants and racialized communities.
Then, in 1993, Augustine became the first Black woman elected to Canada’s House of Commons.
She would eventually serve in roles including Minister of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women. She helped secure Canada’s federal recognition of February as Black History Month, while her wider legacy includes institutions devoted to girls’ leadership, young women’s empowerment, education and equity.
There is a lovely continuity here.
The woman who participated in Black women’s collective organizing eventually carried that experience into Parliament.
That is how community work travels.
The conversation around a folding table can become an organization. The organization can become a movement. The woman sitting in that movement can one day walk into a legislature carrying memories and concerns that powerful institutions once considered too small to hear.
Never assume small beginnings mean small destinations.
6. Dionne Brand: Trinidad, Toronto and the Women Who Refused to Separate Their Freedoms
Dionne Brand was born in Guayaguayare, Trinidad, and moved to Canada in 1970.
Many readers know her as an acclaimed poet and writer. Her history as a Black feminist organizer deserves equal attention.
Brand worked as a counsellor at an immigrant women’s centre. She served on the board of a shelter for abused immigrant women. She participated in labour, Black and feminist organizing and became a founder and editor of Our Lives, Canada’s first Black women’s newspaper.
That newspaper emerged from Toronto’s Black Women’s Collective, whose members reflected an extraordinary range of Black women’s lives. Some were Canadian-born, including women from communities with centuries-deep Canadian histories. Others came from the Caribbean, England and South Africa. They crossed class lines and occupations too.
They did not pretend those differences disappeared when Black women entered the same room.
They organized through them.
The Collective confronted racism and sexism while also engaging questions of class, sexuality and imperialism, and it collaborated with other women’s and community organizations.
For Survivors, Brand’s work offers another quiet lesson.
A woman’s safety cannot always be separated neatly from the rest of her life.
Immigration can affect her choices. Money can affect her choices. Racism can affect whether she expects institutions to believe her. Housing can affect whether leaving is possible. Community ties can be sources of tremendous strength while also making certain decisions complicated.
Good Survivor advocacy does not ask a woman to arrive as one little piece of herself.
It makes room for the whole woman.
7. The Black Women’s Collective: Because Some History Belongs to the Women Together
The last place on this list belongs not to one woman, but to women in company with one another.
Toronto’s Black Women’s Collective brought together women whose roots reached through Canada, the Caribbean, England and South Africa. Their newspaper, Our Lives, began publication in 1986 and created something Black women had long needed: a place to speak about themselves from their own perspective.
There is something almost sacred about that.
Women are often studied after the fact. Somebody else gathers the records, interprets what happened and explains what women must have been thinking.
These women picked up the pen themselves.
They wrote.
They organized.
They disagreed, collaborated, questioned and reached toward Black women beyond their immediate circles.
Their work reminds us that women’s liberation has never depended solely upon finding an extraordinary heroine.
Sometimes the heroine is the network.
They Came From Different Shores and Still Found One Another
Look again at the map these women made.
Nova Scotia.
Ontario.
British Columbia.
Jamaica.
Grenada.
Trinidad.
Black Canadian communities stretching back generations. Caribbean women beginning new lives in Canada. Women moving among civil-rights organizations, women’s organizations, immigrant services, newspapers, legislatures, labour movements, sexual-assault services and shelters.
They did not have to come from the same shore to recognize something in one another.
And that may be one of the loveliest parts of this history.
They show us a form of solidarity that does not require a woman to become less specific about where she comes from. Caribbean women did not have to stop being Caribbean. Black Nova Scotian women did not have to surrender the particular history of their communities. Immigrant women did not have to pretend migration changed nothing. Canadian-born Black women did not have to pretend all Black Canadian histories began at the same moment.
They could bring their histories into the room.
Then they could work.
For the woman reading this who has survived something, perhaps there is another inheritance here.
You do not have to become fearless before you act.
You do not have to make what happened to you sound prettier before you seek help. You do not owe endless access to someone who harms you. Being called difficult does not make your boundary wrong. Needing assistance does not cancel your strength. Another woman’s path does not have to look exactly like yours before you can recognize her humanity.
And if the place you need does not yet exist, history offers one more possibility.
Women have built places before.
They built newspapers when their stories were distorted.
They built organizations when their concerns were pushed aside.
They built political networks when doors remained closed.
They built sexual-assault services so somebody would answer.
They built shelters so women could have somewhere else to go.
They built rooms.
Then they held the doors for women coming behind them.
We should remember their names.
But perhaps the finest way to honor them is to remember what they were teaching us all along:
A woman does not have to wait until the world considers her pain important before she begins building toward freedom.