A BLM rally led me to ugly truths
As a white kid from Oakville, I was taught systemic racism didn’t exist in my town
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent movement against systemic racism, activists around the world have turned to the histories of their communities to trace the roots of racism.
As Canadians, we repeatedly hear that systemic racism doesn’t exist in our country, or is insignificant in comparison to our southern neighbours — a lie that has led many white people to believe that racism in Canada is isolated, that it isn’t embedded in our institutions, culture, and ourselves.
As a white kid growing up in Oakville, I was blind to racial divides. You are taught that everyone is equal, that the colour of your skin “doesn’t matter.” I was blind to the fact that the wealthiest neighbourhoods are almost exclusively white. As I have grown up, seen the realities of racism, and listened to my Black peers, I have realized that the richest pockets of Oakville are a product of a society, and years of discrimination, which have enabled white families to accumulate wealth.
My hometown has a history of bringing slaves across Lake Ontario and to freedom in Canada. However, like many towns and cities across the nation, Oakville and the region of Halton have a deep and disturbing history of white supremacy that has remained hidden for decades. This includes speculation town leaders were involved with the Ku Klux Klan. I was determined, after going to a Black Lives Matter march, to go beyond the textbooks and learn about it myself.
At the rally in downtown Oakville on June 13, one speaker told the story of Ira Julius Johnson and Isabel Jones. They spoke about how, in 1930, 75 members of the Ku Klux Klan rode in a procession from Hamilton to Oakville to intervene in the marriage of Johnson, presumed to be a Black man, and Jones, a white woman.
I had never learned about this, and I was compelled to know more. I reached out to author Lawrence Hill, who detailed this in his book, “Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White
in Canada.” According to his account, the Klansmen burned crosses, forcibly separated the couple, threatening consequences should they be seen with each other again. A month later they burned down Johnson’s home, despite Johnson revealing that he was actually of Cherokee descent.
In speaking with these authors and leaders, what alarmed me most about this story was Oakville’s approval of the Klan’s intervention. In a Star front-page story from 1930, then-mayor of Oakville, J.B. Moat, said, “I think the Ku Klux Klan acted quite properly in the matter” in relation to the intervention. Alvin Duncan, a prominent member of Oakville’s Black community, speculated that Oakville’s thenpolice chief, David Kerr, may also have been a member of the Klan. On that same day, Kerr appeared to know many of the Klansmen well, and shook their hands. Understandably, following the altercation, Oakville’s Black community was terrified as lynchings occurred regularly just across the border.
When I first heard this story, it was inconceivable to me. I could not imagine the Klan burning crosses in the streets I had grown up in. As the woman telling the story pointed out, unlike other historical events, this one had no plaque or space in our history or education. I didn’t study this in school. This history was shocking to me because I hadn’t grown up with it.
What else didn’t I know about the place I grew up? I contacted Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society, to learn more. It was then I also learned that the family of William Chisholm, the founder of Oakville, had ties to slavery. William’s brother, John Chisholm, owned a slave in Niagara before he moved to Halton. Henry also pointed me to Burlington’s Joseph Brant, who was a Mohawk chief, and is memorialized all over the city. Sophia Pooley, one of Brant’s slaves, who was only seven when she was taken from her parents, recounts being beaten by Brant’s wife. Despite this, Burlington’s hospital is named after him, as is Brant Street, and a museum that commemorates him as the city’s first citizen.
In our history textbooks, Brant is glorified as a leader for the Mohawk people and the British army, but the fact is he was a slave owner. In that journey of discovering these histories, I found more recent forms of supremacy close to home, in Georgetown. The town’s District High School’s sports team the “Georgetown Rebels,” flew the Confederate flag until 1989, when they realized it was no longer appropriate.
Archives from newspapers also show that the Klan visited Georgetown regularly, as recently as 1993. Wanting to know more, I spoke to Lindsay Anne Black, alumni of Georgetown High, who has written about racism in the town. While attending the school in the early ’90s, she learned that there were members of the Klan and the Heritage Front, living in Georgetown at the time. She heard of students’ involvement with the Heritage Front in particular, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group. I wasn’t surprised by the fact that white supremacy existed in Halton, but I was surprised by its scale and its overtness.
The town of Oakville was grown by wealthy white men from Toronto, moving west to build upscale estates. With this culture of white privilege, it makes perfect sense why these forms of supremacy would exist. However, when your educators have not taught the real history of racism in your town, and your leaders tell you that Canada does not have “systemic, deep roots” of racism like the U.S, why should you believe that the Ku Klux Klan were in your backyard?
I can’t help but think my community has been hiding this racist history from me my entire life. I grew up thinking I lived in an idyllic suburb where everyone is equal, despite the colour of their skin. That the town I grew up in was always welcoming and inclusive when it was not. I feel that my community is ignoring a past of privilege and supremacy because it is easier to ignore than to remember.
Dismissing white supremacy, as a construct existing only in the U.S., has led us to ignore our racist past. It has permitted white families to believe that their wealth is not a product of institutionalized racism. And it has led us to believe that in Canada, there is no supremacy worth dismantling.
I hope our educators teach the history of racism in the communities in which they teach. I hope our politicians stop preaching that racism isn’t as bad in Canada as it is in the U.S. I think we should consider carefully who we memorialize and take the whole character of our historical figures into account.
I hope that white people realize the fear and oppression that Black communities have endured for years, right here in Canada.
Ethan Carley is a Grade 10 student at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Oakville. Follow him @ethancarley_