COMMUNITY MATTERS
March calls to rebuild NCC
With the dream of reviving the Negro Community Centre that once served as the communal heart of Montreal’s Black community, more than 100 demonstrators marched from Old Montreal to the site of the former NCC in Little Burgundy on Saturday.
The march, titled “Our Long Walk Home,” coincided with Emancipation Day, officially recognized in Ontario and a national public holiday in many Caribbean countries to commemorate the day slavery was abolished in most British colonies in 1834.
In this season of global Black Lives Matter protests over police killings of Black men and the persistence of systemic racism, organizers said a community centre that would also serve as a museum of the Black community’s history and gathering place for all cultural communities is needed in Montreal more than ever.
“This is a bittersweet day for me,” said Greg Fergus, MP for Hull-aylmer and chairman of the federal Black caucus. “It’s bitter, because in spite of the fact that 186 years ago that we ended slavery, so many things remained in place that didn’t allow us to be truly emancipated. … Official policies, unofficial policies. Attitudes. Things that kept Blacks from taking their true place in Canada. And some of these attitudes still exist today. …
“We have now seen that racism kills.”
The march and presentations started in Place d’youville, in Old Montreal, where the government announced on Aug. 1, 1834, that slavery had been abolished.
It ended in Oscar Peterson Park, next to the former site of the NCC, where the world-renowned jazz pianist took lessons as boy. Oliver Jones, another piano prodigy who learned at the NCC, also addressed the crowd.
Residents spoke of playing basketball there as a boy because there was no other place for them, of their aunts learning to tap dance there, or sew, of dance parties.
First established in 1927 in Little Burgundy, the NCC served as a focal point for Montreal’s Black community, providing health and social services, after-school academic and sports training, as well as organizing to fight against racial prejudice.
With its building in need of significant repairs and funding drying up, the NCC closed in 1992, and the building was demolished in 2014. A developer brought the property for $300,000 and intends to build a mixed residential and commercial development on the vacant lot, with a small space reserved to exhibit the site’s history.
Community activists want a chance to buy back the land and build a centre and museum to serve the neighbourhood and act as a focal organization for the city’s varied Black population and numerous organizations. Estimates for the cost of the centre are around $10 million. Some are in favour of a mixed-use building that could include residential housing.
David Shelton, who is on the organizing committee to reopen the centre, said it once served members of the Black and Irish communities, and seniors from both groups still socialize today.
“The centre allowed the different races to grow up and develop friendships together,” he said. “Now the neighbourhood has changed, and there are Bangladeshis, and North Africans, and blacks, and whites. This centre was a place where people of all backgrounds came together. We want to resurrect that.”
The march culminated with speeches and performances at the park, and a plea to support the organizing committee in its efforts to revive the centre for the good of the entire community.
“The roots of the black community in Montreal go back to the first days of the official founding of the city, and even before, and the NCC has become a symbol of its existence, and of the community’s resistance against racism and all kinds of negative forces,” said Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-action on Race Relations, who helped to organize the event along with the Côte-des-neiges Black Community Association.
“So it’s so important for the community to have that home, and in the hearts and minds of many in the Black community, that is their home.”
With the Black Lives Matter movement, there is increased interest in supporting initiatives that aid cultural communities, Niemi said.
He mentioned the Blacknorth Initiative that brought together more than 200 CEOS in late July in Toronto to support ways to dismantle anti-black systemic racism. This kind of interest could lead to financial or other support for the centre, he said.
The centre allowed the different races to grow up and develop friendships together ... We want to resurrect that.