Ideas - From Grit to Glory: Canada’s First Black Woman Publisher

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

In 1853, Mary Ann Shadd Cary became the first Black woman publisher in Canada with her newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. As a lawyer, publisher, and educator, she laid the groundwork for Black liberation in Canada. Descendants and other guests share her remarkable story. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 7, 2023.

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start listening today. This is a CBC Podcast. When your childhood home is a stop on the Underground Railroad, you can be sure that your life will lead others toward a path towards liberation. In a world that wished for Black people to be silent, Mary Ann Shadcarry shouted the loudest. Silencing every voice that spoke against Black freedom and breaking through barriers that sought to hold us, Mary Ann Shadcarry made abolition a non-negotiable. Turned newspaper into microphone, building an entire house every time she was denied a seat at the table. Mary Ann Shadcarry was a teacher. But the greatest lesson she ever taught was that as long as there is injustice, we must always speak out.

For as long as people are being silenced, we must always be loud, and that for as long as we are Black, we should always be proud. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. And I walked in and the curator of the time, the late, great Arlie Robbins, first curator of the museum, just kind of casually handed me this article and I looked at the front of it and it said Mary Ann Shad, publisher, teacher, lawyer, and crusader for Black freedom. And I said, wow, who is Mary Ann Shad? Mary Ann Shad Carey was born in the state of Delaware in 1823 to parents who were free African-Americans. And it wasn't until many years later, like I was a young adult, before I realized, like, wow, she's an incredible woman, and that I was related to her, and I thought, bam.

Mary Ann Shad-Carrie moved to Canada in 1850, after America passed the Fugitive Slave Law. She soon founded a racially integrated school in Windsor, Ontario, and three years later, she became the first Black woman in Canada to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. Everyone has a story, but women's stories are often neglected. They don't often get into print. And I think with Mary Ann Shad Carrey's story being such an extraordinary one, hooray that it's finally out there and that we know about it. In October 2023, the City of Toronto marked the 200th anniversary of Mary Ann Shadd Carey's birth

by hosting a series of panel discussions and poetry recitations celebrating her life and legacy. We're going to have some mics passed on to you first. Can you hear me? Just keep testing. We're calling this episode From Grit to Glory. Yes, I think mine is working. Mine's not, but I'm loud enough.

Oh, there we go. Hello. We begin with a story of discovery, featuring descendants of Mary Ann Shadcarry in a conversation moderated by Carlton journalism professor, Nanaba Duncan. Adrienne Shad is a historian, a curator, and an author. She is Mary Ann Shadcarry's great, great, great niece.

Shannon Prince is a curator of the Buxton National Historic Site in North Buxton, Ontario, just south of Chatham. Shannon is also Mary Ann's great, great, great niece. Then we have Maxine Robbins, a retired educator. She is married to Ed Robbins, a retired educator and superintendent. Ed Robbins is Maryann Shadcarry's great, great, great nephew. And Maxine played a pivotal role

in helping to keep Maryne's records alive. So for this conversation, we're going to start with how each of you really first encountered Marianne Shide Carey. So, Adrienne, you were at a museum in the 70s. That's how you first encountered Marianne Shide Care Carrie, what happened? So I was visiting Buxton, because I'm originally from there, but I was living in Toronto, still live in Toronto. But I was down there for the summer, and I thought I would go over to the museum for the afternoon and check out

what was going on over there. And I walked in and the curator of the time, the late, great Arlie Robbins, first curator of the museum, just kind of casually handed me this article. And I looked at the front of it and it said, Mary Ann Shad, publisher, teacher, lawyer,

and crusader for black freedom, something like that. And I said, wow, who is Mary Ann Shad? I'd never heard of her. This was before the first biography of her came out in, I think it was 1977. I had never heard of this woman. And... But she shared your name. Yeah, exactly. And it was quite eye-opening to read through the article and read all of the tremendous accomplishments that she had and, you know, just her fight and her spirit

that came through in the article. And I was just, you know, overcome almost. And that was the beginning of my understanding and my learning about this woman. Shannon, for you, it's also connected to a museum. It is. Well, it's interesting because you mentioned Anne Arley because I was after a chat and I was thinking because I would ride my bike down to visit my Aunt Arlie, like you were saying, she was with curator. And I would hear about this Mary Ann

because she was writing a book about the history of Buxton, but she was also a researcher as well and different people would write to Aunt Arlie about things. So she would mention this Mary Ann and every time I would go down, but I was more interested in what my uncle Laverne was cooking because he was a great cook didn't pay any attention to it So fast forward many years later, and I was still hearing about this Mary Ann, and I'm thinking okay So who is Mary Ann like you know like every time I went down to see her

What was always on the tip of her tongue. And it wasn't until many years later, like I was a young adult before I realized, like wow, like you were saying, she's an incredible woman, and that I was related to her, and I thought, damn. Yeah, sorry. No, no. When they, when, damn is great.

But, but, but. When they kept saying, when they kept mentioning Pearl, what were they saying? Just that I heard Ann Arley saying she was just an amazing woman. She was very strong and I'm thinking, okay, so yeah. Okay, so so many... And I guess because in the community, because there were so many strong women. So I'm thinking, okay, so maybe Mary Ann's new to the community, just living around the corner, but again, again, really I'm worried, interested in about the food.

But getting the job at the museum, and I think that was really enlightening for me, and I was just so inspired by her. And not only from reading Anne Arley and everyone else's work that they had given to the museum, but also the fact that this was, I was part of her, if you will. And her legacy is still very strong in all of the Shad family today. And I'm just still marvel at all of her accomplishments and I'm still learning. So I think she's just a wonderful lady. So Ed and Maxine, you found her papers in the house,

but you knew about, Ed, you knew about Mary Ann Shadcarry before you found those papers. You didn't. No. Wait a second. Okay. Okay, what happened? Well, the short answer is we learned about Mary Ann Shanker, her name in 1974.

1974. Yes. And then we learned about Mary Ann Shanker in 1977. I will give you a little bit of the back story on that because it was quite interesting in terms of what happened in 1967. Maxine and I bought a 50 acre farm. It was right next to my father's farm and it had an old house on it. So we moved into the land. So we moved into the 74, we build a new home house on the farm and we had moved into the new house and we tore down the old house, the old wooden house. Quite interestingly enough, we were just getting ready to torch it, to burn it up. And then the hero of the story comes in, Maxine. Now it isn't often that one gets to be referred to as a hero.

So I'm going to take advantage of this. I was on a mission to find some old wood to make a triptych. I looked across the lane and there was this whole pile of rubble, so I thought I'll go there. And as I was searching through to find these old boards, I saw a sheet of paper. It was a corner. I picked it up, sturdy, cleared it off. And I looked at the date, and it was dated in the 1850s.

Wow, this is amazing. And then I proceeded to read. It was a letter from a little girl who lived in Detroit and she was writing to her grandmother and telling her the plight of the family there. Someone didn't have shoes, several people had the flu, it was not a happy letter, but I was, my interest was piqued. I immediately went into the house and showed it to Ed and he felt it was worth looking for other papers also.

So we and other family members spent several days looking for what we could find. And as we read the letters that had been written to Mary Ann Shad-Carrie, and we saw the penmanship and the contents of the letters, we were so impressed. We said, who are these people? And at that point, we made contact with Arlie from the museum. She was a curator. She came to our house and she said,

the original owners, the people who had built the house were Mary Ann Shedd Carey's, and her brother-in-law. And that Mary Ann Shedd, Kerry, had lived there periodically when she was in Chatham, and that the papers were probably very important. Fast forward about two years to 1977, Jim Bearden and Linda Butler, two authors, caught wind of the fact that we had some papers.

So they called and came to our house to see what the papers were all about. That was very interesting to them. They were very intrigued and they were in the process of writing a book about Mary Ann Shadcarry. So they stayed overnight, that's how impressed they were, they stayed overnight, just messed with people, and they stayed overnight to view the rest of the papers. They ended up writing a book and having it published in 1977. There was the Life and Times of Mary Ann Shadcarry,

and the book was called Shad. So that was when we had the opportunity to really learn something about Mary Ann Shadcarry. So now we could spend the next hour talking about this, but we're gonna end with one question, and that is, what does she mean to you now? Shannon, let's start with you. Oh, yeah, we're just waiting to see if you can fit me. Well, to me, let's see, she means a lot of things to me. And I think, you know,

because she's a role model, she's a leader, you know, an inspiration, like she was a journalist, a lawyer, a feminist, and she was also a mother. And I think sometimes people forget that she was a mother doing all of the many things that she was doing without a strong support network like some of us have today. You know, and I think she was a strong woman and she, you know, exemplifies, you know, change and the power of voice and was not afraid to tell the truth. So, you know, I just, I embrace who she was, who she was and all that she was because she means so much to me. Yeah, so yeah, it's all wrapped up into one because I think that's a loaded question.

It is. It really is. But I asked it. Yeah. What about you, Adrienne? Well, reading that first article, and I didn't know that much except what was in the article, it kind of opened my eyes to what was possible in black history, black Canadian history. Her example was really important in that. It kind of changed the trajectory of my life in some ways. Really? Because I felt that if there were people like Mary Ann Shad and her family in my own history that I didn't even know about. What else was out there? Who else, what other families had these great leaders and people who accomplished so much that we don't have any idea about but are there waiting for

us to discover them? What about you Ed? What it meant to me was quite interesting because I was really humbled by the accomplishments that Mary Ann Shedd had made and it went to you back, it caused me to reflect back upon my schooling and my life. There were two different areas specifically that I became interested in. One was her interest in education. The fact that she not only showed her, did that, but showed her interest very much by creating situations for young people to learn,

having her own schools, having that which was very, very interesting. The schools were integrated in terms of there were black and white students in the classroom. It made me reflect back on my schooling. school from 47 to 62, 1947 to 1962. And I was the only person of color in a class or as a teacher through that whole system. Very interesting. And it really caused me to think back on that. Also, if they're ever brought up in a classroom,

Negro or black or whatever have you, how I cringed or felt very uncomfortable, even talking about that during those particular years. It really, in that reflection, you see that there were no role models, no persons for me to look up to that happened to be to look like me. So those are the types of things that went through my mind at that time. Also I started to think of what she really got for education was the one. And I was going to say, you know,

I didn't know we could dance until American bandstand in 1976 had a black couple. The second part that I gleaned from Mary Ann Shedd's beliefs was integration. And I firmly believe that you have to be in a room with other people, so get to know them and them to get to know you. You've got to be there.

And if you're ever going to be making policy on different people's lives, you've got to be at the table to have your idea of how to cross forward. So those are my impressions of her. And I think Maxine, she will definitely have different ones than I do. I'm interested because Maxine, you were, you are an educator and you found like you found her work, they were in your hands.

And so you were seeing for the first time who this person was. So now when you think of her impact as an educator, what are your thoughts? Well, one thing that I think is everyone has a story. We know that. But women's stories are often neglected. They don't often get into print.

And I think with Mary Ann Shad-Herry's story being such an extraordinary one, hooray that it's finally out there and that we know about it. Her accomplishments are even more impressive when you think about the kind of world that she was born into and the fact that she had to navigate that world

with two strikes against her already, being black and being a woman. And it is surprising and exhilarating to see how much she was able to accomplish. Now in terms of a role model, I wish I had had role models that I could look at in books and on TV and so forth. And I'm very, very thankful that my grandchildren will be in a different situation. Two years ago, my youngest granddaughter, who was in grade four, did her black history project on Mary Ann Shadkerry. And she was so proud to do that. And after she had finished, her classmates started

to call Mary Ann Shad Carey Stella's aunt. That's amazing. That's wonderful. And so I say that may Mary Ann Shad's story continue. That's wonderful. And so I say that may Mary Ann Shadd's story continue. That's right. That's right. To be celebrated. Well, thank you all for being here.

We really appreciate it. Adrienne Shadd, Maxine Robbins, Ed Robbins, and Shannon Prince, you've all kept the memory of Mary Ann Shadd alive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The words I write and the stories I tell are my tools for upholding the legacies of those who define what it means to be Black and visibly existing. See, the world may look at me with eyes filled with doubt.

They're unaccustomed to Black women scripting our narratives, but each line and phrase is a testament to the power I control on the page. This resilience, this passion for words is rooted in the journeys of those who paved the way leading me to where I stand today. If you listen closely, you may hear the echo of a fearless pen held by the hand of a woman named Mary Ann Shadcarry. Her words were like seeds on feral ground in a world not ready for her ink to flow. She was a relentless river, breaking through the rocks of ignorance.

She held out the page and pen, like lanterns of hope in a shattered night, lightened in our path. She led a soaring symphony of unhealing voices, each black note rising higher on the breath of transformation. Though doors closed on her, she persisted and sculpts her destinies like constellations in the night, churning the course for black women's voices to shine.

A teacher, a writer, an editor, a businesswoman, a wife, an organizer, an eloquent force to be reckoned with. She shaken and shattered the chains of a societal mold. Mary Ann Shadcarry raised her voice, her words like a lighthouse in attempted sea. Faced with the darkest chapters of faith, she made her choice for freedom and equality amidst the storms that threatened to drown her. The provincial freedom, her paper, her sword, where words became weapons, in its pages Mary Ann Shadcarry wielded a literary arsenal, sparking a revolution in the hearts of Black womanhood, an anthem of empowerment that echoes the night, igniting dreams or once laid

doormat, and in her words we found our voice, undaunted and fierce redefining our destiny. She showed the world that women could rise and that black women voices mattered. In the footsteps of Mary and Shag Carrie I'll lead with action and not just words. I'll forge ahead. In her spirit I find my strength and core. In a world that seeks to silence voices I insist on being heard. I as a black woman insist on breaking through to the veil of pre-justice I'll brightly glow in every stanza and every dream just like the path was made before me so I stand here I in bowls ink and brace in verse and strong and true I claim my space a black woman writer on apologetically free I'll scribe my

words for the world to see. That was poet Jen Kasyama. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast. Heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayaad. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons,

but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Black communities kept Mary Ann Shadcarry's story alive. But it's only in recent decades that her story has become better known. Shadcarry's work as an abolitionist, educator and publisher

helped lay the groundwork for racial integration and women's equality in Canada. Shad Kary's legacy and impact were the focus of this next conversation, featuring Rosemary Sandlier, past president of the Ontario Black History Society, Reynaldo Walcott, professor of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, and moderator Kristen Moriah, assistant professor of African American Literature at Queens University in Kingston.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being here. So because you two have such a deep background in both education and scholarship, we really wanted you to be able to help to shed light on Mary Ann Chedkary's background for so many of the people here who will be listening. And it would be great to just talk about how you yourselves first learned about Mary Ann Shadcarry and her impact. Well, I first came to know about Mary Ann Shadcarry

only because I actually went to church and my church was a black church and we would have conferences that would have us moving around the province. So in the process of leaving Toronto, which is my home, and making my way to a conference, a church conference, we would often find ourselves in Windsor, or in Chatham, or in Buxton.

And in the process, the name Shad would come up frequently all the time. But I don't think that it meant anything to me because there were so many incredibly strong and amazing African Canadian women in our midst, but for me they were all connected to church because we were not included in other aspects of society in Toronto in a regular and routine way. But I think when she became meaningful to me in terms of being a historical figure and having an impact was when I had the opportunity to see some of the materials written by Dr. Daniel G. Hill, who was a founder of the Ontario Black History Society. And his book, Freedom Seekers, was an opportunity to find tidbits of all kinds of amazing things that would really pique your interest.

all kinds of amazing things that would really pique your interest. So when I was later approached to write a book, one of seven, she was going to be included for sure and she was always going to be part of any Black history presentation that I would go on to do later on. This is amazing. I would never imagine something like this happening. So this is amazing. I have to begin there. So how do I come to Shadkari? Well, in a couple of ways. One is that the 1990s in Toronto was a really interesting and magical time.

There was a kind of historical literary music, cultural Renaissance happening. And so Austin Clark came back into publishing. The Natanio DeCora was founded. Rosemary Sadler here and a full Cooper and Adrian Chad there here and a full Cooper and Adrian Chad and Carl and Carl and smart frost and others were doing all of this groundbreaking research and interestingly enough we were all kind of bumping into each other in all kinds of places and people would often whisper to me that Adrian's last name

was an important last name. And so we will be hanging out and people will like whisper this to me. And I had just written this book called Black Like Who. And some people thought that it was too Toronto centric. And, and, and, and, but one of the things that I did in that book was I was searching around for what I called at the time, Grammars for Black in Canada.

And what I wanted to do was to find figures, transitional figures, that deepen Black people's relationship to Canada beyond the post-World War II arrivals. And so I started looking to see what was in the black abolitionist papers and the late Austin Clark said to me about you should just work with Shad. And so I went off and tried to find as much as I could find about Shad. And the thing about what was happening in that Renaissance there was this white PhD student from McMaster Richard Richard Ad Monte, and I don't know where he is now. But he republished Shad's plea with an introduction.

He also republished Thomas Swock's Small Words narrative, Slave Narrative, the only Slave Narrative written and first published in Canada with an introduction. And it was because he did that work that it allowed me to turn to Shad and to think about what Shad might mean for thinking about Black presence in Canada that also had a migratory story to it, but in a way that could be a building block for thinking about the long

presence of Black people in Canada beyond the way in which multicultural discourse positions it as basically 1960s and after No, it's clear for both of you that Chad is such an important figure, right? And thinking through blackness in Canada, these black histories that have been erased from public discourse in a way. I'm wondering if you have any ideas about why we don't know more about Mary Ann Chad Carey, why more people still don't know about her and her important work? The really, really easy answer is because we still just don't know Black history.

That's the real bottom answer there. Let me just add a piece here that is not Mary Ann Shad focused. This is also the 400th year since the birth of the first child who was enslaved, and we have a name for, and who arrived in Canada at eight years of age. We don't talk about that. I just came from Quebec City where we were able to finally, um, my initiative to have him recognized as a person of national historic significance.

It's, um. Olivier Lejeune. Remember that name to an eight year old child. So if we can't talk about the thing, the that we're going to be able to shows up, you know, after the fact, right? And not that's good or bad, but it's after the fact. So this terrible history that we don't talk about, that we don't recognize, we can kind of, you know, just move from when she arrives. And at the time, of course, the issue was about ending slavery, not so much in Canada, but everywhere else. The issue was not about,

it was about a place where we could all live and flourish. And that was a bit problematic because there were two significant viewpoints. One, remain in the United States and build there. And the other, leave the United States. And that's I think the other part that impacts Mary Ann Shad and our knowing her story is the fact that has already been pointed out, she was a woman. And women, even during the time of the Black Power Movement tended to be less spoken about.

Women were mothers, but that wasn't spoken about. But they were activists, they were thinkers, they were visionaries. And she happened to be non-traditional in her approach. So she was not the person that people were going to hold up to be the right person to support necessarily as history documents people going forward. When you read Mary Ann Chad Carey's plea, one of the things is really clear is that she's not a figure who's really interested in being slotted into any particular national space. In the plea, she makes the claim that all of North America is a home to Black people. Certain that neither a home in Africa nor in the Southern States is desirable under present circumstances, inquiry is made respecting Canada. I have endeavoured to furnish information

to a certain extent. I determined to visit Canada, and to there collect such information as most persons desire. If a coloured man understands his business, he receives the public patronage the same as a white man. He is not obliged to work a little better and at a lower rate. There is no degraded class to identify him with. Therefore every man's work stands or falls according to merit, not as is his color. Builders and other tradesmen of different complexions work together on the same building and in the same shop with perfect harmony, and often the proprietor of an establishment is coloured, and the majority or all of the men employed are white. To set forth the advantage of a residence in a country

in which chattel slavery is not tolerated, and prejudice of color has no existence whatever. And so when we recover these figures, I've done it too, I've been susceptible to it. We often recover them as national figures, but really she is a disturber of national boundaries. And when you read the plea and it was said earlier, Mary Ann Chad Carey was a person who disturbed a whole bunch of things. She challenged the male abolitionists, she challenged questions of how we would think about race and she refused race as a racial category.

So she pushed, her philosophical understanding of the world is a challenge to many of the things that we desire to make us feel certain and known. And so there's a wing which that she could easily go missing in that way. But in terms of the Canadian context, like there are only two other women who I think in some in terms of the national imaginary of Canada who can C-Cord and Moody and Susanna Moody and Laura C-Cord and of course in some ways Chad is a contemporary of theirs and her contributions are far more significant and yet they occupy so much space in the national imaginary You know one of my favorite and most funny Shad moments

is reading a review of her first pamphlet, Hints to the Covered People of the North, because it's reviewed in the North Star in Frederick Douglass' newspaper by her mentor, and the review is actually terrible. The reviewer savages her and says, you know, a lot of people are talking about this, and what they're saying is actually, I haven't paid any money for it and if I had known

that it was available for cost I would not in fact have paid any money for it. It was truly rough, right, and so just to imagine that as a young person, right, in your early 20s you're starting a public life as a writer, as a woman in the mid 19th century, actually facing that kind of criticism and that pushback, that early on denial of your talents and your ability to speak in public, to me is just incredible to go from that to here. As we close up, I wonder if you have any of your own personal

favorite shad moments, any of her major accomplishments that you think that people should hold on to or that strike you as being as significant? I think the fact that she was such an independent thinker and really acted on her own conviction and she wasn't swayed by populist opinion at all, I think is incredibly important that that she was committed to hard fact that as much as she was supported initially and worked with Frederick Douglas, the fact that she countered him in as much as in this very city, there was a fundraiser held by white abolitionists in support of Frederick Douglas and his paper and his perspective, which basically encouraged black people to go back to the United States.

And she was having a fundraiser for her initiative and the provincial freemen. And the only people who came out to support her were less well, less people who were poor, the black population. or less well, less people who were poorer, the black population. So she had to wonder, what are you doing Toronto? I came here because you are the abolitionist center and this is why you support me?

And so people may not have appreciated that opportunity for her to call them out. And she also was countering Frederick Douglass, who later went on to be council general for Haiti, has supported every step of his process. History was not going to be kind to a woman who challenged the approved narrative. And that's because history was not going to be kind to a woman who challenged the approved narrative.

But I think it's important for us to always remember that it's important to follow what you believe, no matter what the consequences, because at the end of the day, how do you have integrity? How do you have authenticity in your own beliefs if you don't do that? Yeah, I I want to follow from that to say that chad is An inspiring figure because she could disagree with what being disagreeable And I think that sometimes that's lacking in how we think about formations of black community, that there's a resistance to people

being publicly disagreeing. And so that's one thing that I take from Shad that's really important. I'd be remiss if I don't mention Sylvia Sweeney's film of 1997, which also helped many of us to recover Shad as an important intellectual. And that for me is the thing that's really important about Shad, that when you read the plea for immigration, what you're reading is a philosophy of Black life in North America.

And so Shad for me is this figure that opens both the past of Black life in Canada and the future. She is a foundational building block for thinking about how we can talk about a continuous Black life in Canada. One that's routed through migration, but one that's not only about migration because she understands all of North America as the site of Black Lives. Fantastic. As we close, Rosemary, I wonder if you would like to share something with us from your work? I just wanted to add that somebody reminded me that this, my book, one of my early books

was probably the first African-Can Canadian publication on Mary Ann Shad. And listening to you speak earlier, it was built on some of the research also that Bearden had done, which I couldn't have remembered or couldn't have realized had come from your own discovery. So a combination of that. And one quick piece to write in Canada to do research, I applied to the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council I'm going to talk about the

And I got to go to Howard University, Spring Garden Library with my son, my third child who was still nursing, a stroller and all the diaper bags and everything. So when I got to the library, they didn't want to let me in because I had a baby with me. And it had taken me a year to get my money to go to Washington and I thought Mary Ann Shad had trouble at Howard too

But they let me in and my son thankfully slept through my whole Period of research and hence the book, but thanks. Amazing, thank you. One last thing that I want to say is that you know, when I say this is amazing, I really mean this is, I really mean that, you know, to think like 20 years ago, 20 something years ago when I wrote that essay, I subtitled it, impossibility of Black Canadian studies, as a way of saying that Black Canadian studies was indeed possible. And as we celebrate Chad today, I should note that at Queen's, at Dalhousie, at Guelph, a number of Canadian universities now have

Black studies programs. So Black studies is possible and people like Mary Ann Shadd should be foundational to those programs. Thank you, thank you, wow. It's so invigorating to be here and to be working one of those programs and to be sharing the stage with you two, both icons. So thank you so much for being here today. who on my road as a nine-year-old. A lark in the midst of vultures pouncing and pecking, an interface between vision and repugnance.

Keep your black womaness in the kitchen. Be a lady coming from men and other women too. Mary and Chad Carey, the lark. Me, juxtaposing Mary's trailblazing status to a mood of ambivalence from fellow smokers in a shed in the back parking lot of an apartment building housing the mentally ill. I was listening to Mary Ann Shad's descendants, Adrienne and Marishana, speak of their ancestors' accomplishments

on a smartphone podcast. Neighbors in the shed talked enthusiastically above the podcast, almost as if this podcast was a footnote, optional even. March 24, 1853. The Provincial Freeman newspaper. The inception of a four-year trilogy of underground railroad abundance of vacancies for freedom seekers to fill. Part one of the trilogy, going back. Pshh, at all the people who didn't see her priceless worth. The patterns of thinking insulting her brain girth. She sadly use a male expression. Even my perception of lack of volition agency in my own endeavors derides the clasp connecting her gumption to my

current craziness. Imagine she doing that. Let me do my thing. My thing is singing our struggle through the calamity of this zoo human. Not humane, pressing on all sides, not fiction, but bastardly collisions of consciousness turned cosmic castration without the trans will to do so. Irony didn't hold your opinion, Mrs. Shad,

but your parents' proactive homebuilding did, with clandestine passages feeling like peril. Transporting us to permanent safe zones all the way to Canada, not perfect, but better than the Four Hundredth Fiasco. Your goblin of pristine plains afforditude rang on in the Kensington Park Jazz Festival edition of the Provincial Freeman, which in 2023 yearns for a renewed Senegal, a revolutionized Dakar, darkness to dynamism factor, a bicycle of bubbles in a mist of sang-out scream from a brother bald with remaining remnants of Rastafarianism. My gay days are in my past. Meaning only to be jovial, not literal.

Back to the details of your decisiveness, Marianne. You, the crystal shepherd of the people, be wrapped with buttons. We're finding them anyway. Walks me toward a door of forgetfulness. The crush of bone and brain matter beating at you while you whittled away at your table of gourmet delights. Read nutrition. Canada West was your landing zone

for your phenomenon of desegregated education. The rain. Drawing out the pages of historiography in a footpang of distraction. Your route to what you saw on the other side of the rain cloud was a festival of jerk chicken, chick peas, dates, fry bread, basmati rice, gelato, tea, and families of all sizes and strides, rolling along in resilient carnival rides.

Pshh, veritable sunshine. Now, let's get down into it. Part two, going back further. My mother was attacked by a bigoted woman with words at a phone booth in the 1970s and felt the root of violation by a man in the first few months of coming to Canada from the Caribbean. Her valiance and knighthood is clear because 40 years after that, her husband is attacked

in his taxicab and her 17-year-old son is shot in the head by a peer at a student house. The struggles against cancer, still standing. Is there any more a woman can bear? I am documenting. I am breathing because she can overcome. I am breathing because she can overcome. Mary A. Shad-Carrie, a woman with a message and a multitude of farms of nourishment for the future of all life. She cultivated metaphor, irony, statement, question, analysis, and a man like Mr. Carry, quite contrary like me, worships,

effervescing at her shrine, like a visitor to the sanctuary of magical music and vision, identifying the investments I like, the drum, the banjo, the flute, the beat, afwik, and the breath. Even as I write this, the beat, Afuik, and the breath. Even as I write this, the sound of seven gunshots in my neighborhood rocks among the oaks, the babies, and the bugs. I remember the forces that worked against Mary Ann

were persistent, but she kept the sails up, hoping for the winds of change, a ring of equality, beaded brilliance as Turtle Island has always been, paid details of her algebra for the seeds, nurturing her essence, seeking serenity and resistance, peace, remembering how home can be hostile. So we wander into new domes to make our heaven there. Part three, in the beginning. Harriet and Abraham Shad, Mary Ann's parents, opened their residence as a station

on the Underground Railroad. Here live questions for our nourishment, the components and challenges of this train. Spies, horses, wagons, food reserves, indigenous Turtle Island allies, European Turtle Island allies, Quakers, European Turtle Island allies, Quakers, the American Missionary Association, guns, hiding, acting, costumes, subservience, humility, pride, written codes, verbal codes, combat skills, organization, courage, bravery, secrecy, signals, the moon, rivers, forests, injuries, pragmatism, self-control, craziness, affection, manipulation, beauty, Beauty. Discipline. Meditation. Bugitive hunters.

Risk-taking. Intelligence. Money. Magic. Artistry. Faith. Magic, artistry, fake. recited by Larynx aka Shafik Etienne. Other recitations by Jen Kasyama and Maya Spokin. This episode from Grit to Glory was produced by Nahid Mustafa. Special thanks to Nanaba Duncan, Cardi Chair in Journalism at Carleton University. Audio provided by the City of Toronto. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso.

Technical production, Danielle Duval. The senior producer, Nikola Lukcic. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayed. So For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.