By ARNOLD A. AUGUSTE, Publisher/Senior Editor
Black History is Canadian history.
Although the month of February has been set aside to focus attention on the history of Black people in this country, a history that has spanned hundreds of years, our history is being made every day.
There is no aspect of life in this country that doesn’t affect us or that we have not had a role in helping to shape. Black History Month is designed to remind us of this and to remind us that this is our country as much as it is anyone else’s.
So, Happy Black History Month.
Although we have had a presence in this country since the 1600s, our community grew exponentially in the 50s and 60s as the federal government began to relax its restrictions around the immigration of Black people, especially from the Caribbean. (In barring us initially, they claimed, among other things, that the climate would be too cold for us.)
As the community grew, many of us found ourselves having to deal with discriminatory behaviour and in some cases downright racism – in housing, in the education system, during interactions with the police, with the immigration department, in employment, even in stores as we tried to do our shopping.
Many in our community would have none of it so they stepped forward to fight back, to demonstrate, to protest, to raise their voices and let those with the power to change things know that things needed to change.
A lot of the benefits and freedoms we enjoy today have been hard-won on the backs of these people.
For the past 45 years Share has been privileged to be able to document our presence in this society, recording our history, if you will. We were proud to celebrate in print the achievements of our people, whatever they were.
We covered several ‘firsts’ as proof of our progress whether it was among the police, in the media, in the education system or in the myriad other aspects of life in this city.
One of the ‘firsts’ I recall clearly was when we heard that there was a Black woman hired as a streetcar driver. Not a big deal now, right? But it was back then.
This month, we are able to report that this woman, Irma James, is one of two former TTC employees being featured for Black History Month.
Promoting and celebrating our community was always the reason for Share’s existence. We never claimed to be an objective newspaper. Share was launched to balance the negative coverage of our community that was commonplace in the mainstream media. We endeavoured to present the other side of the news – the good news, the positive news, the news of accomplishment, of the achievement of our children, of the progress we were making that the mainstream media did not seem to be interested in.
Our ground rules were simple. We would only report positive news; we won’t apply for or accept government or any other type of funding and the paper would be free to make it accessible to as many people as possible. We also would not accept ads that we felt were not in the best interest of our community. As such, we never accepted spiritual or palm reader ads, for example.
It looks as though that worked for us, doesn’t it? You, our readers, advertisers and the stores which generously carried Share at no cost to us, have supported us and kept us going for 45 years.
Last July, I decided that I needed to take a break and would take the month of August off. I have been a reporter in the community for 51 years and publisher of Share for the past 45 years. I always only wanted to be a journalist in the community. I never had a desire to work in mainstream or other media. I also never wanted to be a publisher. But, after studying journalism at Ryerson and finding myself out of a job, I didn’t see another option.
Just days after the last issue of Share on July 27, I got a call from my nephew in Florida that my brother, one year younger than me, had died suddenly of a massive heart attack. That blew me away and reminded me of my own mortality.
August came and went; then September, October, November…and I didn’t care about going back to work. I thought I was done.
But your calls started coming in. You wanted to know why there were no Share in the stores; when would we start publishing Share again; some were complaining that we didn’t upload the latest issue to our website. Calls were even coming in from some of the stores and other outlets which graciously allowed us to make Share available to you over the years. They said that they were being asked by their customers about Share and they didn’t know what to tell them.
But what was most impactful were the calls from those of you who wanted to send us money or who were offering to pay for the paper, believing that the reason we were not publishing might have been because of a lack of funds.
I was just tired.
But, as Michael Corleone said in Godfather Part 3, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Please enjoy this special Black History Month issue. Where we go from here is still to be determined. But we will always be proud and grateful for the privilege of being part of this amazing community for so many years.
Now, maybe it’s just time to say goodbye.
