{"id":30833,"date":"2022-02-17T20:12:29","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T01:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30833"},"modified":"2022-02-17T20:15:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T01:15:06","slug":"courage-is-the-ability-to-find-your-voice-and-speak-up-jean-augustine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/courage-is-the-ability-to-find-your-voice-and-speak-up-jean-augustine\/","title":{"rendered":"Courage is the ability to find your voice and speak up: Jean Augustine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jean Augustine knew she had to \u201cgo for the jugular.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, Ms. Augustine wanted to make a difference. She was following in the footsteps of just two others African-Canadians who had served as Federal elected representatives and she knew she had a lot to contend with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First elected in 1993, she found her seat in a Parliament that was engulfed in trade issues, tackling debt and deficit, and finding a balance with the rise of two new political parties in the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a difficult discussion to be had, she said, but in order to spur the discussion, she needed to zero in on her target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was an elementary school principal, starting with the Catholic School Board in Toronto, teaching social studies in Grade 7 and 8, and there was nothing in the textbooks about African Canadians, about Indigenous peoples, or what I considered important information for these students at that specific age group to understand the workings of society,\u201d said Ms. Augustine, who was the keynote speaker at a virtual gala hosted by the Aurora Black Community Association to mark the start of Black History Month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The virtual gala included greetings from Premier Doug Ford, the participation of Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, MP Leah Taylor Roy, MPP Michael Parsa, Mayor Tom Mrakas, along with several members of Council, including Sandra Humfryes, who was among the speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her address, Ms. Augustine, who was the first Black woman to serve as a Federal Minister of the Crown, illustrated how it takes concerted leadership to make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I came to Canada in 1960, we had no Charter of Rights and Freedoms,\u201d she continued. \u201cWe had no Human Rights Commission, so when things happened to you, you had nowhere to go to complain. We had no Landlord-Tenant Act. We had no Police-Community Relations. We had no schoolboards or trustees talking with parents or bringing parents into the system so they could understand what was happening with their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe stepped out in 1971 in Canada as the first country in the world to say we are diverse, we are multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious \u2013 that is a society we are in Canada, but those of us who were participating in all the areas in the society, we did not see ourselves included in so many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics was just one arena African-Canadians didn\u2019t see themselves represented, but that was about to change through \u201cconstant struggle, constant protests, demonstrations, advocacy and activism,\u201d along with Augustine\u2019s efforts from her seat in the House of Commons to have Black History Month recognized in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She initially conceived doing this through a private members bill, but getting a bill such as this on the floor was purely by chance as they were picked through a lottery system \u2013 \u201cI had been buying lottery tickets and I wasn\u2019t winning, so I decided I wasn\u2019t going to do the draw!\u201d \u2013 and ultimately made a motion in the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was told each time I went with what I considered a finished motion, \u2018No, this is debatable. You have to have things in there that are not debatable.\u2019 The motion was a very simple one. The motion went right to the jugular. The motion had nothing in there that anyone could question: \u2018That this House take note of the important contributions of Black Canadians to the settlement, to the growth, to the development of Canada; that Black Canadians are making contributions to Canada; that we are a diverse Black community in Canada; and, therefore, I am asking my colleagues to designate February as Black History Month.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was thinking of the time of those teachers who were afraid to teach anything outside of the module. I was thinking about the opportunities that would be given to us, to have opportunities like we have today, where we can bring all of us together. The leadership, the community, the neighbours, the friends and allies, so that we could talk very openly without any censure about the history of people who have been here since 1603.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took courage, but the motion ultimately passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Ms. Augustine\u2019s perspective, \u201ccourage\u201d is the ability to find your voice, to speak up for others, and the ability to understand what is necessary and what is important. It took courage to push back against the barriers and to speak up, she continued, but she was guided by the philosophy that \u2018Lord, help me to change the things I cannot accept and to find allies who would stand with me to make the change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also lived by the words of her grandmother that \u201ctalk is cheap.\u201d \u201cWe can talk the talk, but it is how we\u2019re able to go from the talk into ensuring that we do what is necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is important for you, as leaders, to engage your community, to draw them in, to look around the boardrooms, to look at opportunities that there are, and ensure that we\u2019re not just talking about diversity, but talking about including those voices because we have all the studies that are done that tell us we make better decisions when there are different voices in the room,\u201d Ms. Augustine told the local leaders sharing her screen. \u201cWe move better as a society and as a community when everyone is engaged. It is important as the community engages itself, as the community does its own mobilizing, as the community begins to develop and form the organizations that your voice is there, you are supporting them and you\u2019re finding opportunities for their voices to get beyond just talking to each other in the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can only be an ally if you understand what allyship is about. You can\u2019t be an ally today and an ally for this issue and then you run and hide\u2026 An ally sees what\u2019s important to make the move forward. But I think you\u2019re all allies now just listening to you today, just seeing the turnout here. Just seeing the enthusiasm. Just the responses\u2026.that here we have a few miles outside of Toronto, a city called Aurora, but working together as allies, working with courage, working with commitment, working with competence, working with the knowledge that we have to build together. As we build together, we\u2019ll have so much to offer not only our community but to offer the entire province and the entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Augustine knew she had to \u201cgo for the jugular.\u201d As the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, Ms. Augustine wanted to make a difference. She was following in the footsteps of just two others African-Canadians who had served as Federal elected representatives and she knew she had a lot to contend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-17-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-81j","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-18 06:52:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}