A volunteer-led celebration of Black History Month invited visitors at the Gibsons Public Market on Feb. 19 to partake in a consciousness-raising feast, following an earlier proclamation by the Town of Gibsons that declared the month of February “an opportunity to learn about and be inspired by the history, pride and strength of African Canadians.”
Sunshine Coast residents Valerie Mason-John and Iyabo Olaniyan, two members of the Coast’s informal Black History Month coordinating alliance, appeared before the Gibsons municipal council on Feb. 15. During their short presentation, they outlined a rich history of local leadership by people of colour.
Wearing a green-ruffed ribbon he received two years prior during the annual commemoration of Black heritage, Mayor Bill Beamish signed the town’s proclamation into effect.
Because of pandemic-related limitations, Mason-John and Olaniyan had anticipated that 2022 would be a hiatus year—only to be surprised by popular demand.
“We weren’t going to do anything,” said Mason-John. “We didn’t really want to go big this time. But it’s amazing how many people reached out to us and said, ‘What’s happening for Black History Month?’”
“So we thought, this is what we can offer: we can offer food. We’ll make food and feed the community.”
Two dozen people were on-hand for the noontime Saturday opening of the Royal Banqueting Kitchen, which served up traditional Nigerian dishes—including Jollof rice, Plantain, Akara, Egusi, Moin Moin, and Olaniyan’s signature “African donuts”—to crowds throughout the afternoon.
Mason-John, who is the author of eight books including Afrikan Wisdom and I Am Still Your Negro, ladled food at the buffet before signing copies of their works.
Artist Denise Brown, whose exhibit The Fabric of Freedom: Quilts and the Underground Railroad was featured at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery in 2021, also participated in the event.
Olaniyan emphasized that despite the celebration’s jubilant overtones, Black communities still face marginalization and systemic violence.
“Even when the government of the land is saying there is no racism, there is still some minority of citizens who put on an attitude of resentment, racism and prejudice,” she said. “So we just want people to come closer to us, come into proximity.”
“Our Black communities in the [African] diaspora are in crisis. One of the biggest killers of young Black people in the U.S. is Black people under the age of 21. And this is the same in Canada. We should be getting curious: why is this happening? We’ve been pitted against each other and literally traumatized.”
In a 2019 survey by the Vancouver Foundation and the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation, almost one in 10 Sunshine Coast residents said that they experience frequent or occasional discrimination based on their culture, age, gender, or appearance.
Mason-John believes that the trauma of discrimination can impair children’s ability to embrace their identity. “On the Sunshine Coast, a lot of our Black children will have internalized racism,” they said. “They will not be confident about being Black and will want to assimilate into white culture. There is explicit racism and there is implicit racism.”
Black History Month has been observed nationwide since its official inception through an act of Parliament in 1996. Senate approval took 12 more years, finally coming as a result of a motion by Donald Oliver, the first Black man appointed to the Canadian Senate.
