Seeing Confederate flags sold and displayed around Stratford, Ont., had left Edward Smith feeling disappointed and disturbed.
The 37-year old, originally from Ohio, moved to Stratford to work as an actor; he.has lived in the Ontario city that’s known for its arts and culture scene for 10 years.
According to the 2016 census, Stratford has a population of around 31,00 people. Fewer than 350 identified as Black.
Last week, Smith was out walking his dog and saw a Confederate flag hanging in the window of an apartment in his building. He snapped a photo and posted it in the community association group with the question: ‘Can we do better?”
“And then the vitriol came,” he said. Blatantly racist memes were sent his way, which depicted lynching, blackface and language that praised white supremacy.
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While many supported him, Stratford also needs to face the hateful environment that has been created, he said.
“The community needs to take responsibility for the fact that racism feels welcomed and at home in its midst,” he said. “We need to realize our own culpability in allowing people to hold these views unchallenged.”
Being Black in a small town or city in Canada can hold a different set of challenges when it comes to one’s sense of belonging, multiple residents told Global News. Some may experience both overt and subtle forms of racism, while others find themselves teaching their non-Black neighbours how to be allies.
In recent months, protests have been happening across the world stemming from the deaths of multiple Black people at the hands of police, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. People have also continued to call for an end to anti-Black racism across the country.
“It’s not necessarily just geographic,” she said. “That isolation is defined by feelings of hopelessness. There may be triggers around previous experiences of isolation, perhaps instances of microaggressions or macroaggressions and invalidation may arise.”
Watson says Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BlPOC) can feel further isolation if they don’t have an understanding, accepting or supportive community of allies around them.
“That’s going to create some mental health issues where you might see someone in persistent anxiety and stress or hyper-vigilance of their surroundings.”
She says many have long believed that racism may not exist in a country like Canada or that we’re just too “nice,” especially in small-town living, but experiences involving overt and subtle racism still exist.
“There’s a lot of benevolent racism that happens in small communities.”
“There’s a lot of well-meaning individuals who have pure intentions, but it’s deeply rooted in a history of believing in and considering people of colour and Black individuals in Canada as less-than.”
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‘Pain’ from daily microaggressions, racist comments
After feeling isolated and dealing with racist comments living in the small town of Pembroke, Ont., Burgundy Morgan, 23, knew she had to leave.
In high school, she remembers teachers would hammer her with questions, asking where she was “really from.” Some white classmates called her “the whitest Black girl” because of how she spoke, she said.
“I just kind of went along with it … because I wanted to make friends. I did feel pain from things like that,” she said.
Burgundy Morgan left the small town she grew up in due to racism.
Photo provided by Burgundy Morgan
Pembroke has a population of around 15,000 people and only 75 are Black, according to 2016 census data. For Morgan, the worst experience was how some people treated her natural hair.
“People were always coming up to me, touching my hair, playing with my hair, always asking me questions.”
She eventually moved to Ottawa to go to college and doesn’t plan on going back to Pembroke.
She remembers white classmates saying the N-word around her, not knowing the history of that word.
“There’s a lot of things that weren’t taught about racism in schools (and) it’s not enough to be ‘not racist.’ You have to be anti-racist and continuously be educating and taking accountability for your actions.”
The importance of building a community
Tristan Barrocks, 36, has been living in Shelburne, Ont., for five years with his wife and children. The town had about 8,100 people, according to the 2016 census, about 750 of whom were Black.
Barrocks, a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, says he has seen how diverse his town has become in just the last few years. In fact, when he first moved from Brampton, Ont., to Shelburne, a few other Black families also moved with him.
“It was definitely a dramatic difference in the sense of the pace of life and also the quality of life,” he said.
Now, Barrocks has invested his time in building a more inclusive community for his children. He joined a local parent council to include more Black-focused events and programming within the school system and hopes to bring more extra-curricular activities to students of all backgrounds.
Tristan Barrocks pictured with his family.
Photo provided by Tristan Barrocks
In his eyes, this is a way to expand his community and make it more diverse.
“There is the old-school string of thought where Shelburne is small-town … and we need to keep that vintage style,” he said. “Some of these people have never left Shelburne or been around Black or brown people or Asian people.”
He says that while he has not experienced racism in his town himself, he often deals with racial bias or stereotypes about being Black. But he also has a lot of respect for his local leaders and neighbours — Barrocks says hundreds of people showed up to a Black Lives Matter protest recently.
“There are things happening (here). There is progress being made,” he said.
Barrocks says he spent months soul-searching his decision when he first moved and realized he also had assumptions about small-town living.
Tristan Barrocks moved to a small town with his family and is invested in the community.
Photo provided by Tristan Barrocks
“We made assumptions people weren’t friendly or people were looking at us a different way … We took the initiative upon ourselves to engage in dialogue.”
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The cost of living in a city
Alyssa, a 44-year old woman who has lived in Paris, Ont., for most of her life, says that while living in the town of around 12,000 people is usually quiet, she has faced microaggressions.
Global News has changed Alyssa’s name to protect her identity.
As a school teacher, students have made fun of her lips and the colour of her skin, she said.
“I didn’t say anything about it because I was a little bit in shock and numb,” she told Global News.
Alyssa says she would feel more comfortable living in a larger city, as the environment would be more diverse.
“I just physically feel more comfortable there,” she said.
But the cost of living in a major urban centre like Toronto or Montreal is a deterrent that has kept her in Paris.
Racism is a burden for Black people everywhere, but within a city, it may be “easier to bear,” she said. Finding other Black people to discuss what she is going through is close to impossible in Paris, as seeing another Black person is a “rarity,” she said.
Watson understands how important it is to be around communities that look like you and support you, but she also understands how hard it can be.
She recommends reaching out to support groups digitally or trying to build relationships with others in your city or town.
Small-town living may not be for everyone either, she stresses, and if you are planning to make the move, do some reflection first. She says it’s not a Black person’s job to “fix” diversity problems in small towns either.
“Everybody has a different tolerance and understanding of what it means to feel connected to others.”
More information about anti-Black racism in Canada: Racial profiling and racial discrimination against Black people is a systemic problem in Canada, according to numerous reports and experts.
Black Canadians account for 3.5 per cent of the country’s total population, according to the latest government statistics, but are over-represented in federal prisons by more than 300 per cent, as found by the John Howard Society.
A Black person is nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by Toronto police, a 2018 report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission found, and Black Canadians are more likely to experience inappropriate or unjustified searches during encounters and unnecessary charges or arrests.
They’re also more likely to be held overnight by police than white people, according to the John Howard Society.
Black Canadians experience disparities in health outcomes compared to the population at large, according to research from the Black Health Alliance. The Black Experiences in Health Care Symposium Report notes that they often face barriers and discrimination within health-care systems. Black people report higher rates of diabetes and hypertension compared to white people, which researchers published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health say may stem from experiences of racism in everyday life.
Wednesday is Transgender Day of Remembrance, which focuses on trans people who have lost their lives because of violence. Here is what to know.
What is Transgender Day of Remembrance?
Transgender Day of Remembrance is marked every Nov. 20 and began in 1999 to honor Rita Hester, a trans woman who was killed in Massachusetts.
The day marks the end of Transgender Awareness Week, which is used to raise public knowledge about transgender people and the issues they face.
The Williams Institute at UCLA Law estimates that 1.6 million people in the U.S. ages 13 and older identify as transgender. And it says transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violence, including rape and assault.
Candlelight vigils, memorials and other events are held to mark the day. The Human Rights Campaign also released its annual report on deaths of transgender people in conjunction with the day.
How many transgender people have lost their lives to violence?
At least 36 transgender people have died from violence in the 12 months since the last Day of Remembrance, the Human Rights Campaign said in its annual report. Since 2013, the organization has recorded the deaths from violence of 372 victims who were transgender and gender-expansive — which refers to someone with a more flexible range of gender identity or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system.
The number of victims is likely higher because many deaths often aren’t reported or are misreported, or misgendering of the victims leads to delays in their identification.
The Human Rights Campaign said there was a slight increase from the previous year, when it identified at least 33 transgender victims of violence.
A large number of the victims tracked over the past year were young or people of color, with Black transgender women making up half of the 36 identified. The youngest victim identified was 14-year-old Pauly Likens of Pennsylvania.
Two-thirds of the fatalities involved a firearm, the organization said. Nearly a third of the victims with a known killer were killed by an intimate partner, a friend or a family member.
What is at stake politically?
This year’s remembrance follows an election where advocates say victories by President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates who focused on issues like transgender athletes dealt a setback to trans people’s rights.
It also follows a wave of measures enacted in Republican states this year restricting the rights of transgender people, especially youth.
Half the states have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments next month in a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s ban.
Advocates say the legislation and rhetoric is creating fewer safe spaces for transgender people, and they worry it could spur more violence against trans people.
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Associated Press writer Jeff McMillan in northeastern Pennsylvania contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) — In 2022, New York City’s jails commissioner, Louis Molina, issued a dire warning to local lawmakers: fentanyl was pouring into Rikers Island through the mail, he said, spurring an overdose crisis among the jail’s detainees and putting guards at risk.
As evidence of the insidious threat, Molina passed around a child’s drawing of a reindeer, one of hundreds of seized items he said had been “literally soaked in the drug and mailed to people in custody.”
But that claim was based on faulty drug-testing kits with a stunning 85% false positive rate, according to a report released Wednesday by the city’s Department of Investigation. The report found the city vastly overstated the prevalence of fentanyl sent by mail to detainees.
When investigators retested 71 pieces of mail initially flagged by field tests as containing fentanyl, only 10 actually showed traces of the drug. The drawing of a reindeer highlighted by Molina was fentanyl-free.
Field tests indicating an influx of fentanyl-laced mail to Rikers Island fueled a yearslong campaign by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to bar people in city custody from receiving physical mail.
As a replacement, city officials proposed redirecting mail to an offsite vendor, who would then upload it digitally for the incarcerated person to read on a tablet — a practice used in other correctional systems, including New York’s state prisons. So far, the proposal has been blocked by a jail oversight board.
Jocelyn Strauber, the commissioner of the Department of Investigation, said the city should reassess its ongoing effort to bar detainees from receiving mail, given the report’s findings.
“The field tests don’t support a concern that a high rate of fentanyl-laced objects are coming in from the mail,” she told The Associated Press. “To the extent policy determinations are based on flawed data, they ought to be reconsidered.”
Detainee advocates have long contended that drugs primarily enter the jail system via employees, who can easily smuggle them inside and sell them to gang leaders. In recent years, dozens of correction officers have been charged in multiple investigations of smuggling rings on Rikers Island.
In its report, the Department of Investigation said corrections officials had failed to implement many of the department’s previous recommendations aimed at screening staff for contraband.
In an email statement, a Department of Correction spokesperson said the agency would review the report and continue refining its testing processes. “Field tests are a tool used to quickly assess potential threats, and while not perfect, they play an important role in our safety protocols,” the statement said.
Such field tests have gained popularity in recent years alongside a spike in opioid overdose deaths nationwide, allowing law enforcement officials to bypass the lengthy lab process to determine if a substance contains narcotics.
But experts have long raised questions about the strips’ effectiveness. Under federal regulations, manufacturers are required to include language on their packaging indicating that results are preliminary until confirmed by a lab — something that rarely happens in correctional settings.
Last November, New York’s state prison system was found to have wrongly punished more than 2,000 detainees due to false positives from drug tests manufactured by Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories.
For years, the test strips used on Rikers Island, the city-run jail system, were also provided by Sirchie. But after complaints about the reliability of the tests, the Department of Correction switched to kits made by DetectaChem last April.
The review by the Department of Investigation found DetectaChem’s test strips had a false positive rate of 79%, while Sirchie’s were wrong 91% of the time.
Inquiries to Sirchie were not returned.
Travis Kisner, the chief operating officer of DetectaChem, said the company was still reviewing the report, but added: “We stand behind our product.”
A former police officer involved in the violent arrest of an Ottawa man who later died in hospital told a coroner’s inquest that he was traumatized by the incident and worried about his own safety at the time.
The inquest into the July 2016 death of 38-year-old Abdirahman Abdi began earlier this week, with witnesses testifying Wednesday.
Abdi died after police responded to a 911 call reporting that a man was groping women outside a coffee shop in Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood. The inquest has heard that Abdi appeared to be in a mental health crisis at the time.
Former Const. David Weir, who was the first responding officer, testified Wednesday that Abdi’s death was a “critical stress incident.”
“It still affects me to this day. It’s the reason why I’m not working,” he said.
Weir, who was a member of the Ottawa Police Service from 2002 until earlier this year, said police were short staffed that day and he volunteered to take the call about Abdi.
Weir said the report he received through police dispatch did not match the scene he arrived at that day.
“This guy’s behaviour is so erratic,” he said, adding that his thinking at the time was: “I’m going to end this because it’s out of control. It’s just me and this large man.”
Weir described chasing Abdi and repeatedly striking him with a baton in an attempt to get him to stop running.
“It was like I hit him with a fly swatter,” Weir said.
The inquest was shown security camera footage of Abdi’s arrest, with presiding coroner Dr. David Eden thanking the jury for watching what he called a “harrowing” video showing Weir and Const. Daniel Montsion hit and tackle Abdi to the ground. Montsion was charged in the case with manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon and was found not guilty in 2020.
“This call has been traumatic for me and still is to this day,” an emotional Weir said. “There are things about it I don’t remember, it’s not because I don’t want to.”
Due to a lack of supervisors on duty, Weir said he was forced to stay at the crime scene instead of being driven to a police station to write his report as was standard procedure.
“We have people trying to crash into the crime scene from behind us … there are people on the street who are yelling,” he said, adding that he heard someone accuse him of crushing Abdi’s head.
Weir said he was worried for his safety in the minutes following the arrest.
“Honest to God, I thought I was going to get a brick to the head,” he said.
The jurors heard Monday that Abdi was born in Somalia and went to a refugee camp in Kenya with his family before moving to Canada in 2009.
Through an agreed statement of facts, the inquest heard that Abdi appeared to be in a mental health crisis when he interacted with patrons at a coffee shop on the day of his arrest, with multiple women saying he grabbed their breasts without consent.
The inquest, set to last four weeks, is mandated by law because Abdi was injured while in police custody. The jury is not tasked with determining legal responsibility but it can make recommendations to avoid similar deaths in the future.
A lawsuit Abdi’s family filed against the Ottawa Police Service was settled out of court in 2021.
The details of the settlement are confidential, with both sides agreeing in a statement at the time that “significant improvements” need to be made to how police respond to people experiencing mental health issues.
Abdi’s family said in a statement earlier this week that his death could have been prevented and that they hope the inquest will spur changes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 20, 2024.
