On May 4, 1992, a peaceful protest outside the US consulate in Toronto turned into a march up Yonge Street. Days earlier, police officers in Los Angeles had been acquitted in the beating of Rodney King, and on May 2 a police officer in Toronto had shot and killed Raymond Lawrence, a young Black man. That night, windows were smashed and stores looted along Yonge Street, and many people were arrested. Ontario Premier Bob Rae asked former diplomat Stephen Lewis to investigate. His report, delivered on June 9, 1992, concluded that the King verdict and the Lawrence shooting were only catalysts: the fundamental problem was anti-Black racism in policing, jobs, housing and a school system centred on European history and culture. More than three decades later, many of the issues Lewis named are still debated. This lesson looks at how Black communities have resisted systemic racism since 1982 and how their history has gained public recognition.
Black people have lived in what is now Canada since the 1600s, including people enslaved in New France and British North America, Black Loyalists, refugees who came by the Underground Railroad, and Black Nova Scotians whose communities, such as Africville, date back centuries (see Unit 4 for Viola Desmond, Africville and the porters' unions). After immigration rules changed in the 1960s, many more people came from the Caribbean and later from Africa. In the 2021 census, about 1.5 million people in Canada, roughly 4 per cent of the population, identified as Black, with roots in dozens of countries and in long-established Canadian communities.
Systemic issues since 1982
| Area | What the evidence showed | Responses |
|---|---|---|
| Policing and carding | "Carding" or street checks meant police stopping people who were not suspected of a specific crime and recording their personal information. Investigations in Toronto found Black people were stopped and documented far more often than their share of the population; a 2019 report in Halifax found Black residents were five to six times more likely to appear in street-check records than their share of the population would predict | Ontario restricted arbitrary street checks from January 1, 2017; a 2018 provincial review found little evidence carding was effective; Nova Scotia banned street checks in 2019 |
| Use of force | Reports by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2020) and Toronto Police Service race-based data (2022) found Black people were over-represented in police use of force and strip searches | In June 2022, Toronto's police chief apologized to Black communities after the data was released |
| Education | Black students in Ontario were more likely to be placed in applied or lower-level courses (streaming) and to be suspended | Toronto opened an Africentric Alternative School in 2009; Ontario ended streaming in Grade 9 starting in 2021–2022 |
| Justice | Black people were over-represented in federal prisons compared with their share of the population | Federal and provincial reviews; courts began considering reports on the impact of systemic racism when sentencing Black offenders |
| Employment | In 2020, Black federal public servants launched a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging decades of discrimination in hiring and promotion | Ottawa announced mental health funding and changes to employment equity; in 2025 the Federal Court declined to certify the class action, and the plaintiffs' appeal was scheduled to be heard by the Federal Court of Appeal on October 20, 2026 |
Activism: from the Black Action Defence Committee to Black Lives Matter
Black Canadians organized to demand change. The Black Action Defence Committee, founded in Toronto in 1988 by Dudley Laws and others after police shootings of Black men, pushed for independent investigations of police; Ontario created its Special Investigations Unit in 1990. Black Lives Matter–Toronto, formed in 2014, held a two-week protest camp outside Toronto police headquarters in 2016. After George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, tens of thousands of people joined anti-racism marches in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Vancouver and many smaller communities in June 2020. Debates followed about police budgets, mental health crisis teams, race-based data and the removal of school resource officers. Ontario's Anti-Racism Act (2017) had already required some public bodies to collect race-based data so that patterns could be measured.
Recognition, heritage and identity
- Black History Month: in December 1995 the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion by Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to Parliament, recognizing February as Black History Month; the Senate adopted a similar motion by Senator Donald Oliver in 2008.
- Viola Desmond: Nova Scotia granted her a posthumous free pardon in 2010, and on November 19, 2018, a ten-dollar note with her portrait entered circulation, making her the first Canadian woman to appear alone on a regularly circulating Bank of Canada note.
- Apologies: Halifax apologized for the destruction of Africville in 2010, and the federal government apologized in 2022 to the descendants of the No. 2 Construction Battalion, a segregated Black unit of the First World War.
- Emancipation Day: on March 24, 2021, the House of Commons voted to recognize August 1 as Emancipation Day, marking the day in 1834 when the Slavery Abolition Act took effect across most of the British Empire, including the colonies that later became Canada.
- International recognition: in 2018 Canada officially recognized the UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–2024).