Category: Black Education

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The Struggle for Education in the Queen’s Bush Settlement

Rooda Lee, Scott Parker, Elizabeth Broderick

The formation of the Queen’s Bush settlement is a hidden story in Canadian history; however, detailed accounts of the Black settlement in Wellington County have been told by local historians, Jerry Prager and Linda Brown-Kubisch, in recent years. First, historians believe the settlement formed some time in the early 19th century, around the year 1820 (Ontario Heritage Trust). The settlement itself encompassed a 12 by 8 mile section of land located between the Waterloo County and Lake Huron area, more specifically, in the area which would become Woolwich in later years (Thorning). It was largely composed by fugitive slaves and free Blacks who fled the United States. Census data suggests that at its height roughly 1,500 Black pioneers settled in Queen’s Bush. In The Queen’s Bush Settlement, Brown-Kubisch argues that these “Black pioneers” had little to no expertise in surviving in such a forbidding climate and landscape; however, they were able to create a thriving, independent and self-reliant community (32).  The Queen’s Bush settlement was not a rare occurrence either; black settlements such as the Oro settlement, Owen Sound, and Collingwood also provided a space for Black Canadians, former slaves and free Blacks, to make homes and build communities in Ontario (Rickards 17).

This image shows a family outside of their home within the Queen’s Bush Settlement. The photo was taken around 1920. Source: Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge

John Little experienced the many hardships of slavery before successfully escaping to Canada. Little was subject to the harsh violence of slavery: he was sold and separated from his wife and regularly beaten and tortured by his owner after he tried to escape. After escaping and reuniting with his wife, the Littles runaway to Ohio to seek freedom and from there they made their way to Queen’s Bush. Due to white owners fear that Black literacy would threaten the slave system, laws were passed forbidding slaves to learn to read or write. John Little states, “I was never sent to school a day in my life, and never knew a letter until quite late in life” (198). Little’s lack of education exemplifies the constraining of Black education as a method to suppress Black agency and rebellion. He says, “but being a slave, I did not know my age; I did not know anything” (199). Education was essential to how the Littles imagined a future of freedom and independence for their children in Queen’s Bush: in Mrs. Little’s testimony, she states, “one little girl is all that is spared to me… I intend to have well educated, if the Lord lets us” (233). The Littles’ slave testimonies reveal the efforts of former slaves to obtain education, which they viewed as an essential means of achieving racial equality and equal access in Canada.

The Littles understood that the education of African Canadian children was central to the social development of Blacks in Canada. However, Black settlers in early Canada faced a number of obstacles limiting and denying black students access to state-run schools. As Awad Ibrahim and Ali A. Abdi write, “In the country’s early days, many Canadian towns and villages did not have public school, and….towns that did have schools often refused to let black children attend. This was the case especially in Nova Scotia and Ontario, which passed laws to keep black children in separate schools” (4). Wanting to educate their children, Black parents across Upper and Lower Canada fought to create their own schools and train their own teacher. They opposed the “under-funded, poorly equipped, inadequately staffed and segregated schools” that were available to Black children, “demanding that their children receive educational opportunities equal to everyone else’s, and that they be allow to send their children wherever the saw fit” (4).

Black pioneers in the Queen’s Bush held a deep commitment to education. American missionaries travelled to the settlement to provide educational and vocational training that could help Black pioneers to live independent and self-reliant lives. In her discussion of education and the Queen’s Bush Settlement, Linda Brown-Kubish concludes that while Black leaders “urged them to obtain an education and to be industrious and thrifty, in order to prove to whites that Blacks were their equals….Blacks quickly realized that this alone did not guarantee assimilation into white society; nor did it eradicate discrimination and resentment” (23). Educational discrimination guaranteed white supremacy and subordination of Blacks in Canada in the present and persists into the present.

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Marisse Scott: A Game Changer in Nursing

By Drew Gover, Noelle Wakeman, and Amia Khosla

During the 1940s, the culture of “[n]ursing in Canada … represented the Victorian ideal of white femininity and respectability. The profession [therefore] was exclusively reserved for middle-class white women” (Reynolds 165). In Ontario and Nova Scotia, Civil Rights activists fought hard to remove barriers of discrimination restricting education and employment opportunities for Blacks. In 1947, Black activists, such as Pearleen Oliver, crusaded successfully for admission of Black women to nursing schools in Canada. Guelph’s St. Joseph’s Hospital played a pivotal role in ending systemic racism in the nursing profession by admitting Marisse Scott to its nursing school. However, Scott’s journey to becoming one of Canada’s first Black nurses was not an easy one: she experienced multiple incidents of racism and her successes were invalidated time and time again. Despite these injustices, Marisse Scott’s success at St. Joseph Hospital disrupted the exclusionary ideal of the nurse as a middle-class white woman. 

This image shows the Globe and Mail's article on Marisse Scott with a picture of her smiling on the right and tells her story on the left. This image is from 1947 and was found in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
This image shows the Globe and Mail’s article on Marisse Scott with a picture of her smiling on the right and tells her story on the left. This image is from 1947 and was found in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

After graduating from High School with Honours, Marisse Scott applied to nursing school in her hometown, Owen Sound.  Scott was told by Owen Sound General & Marine Nursing School that while she was an “excellent” student, who was well loved and garnered much academic distinction, the sight of a Black nurse at the bedside would “kill the patients” and that “there would be no employment for her after graduation, so it would be a waste of resources to admit her” (Owen Sound Times). Scott’s unfair treatment based on race challenged white Canadians’ perceptions of themselves as a “racism-free society.” Scott’s “story of injustice spread to friends, church members, government authorities in Toronto and Ottawa, and most importantly, to the press” (McLean-Wilson). As reports on Scott’s denial of admission to nursing school appeared in the press, public sentiment against racial discrimination and sympathy for Scott’s plight grew. The pastor of the Church of Our Lady in Guelph, J. A. O’Reilly, reviewed Scott’s case and convinced St. Joseph’s Hospital to accept her as a student. In August 1947, Scott moved to Guelph and began her studies at St. Joseph’s Hospital (McLean-Wilson).  

This image shows four of the women who graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital's nursing school in 1950, presenting Marisse Scott at the far left and three other women beside her with flowers along the bottom of the photo. This image is from 1950 and was found in The Grey Roots Archival Collection.
This image shows four of the women who graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital’s nursing school in 1950, presenting Marisse Scott at the far left and three other women beside her with flowers along the bottom of the photo. This image is from 1950 and was found in The Grey Roots Archival Collection.

During her three years of training at St. Joseph Hospital, Scott was one of the most “popular” and academically successful students. Her instructors termed her “one of the most willing and able student nurses in the history of the institution” (qtd. in McLean-Wilson). In 1950, Scott graduated with an Honours Distinction. In the above image of the graduation at St. Joseph Hospital, Scott is prominently positioned at the very front of her class. By foregrounding her accomplishment as well as her acceptance by her peers, the image depicts the successful integration of the nursing profession.  Scott had a long career of nursing in Guelph; later, Scott and her husband moved to St. Lucia, where she worked at the Ministry of Health as a Nutrition Specialist. 

Scott showed many young Black girls that they too could pursue their dreams. “By 1949, Owen Sound was among the growing number of communities whose hospitals had abolished prejudice from their enrolment system,” writes McLean-Wilson. Scott’s experience of racial discrimination was raised in the House of Commons. MP Alistair Stewart raised awareness of Scott’s story, but dismissed her personal accomplishment, saying “all credit to the authorities. She turned out to be a most excellent nurse.” Stewart switched the narrative from the struggle of a young Black woman and her fight against racial barriers to gain equal access to the nursing profession to a story of a “fair” educational and employment system that worked hard to turn Scott into an “excellent nurse.” Stewart’s erasure of the systemic racism that led to Scott’s case re-focuses the government’s attention not on the obstacles to black access to education and employment opportunities but on the good white “authorities” that make Black education and employment possible.

Yet, it was the courage, resilience, determination, and strength of Black women, like Marisse Scott and Pearleen Oliver, who drew Canadians’ attention to racial discrimination and fought hard to break the colour barrier in Canada. Marisse Scott’s legacy outlives her nursing career and continues to inspire and influence others in the present-day. For example, the article “Jamaicans helped make Canada’s health care system more inclusive” highlights how current nurses “pa[y] tribute to nursing pioneers Mary Seacole and Marisse Scott,” and websites, such as the emancipation festival, an Owen Sound based-initiative, continue to shed light on how Scott changed our view of what being a Canadian is. Her story being shared helps us remap the “white space(s) of Canada” into one women and men of all colours have every opportunity to succeed.

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How Guelph Aided in Opening the Doors For Young Black Women

By Tia Muma and Soraya Thorne-Smith

During the 1940s, Marisse Scott fought against de facto segregation and racial prejudice in Ontario’s education system and paved the way for future Black nursing students. Across Canada, Black Canadians encountered various forms of segregation in public services (schools, hospitals, orphanages, cemeteries) that affected their everyday lives; additionally, rampant anti-Black sentiment depicted black people as ignorant, backwards, criminal, and immoral. Despite these practices and beliefs that relegated Blacks in Canada to the status of second-class citizens, Marisse Scott became one of the first Black woman to graduate from a nursing school in Ontario. Scott had to go through a lot on her journey to graduate, starting with facing rejection and segregation in her hometown. However, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Guelph, she was able to complete her schooling and continue her work in healthcare.

Graduation Picture of Marisse Scott: Facebook image

In her hometown of Owen Sound, Scott applied to nursing school, but was quickly rejected. Scott had graduated from Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute with Honours in 1946, and, as the superintendent of St. Joseph’s Hospital said her “qualifications are high.” So why was she denied? Reasons for an applicant to be denied ranged from bad grades to under qualification and paperwork. The simple answer Scott received was because she was “colored,” and they “don’t accept colored girls.” According to newspapers at the time, she was also denied admission to the nursing school because the hospital “feared that patients would be traumatized by a black nurse at their bedside.” Even though, at St. Joseph’s Hospital, there was a patient that was eager to have her as a nurse: “I hope I’m the first person to whom she brings a breakfast tray” (Toronto Daily Star 1947).

In 1881, St Joseph’s Hospital started off as three nuns that dedicated themselves to taking care of the sick, injured, and homeless. Their area of care was originally called the Gate House because of its nearness to a big gate. A new building was constructed in 1862, in fact the pit of the elevator shaft is a part of the basement of the old building. The building staff grew in numbers as the patients did, and eventually the building became what it is today. In 1947 when Scott trained in the hospital, she would have lived in the hospital itself until a year before her graduation when a separate residence was built. At the time that Scott was training at the hospital a private room cost $5, much different from today.

Image of St. Joseph’s Hospital in the 1940s.

Eventually, after some publicity from surrounding newspapers in Ontario and other areas in Canada, Scott sent in an application to St. Joseph’s Hospital at the suggestion of a priest at her local church in Owen Sound (Toronto Daily Star 1947). She was accepted into the Hospital Nursing School and graduated in 1950, becoming one of the first Black women to graduate from a nursing school in Ontario. Her graduation and the publicity that her case gained also disturbed the notion that Canada was a “racism-free space.”

Graduating class photograph with Marisse Scott: Virtual Museum.

During the 1940s and 50s, many white Canadians viewed Black people as immoral, lazy and criminal. These white supremacist beliefs maintained forms of de jure and de facto segregation in Ontario and beyond, which resulted in Black men and women struggling to find employment in universities, government institutions, and hospitals. Scott’s success in nursing school and the publicity that came with it showed that Black people were “fit” for the kinds of jobs that were exclusively “white positions,” disrupting notions of Black racial inferiority. Scott, and the individuals at St. Joseph’s Hospital who admitted Scott to the nursing programs and taught her, pushed against these racial barriers to open up new opportunities for Black women and girls to be able to achieve their own dreams. 

Scott’s experience of racial discrimination in Owen Sound encouraged her and others to challenge barriers in the education system. Her story was a call for equal access and opportunity to education for all Black Canadians. In admitting Scott to its nursing school, St. Joseph Hospital was a leading institution in lowering the colour bar and standing for equal access for all.  Rejecting the dominant belief that nursing should be a strictly white profession, St. Joseph’s Hospital was the site of an influential turning point for Black Canadian Civil Rights. Guelph was home to a woman, Marisse Scott, who would be a trailblazer for a new generation of Black nurses, and an institution, St. Joseph Hospital, that was a model for integration in nursing.