Good chilly Wednesday morning to you all. It is 3:41 a.m. and as always, I’m completely slacking at work.

I was going through some old school notes and I found this one lecture from one of my classes where we discussed Africville.

Now, a lot of Canadians do not know about Africville and I think they should.

I am a displaced person from a foreign country, and I’ll be honest, I had a hard time (as a now proud Canadian) grasping that as recently as the 1960′s, people were being displaced within Canada.

The 35-minute Remember Africville documentary was made in 1991 but it definitely resonates in 2012.

If you don’t know about Africville I suggest you watch this documentary. I know it is in Nova Scotia, but anyone know the story of Regent Park aka Cabbagetown here in Toronto?

Low-income immigrant settlements or “transitional housing” areas that are so easily demolished because no one cares about who lives there or what they do to benefit society. Sound familiar?

(As a sidenote: Read this paper if you have the time to by Sean Purdy called “Ripped Off” by the System: Housing Policy, Poverty, and Territorial Stigmatization in Regent Park Housing Project, 1951-1991 —> http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/52/purdy.html )

I realize that Regent Park and Africville are VERY different places and had different problems and reasons for why they were changed by their respective cities. But, I think it needs to be recognized as being a part of bringing this story closer to the GTA and maybe helping people understand this issue.

I know what it is like to be uprooted from your home, I don’t think some of the fortunate people I know, who were born and raised in the same hood, same block etc. can grasp how much impact losing your roots can be.

This is the link for the documentary http://www.nfb.ca/film/remember_africville/

- Mirna