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Celebrate Black History Month at your Library!

Join us for a free online film screening and discussion on February 23 at 6:30pm. We’ll be watching True North: The Rise of Toronto Basketball. After the Toronto Raptors’ historic NBA championship and a record-setting number of Canadian draft picks, director Ryan Sidhoo follows 12-year-old Elijah Fisher, 15-year-old Keone Davis, and 18-year-old Cordell Veira as they navigate Toronto’s youth basketball scene in pursuit of their own NBA dreams. Email Faith at [email protected] or call 705-526-4216 ext. 3305 to register and receive the online meeting information.

If you can’t make the film screening, you can place a hold on some amazing items in the Library’s collection.

Bryan Prince’s My Brother’s Keeper tells the story of African Canadians who fled slavery but then returned to the United States to enlist in the Union forces during the Civil War. Entire Black communities were profoundly changed by these decisions.

Earlier in Black Canadian history, on the night of April 10, 1734, Montréal burned. Marie-Joseph Angélique, a twenty-nine-year-old slave, was arrested, tried, and found guilty of arson. Afua Cooper’s The Hanging of Angélique : the Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal is the result of 15 years of extensive research, uncovering the trial records that serve as a part of what may be the oldest slave narrative in North America, and complicating the idea that Canada was the haven at the end of the Underground Railroad.

You may want to pick up the memoir by Willie O’Ree, Willie: the Game-changing Story of the NHL’s First Black Player. In 1958 O’Ree was signed to the Boston Bruins but playing in the minors. When he played his first NHL game against the Montreal Canadiens and looked at the newspaper the next day, he discovered that he’d broken the league’s colour barrier.

These books, and many more memoirs, histories, and titles focused on anti-racism, are all available at your Library. Call us or use our online form to get personalized reading recommendations!

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