Viola Desmond's life celebrated at TMU awards ceremony bearing the Canadian trailblazer's name
April 11, 2023
Knowing Darrell Bowden is from New Glasgow, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Social Work student Jeff Perera paid a visit to his office in 2009 to find out how much the administrator knew about Viola Desmond.
Bowden, who was then the Director in the Office of the Vice-President of Equity & Community Inclusion before joining the Rotman School of Management in July 2022 as Director of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, was very familiar with the trailblazer.
Biding time as her car was repaired, Desmond went to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow in November 1946.
Sitting in the Whites-only section, the teacher-turned-entrepreneur who was on her way to Sydney in Cape Breton when the vehicle developed mechanical issues, was arrested and thrown into jail. Found guilty of not paying the one-cent difference in tax between the balcony and main floor tickets, she was fined $20 and ordered to pay $6 in court costs.
When efforts to overturn the conviction at higher levels of court failed, Desmond closed the business, moved to Montreal and enrolled in a business college. She eventually settled in New York where she died in 1965 at age 51.
The conversation between Bowden and Perera led to the creation of the Viola Desmond Awards that celebrate outstanding Black women who are role models and advocates. It is part of TMU’s Black History Awareness series.
Over 150 women have received awards and bursaries in the last 15 years.
Bowden and Perera were honoured at this year’s event on March 20.
“What I love about this event is that it focusses on a segment of history we have not had conversations about,” Bowden, who was honoured with a Visionary Award, pointed out. “We don’t talk a lot about Black women and the impact they have had on Canadian society.”
Darrell Bowden (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
While in Knoxville, Tennessee recently, Desmond’s name came up in a discussion with some people.
“They had no idea who Viola was, yet they said ‘we heard you have someone that followed Rosa Parks’,” Bowden, who managed the White Privilege conference at TMU in May 2018, added. “I had to remind them that Viola made a stand before Rosa who made a decision not to give up her bus seat.”
Perera, who started HigherUnlearning.com as an online space to explore the masculinity impact of narrow ideas, was presented an Advocacy Award.
Jeff Perera (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“I had heard about Viola and we were thinking about having an event or even a day celebrating her life,” he pointed out. “Darrell’s lightbulb went off after our meeting and he took it and created this celebration.”
As a supporter from the start, retired Citizenship Court Judge Pamela Appelt was acknowledged for her 15 years of honourary patronage.
The year after her appointment in 1987, she met the late Carrie Best while in Nova Scotia to speak at a Black Cultural Society event.
“Carrie told me I have a responsibility to teach new Canadians about Viola Desmond,” recounted Appelt. “At the time, I just knew a little about her. The next year, Carrie invited me to her birthday and inquired how I was doing in my quest to spread the word about Desmond. When the awards committee asked me to be their patron, I smiled widely because, by that time, I knew everything I need to know about Viola.”
Retired Citizenship Court Judge Pamela Appelt (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
There is a reason why Best wanted Canadians to know about Desmond.
After learning two young Black girls were ejected from the Roseland Theatre in 1941, late human rights activist and newspaper publisher Carrie Best and her 15-year-son Calbert -- who went on to become Canada’s first Black Assistant Deputy Minister and first Black High Commissioner before his death in 2007 -- sat in the Whites-only section in the theatre a few weeks later.
Arrested and charged, she filed a lawsuit that was thrown out.
Upset by Desmond’s treatment, she used ‘The Clarion’, that she launched in 1946, to champion her cause.
In Kia Cummings final year in high school in 2015, she received a student award.
Overwhelmed with gratitude, her mother – Marsha Brown – began volunteering with the awards review committee.
Marsha Brown (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
She was honoured with an Alumni Award.
“I have seen the benefits of celebrating students, alumni and incredible women in the community who are doing selfless and monumental work,” said Brown whose daughter completed undergraduate studies in Radio & Television at TMU and a Master’s in Journalism & Media Studies last year at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “I am filled with gratitude that the university has decided to honour me.”
Role modelling and advocating are part of her identity.
Brown has leveraged her expertise in supporting asylum seekers, tackling domestic violence and inadequate housing and providing employability training to marginalized youth.
The Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment Vice-President said TMU solidified her passion for social justice engagement.
“Dr. Akua Benjamin was my Social Work professor and was championing anti-Black racism advocacy when other academics were hesitant to do so of out fear for reprisal from department heads,” said Brown who left Jamaica in 1982 and finished high school at Lester B Pearson Collegiate Institute where she was a member of the student group, Januk.
“I have taken on hard issues like violence against women, affordable child care and the settlement of refugees. I have always lended my voice and expertise to supporting marginalized individuals.”
As part of the university for three decades, Brown welcomed the name change last year. It came a year after the toppling of Egerton Ryerson’s statue.
“When I started in 1992, we were already advocating for the statue to come down and the university’s name to be changed,” the Food for Poor Canada Ambassador said. “It took quite a while for these things to happen.”
The Social Work graduate has been engaged in a range of campus activities in the last two decades.
Brown, a former Toronto Community Housing Program Co-ordinator, has played a vital role in building partnerships and providing strategic advice to the university’s Equity & Community Inclusion office.
In 2019, the alumna created the Women Champions of Diversity Award.
So far, six students have received scholarships each worth $2,000.
Dr. Rai Reece, an Assistant Professor in the Sociology department, was the recipient of the Faculty Award.
She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work broadly examines how carceral logics are relationally organized by radical capitalism and White supremacy and how carceral processes in Canada are maintained by historical and contemporary narratives of White settler colonial violence.
Dr. Rai Reece (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“This award is a big deal because I stand on the shoulders of giants,” said Reece who is passionate about community-based collaboration. “This recognition is really for folks who have propelled me and still encourage me to keep going when there was doubt and fear in a space that is not always welcoming to Black scholars.”
In the Office of the EDI Vice-President the last four and half years, Crystal Mark is part of a progressive team taking direct action to advance social progress and racial equality.
The mother of four was the recipient of the Staff Award.
“By not changing seats in the theatre and fighting her court conviction, Viola Desmond took a firm stand to fight segregation,” Mark, whose daughter Shalom is in TMU’s Arts & Contemporary Studies program, pointed out. “I am proud to receive an award at this event honouring her legacy because she was a very strong and noble woman who opened the door for the work we are doing here at TMU to maintain a visible presence for equity, diversity and inclusion.”
Crystal Mark (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
A poet, anti-racist writer and speaker, Mark chairs the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion Board and co-founded Malton Moms that is a creative community activism group.
Jayde James, the first member of her family to complete a Master’s degree, is among TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law second cohort.
Why law?
“I want to change the demographic of the legal system and make it more victim-focussed as opposed to offender-focussed,” said the bursary award recipient.
James is thinking about pursuing a career in corporate commercial litigation with an emphasis on health law.
Jayde James (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“I am not sure yet,” she added. “However, I want to do pro bono work with wrongfully convicted offenders.”
Other bursary award winners were fourth-year students Tahja Burnett-French and Naomi Addai and Kelly Cameron who is a third-year part-time student in the TMU’s Midwifery Education program.
Flesticiah Amoah and Jama Seham were presented Denise O’Neill Green Student Leadership Awards, Jeya Nkrumah received a High School Student Award and graduate student Georgiana Mathurin was honoured with the first Sidney & Mettelia Ferguson Memorial Award.
Leaving Jamaica in 1969, the husband and wife – they passed away in 2016 and 2020 -- owned six special care homes in Toronto, including Sidmet Serenity Home on Keele St.
“They were passionate about strengthening psychiatric and mental support,” said their daughter Sandra Ferguson who was honoured at the event. “They were pioneers in de-institutionalizing patients with mental illness and supporting their reintegration into the wider community.”
Patricia DeGuire (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Also honoured were Ontario Human Rights Commission Chief Commissioner Patricia DeGuire, EDI consultant Keisha James and Tanitia Munroe who is a Toronto District School Board Senior Research Co-ordinator.
Tanitia Munroe (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Pursuing a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development, Munroe’s scholarship is focused on African, Afro-Caribbean and Black diasporic youth and their families educational experiences.
