Jean Augustine

It was 1960, in Toronto.

A young woman had just arrived from Grenada. She was going to look after the children of a family in the Forest Hill neighbourhood.

She had come through a Canadian government program. It recruited women from the Caribbean to work as nannies. After one year, they could stay in the country.

Back home, she had been a teacher. But she was poorly paid.

Her name was Jean Augustine.

She was born Jean Simon on September 9, 1937, in Grenada. Her father worked on a sugar cane plantation. He died when she was very small.

The family went to live with an older woman known as "Granny." Granny wanted the children to study. Jean was an excellent student. She loved music, radio and teaching.

In Toronto, after her year of work, she went back to school. In 1963, she earned her Ontario teaching certificate.

She taught in Toronto's Catholic schools. Then she became a vice-principal, and a principal. She kept studying, up to a master's degree in education in 1980.

Later, she would say:

She also got involved in her community. In 1967, she sat on the first committee that organized the Caribana festival. In 1973, she founded the Toronto chapter of the Congress of Black Women of Canada. She later became its national president.

In 1993, the voters of Etobicoke–Lakeshore elected her as a Liberal MP. She became the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons.

In December 1995, she put forward a motion. She asked that February be recognized, across Canada, as Black History Month.

The House passed it unanimously.

Another of her motions, for a monument to the Famous Five on Parliament Hill, also passed unanimously.

On May 26, 2002, she joined Cabinet. She was Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women. It was the first time a Black woman had sat in the federal Cabinet.

She left federal politics after four terms.

In 2007, Ontario named her its first Fairness Commissioner. Her role: to stand up for people trained abroad, seeking recognition of their credentials.

She held the post until 2015.

Her commitment echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing. Throughout her public life, she worked to open doors for others: in schools, in Parliament, in the professions.

In 2014, a centre for young women's empowerment opened in Toronto. It bears her name. In 2016, a high school in Brampton was also named after her.

A young woman who came to look after other people's children. And, every February, in classrooms across the country, students learning a history no one used to tell them.