Planting a Network

Kay Livingstone was born in London, Ontario. An actress with a career in radio, she turned a social circle in Toronto into a mutual aid association in 1951: the Canadian Negro Women's Association (CANEWA), which she led as its first president until 1953.

Her great project took shape in April 1973: from April 6 to 8, the first National Congress of Black Women of Canada brought 200 women from across the country to Toronto. Parks Canada notes that their concerns were then lesser priorities for both the Black civil rights movement and second-wave feminists. Over three days, workshops covered education, immigration and the image of Black women in the media.

The momentum held. A second gathering took place in Montreal in 1974, then another in Halifax in 1976, where delegates voted to create a national organization. Kay Livingstone did not live to see it: she died suddenly in the summer of 1975, while travelling the country to organize a national conference of visible minority women. It was in Winnipeg, in 1980, at the fifth congress, that the Congress of Black Women of Canada was officially born.

Designated a national historic person in 2011, she leaves a lesson in ubuntu: a network cannot be decreed. It is planted, from living room to conference hall, and others grow it after us.