The Woman Who Stayed Standing

On December 14, 1995, in the House of Commons in Ottawa, one MP stayed standing.

Her name was Jean Augustine. She had just put forward a motion: to recognize February as Black History Month in Canada. To pass, it needed the unanimous consent of all 305 MPs.

One by one, the House checked that no one objected. Jean Augustine did not sit down.

Later, she explained why. She wanted to see the people who had provoked her.

Because there had been some. While she was making the rounds of MPs, one asked her when there would be a White History Month. Another wanted to know who would come asking for March next.

She did not take the bait. She wanted a "yes."

She got it. The motion passed unanimously.

Jean Augustine was born on September 9, 1937, in Happy Hill, Grenada. In 1960, she came to Canada through a program that recruited Caribbean women as domestic workers. For one year, she worked as a nanny in Toronto's Forest Hill neighbourhood. In exchange, she received landed immigrant status.

In 1963, she earned her teaching certificate. She became an elementary school teacher, then a vice-principal and a principal.

Along the way, she helped organize the very first Caribana, in 1967. In 1973, she founded the Toronto chapter of the Congress of Black Women of Canada.

In 1993, she was elected in Etobicoke–Lakeshore. She was the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons.

The idea of Black History Month did not come from nowhere. In 1978, the Ontario Black History Society was founded. The next year, Toronto proclaimed February as Black History Month, a first in Canada. It was the society's president, Rosemary Sadlier, who asked Jean Augustine to take the project nationwide.

A door opened for one person can open for a whole country.

In 2002, Jean Augustine became the first Black woman in the federal Cabinet.

In 2008, Senator Donald Oliver, the first Black man appointed to the Senate, had a similar motion adopted in turn. It passed on March 4, 2008, also unanimously.

In 2016, a high school in Brampton, Ontario, was named after Jean Augustine.

Years later, she summed up what guided her:

You cannot tell a country's story without everyone who built it. Every time a forgotten story finds its place, our "we" grows larger.