What if the names that shaped your city never made it into your textbooks? We sit with author and former social worker Christine Smith Gonsalves to uncover the lives of Black Canadian women whose stories deserve centre stage—and explore how one mother’s journey through the West Indian Domestic Scheme built a legacy of compassion, community, and courage.
Christine reads from her new activity book, Black History Worldwide Presents: Canadian Women of Influence, and shares why she chose ten women spanning the 1930s to the 1980s, including sprint icon Barbara Howard and jazz trailblazer Eleanor Collins. Together we trace how accessible tools—colouring pages, word searches, video links—can help families, tutors, and teachers spark curiosity in young learners. Christine explains how to move beyond the same familiar figures every February by using libraries, documentaries, and local archives to surface the hidden history in your own neighbourhood.
We also dig into Christine’s roots: growing up in Toronto as the child of parents from Bermuda and Jamaica, finding identity in small moments of difference, and discovering how empathy becomes action. Her decades in social work reveal the emotional cost of helping professions and the quiet rewards that return years later.
If you’re a parent, educator, or lifelong learner, this conversation is a roadmap: be curious, ask elders for their stories, and write them down. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves Canadian history, and leave a review to help more listeners find these voices. Then tell us: which unsung Canadian will YOU research next?
You have the option to hear, listen or both to enjoy the podcast!
https://youtu.be/8mnld1j7Ehc (video)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1988087/episodes/18759161-why-preserving-black-canadian-history-changes-how-we-see-ourselves.mp3?download=true (audio)
Use the following link to contact Christine Smith Gonzalez:
Linktree: linktr.ee/christinegonsalves
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