Ms. Cotilda Douglas-Yakimchuk
dedication
We dedicate the Colour of Birth gallery to the memory of Ms. Cotilda Douglas-Yakimchuk, one of our story-tellers who sadly passed in 2021. She was one of Nova Scotia’s first Black graduates from a Hospital School of Nursing in 1954. She dedicated her life to advocacy that resulted in Black nurses being accepted as trusted professionals and received the Order of Nova Scotia for her social activism.
Colour of Birth Gallery
What is the Colour of Birth Gallery?
Produced by the Canadian Midwives of Colour History Project (CMOC), the Gallery is a multimedia experience exploring and documenting the history of Canada’s earliest, racialized, immigrant midwives and their communities during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This first iteration is focussed on Black communities in Canada: enslaved peoples, African fugitives/refugees of enslavement, Black pioneers/settlers, Loyalists and Black immigrants from the Caribbean.
Principal Investigators are: PI: Dr. Karline Wilson-Mitchell DNP, RM, FACNM; Co-PI: Dr. Karen Flynn PhD.
Q. Why do you name this Gallery, “ Colour of Birth”?
A. When someone puts on a pair of reading glasses, or glasses for someone who is colour blind and they see colour for the first time in their lives, it’s breathtaking, transformational, emotional. When a child looks into a microscope for the first time and engages with the microscopic world, everything that they look at afterwards changes, forever. They can no longer pretend they didn’t see or say they didn’t know that amoebas or cell walls exist. It’s a similar transformation that we hope to evoke in all of our viewers, young and old. We are learning as a nation to see that history matters, that culture matters, and that race matters. It’s not enough to treat everyone equally, or “the same” to maintain safety, dignity and wellbeing. Actually equity causes us to individualize care, and advocate in order to produce similar social and health outcomes in our various racial populations. Each has a different life course. Current respectful maternity care research is teaching us that history matters.
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Q. Were runaway slaves and Black Loyalists looking for asylum through the Underground railroad the only method of immigration to Canada in the 19th centuries?
A. No, there was actually a large contingent of immigrants from the Caribbean and Midwest United States who were free landowners and in some cases they were well educated under the British systems in the Caribbean.
Where did they settle when they arrived in Canada ?
The First refugees, immigrants, settlers we started to look at came from the Maritimes (NS) from 1880s until 1940s. Then we searched the various archives and Museums in Ontario: looking for stories in Toronto, Hamilton, Oakville, Amherstburg, Owen Sound, & Orillia. Then we continued to search for stories in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
We are hoping to find more stories in BC, and we’ve even learned that Black Canadians found themselves working in the Northwest Territories in the early 20th century to work in the oil industry and wondered if their families followed them there.
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Black Alberta Rancher John Ware
However, these photos of the famous rancher and horse trainer, John Ware, don’t tell the whole story. We see him, his wife and infant but there are unanswered questions in the picture. She birthed twins. Why did this infant’s twin brother die in childbirth? Although her husband was a well respected, trusted rancher in the community, did this mother have access to all of the best resources and healthcare? Who attended her?
Q. How were births in the Black Canadian community recorded?
A. In Nova Scotia, birth certificates and registrations described Black Canadians as Africans, Negros or Coloured when they referred to the infant or parents. Physicians were described as physicians and white midwives as “nurses..”. It was clear that all of the births that occurred in Africville, a segregated Black community, were attended at home by Black midwives who consequently enjoyed no working privileges or access to employment at the hospital according to interview participants, (Ms. Cotilda Douglas-Yakimchuk.)
Birth Certificate Documenting Birth Images
Juanita Peters, Executive Director of the Africville Museum, NS.
Ontario certificates did not identify the race
In contrast to NS certificates, Ontario certificates did not identify the race of the attendant who conducted the birth.
One of the things that came out in our interviews was the commitment of these midwives. Their work was extremely taxing, physically and emotionally. Often they would be required to walk miles during all four seasons in order to reach women in labour. Here Juanita Peters, Manager, Africville Museum explains the work of her great-great grandmother, the midwife.
Q. What can you tell us about the status of Black midwives and families, their oppression, their access to hospitals or education in the 20th century?
There were many storytellers who provided a picture of the racism and exclusion that Black, internationally educated midwives faced after migration during the 1930s in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Ms. Yakimchuk is a recipient of the Harry Jerome Awards for her community activism for equitable housing and her fight against racism in nursing. She was the first and only Black President of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Nova Scotia.
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Freed slave Mattie Mayes
“Mattie Mayes is recognized as the matriarch of Saskatchewan’s first and only Black pioneer settlement.” She conducted births in the community as a midwife in a settlement that had no access to physicians. She was one of Saskatewan’s first Black settlers, traveling with 12 families who settled in the Eldon District, near Maidstone.
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Q: In the 1800s when wealthy Black land owners came from the midwest US to settle the prairies or from the Caribbean as immigrants, they might have been duly credentialed as Nurses and midwives, how were they treated? Were they welcomed?
A. No they were not welcomed. They were met with surprise, fear, outrage and discrimination, because they were expected to be White nurses, settlers or immigrants, not Black people.
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Amber Valley AL
Amber Valley AL had second generation immigrant Black teachers, and domestic workers. But 80% of the Black community worked in the Railroads as porters making $70/month. Structural and systematic racism continued across Canada in terms of public service and professional jobs. such as midwifery work, despite the presence of a Social Credit government the 1950s and the presence of union activity e.g., Alberta Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (AAACP) from 1958 to 1961. And exclusion in housing, education, work and regulation of healthcare providers continued throughout the other provinces. On the day-to-day, interpersonal level, and within all sectors of society, highly respected health professions (including medicine, nursing and midwifery essentially barred Black individuals, most often through policies that de facto excluded females and/or radicalized people.
Mrs. Drucilla Threatt-Smith, emigrated from Alabama to Amber Valley, Midwife, one of the first “Black Pioneer Midwives” (the great-great-grandmother of current Alberta Midwife, Chandra Martini). The Alabama midwife, Onnie Lee Logan was her young protégé.
Saskatchewan certificates sometimes identified race (e.g., African) and other times that race indicator is left blank.
Birth Certificate for Leonard Douglas Lane, delivered by midwife, Mrs. Grant in Maidstone, SK, 1921, parents of “African” racial origin.
Maidstone is a town in northwest Saskatchewan, Canada (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Mayes, Rep. for Shiloh Baptist Church and Cemetery Restoration Society).
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Q. What were Black Canadian communities like in the 1800s and 1900s?
A. From the 1820s to 1860s individuals escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad which brought them to Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces as Canada’s first refugees. By contrast Black family members describe their ancestors coming as immigrants from Oklahoma to Saskatchewan’s first Black settlement where they described a vibrant church life, culture and strong networks. “Church” housed ancestral African ancestral traditions, mores, rituals and codes that were mingled with colonial teachings. Religious language and customs formed the framework which transmitted coded messages, metaphors for survival, and liberation.
Wood burning stove where likely well water was boiled to sterilise instruments for birth. (2017 photo Black Cultural Centre Cherrybrook, Dartmouth Nova Scotia, Wilson-Mitchell.
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The communities discovered in this study were usually segregated in terms of housing
The communities discovered in this study were usually segregated in terms of housing, education, healthcare and birth. Where were these children in the photo born during the 1940s in Buxton Ontario. And who attended their births? We’ll need to do a lot more sleuthing to find out what those births were like. Robin Winks (2005) describes some of the characteristics of Black Canadian communities between slavery in 1628 until the first wave of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. Karen Robeson (2013) describes the segregated schools for Black children across Canada from the 1870s until 1965.
Students of School Section #13 with teacher, Verlyn Ladd, who taught at the school from 1939 to 1958. Class of 1951, Buxton, Raleigh Township, Ontario. (Buxton National Historic Site & Museum), photo provided by author, FUNKÉ ALADEJEBI
Photo of the Birth Stool for Amherst Museum
Very little is told about how births were attended in Ontario communities. We found many photos of the community but we could neither find photos of midwives, nor the tools they used other than one birth stool. We continue the search.
Image of Birthing stool now housed by the Amherst Freedom Museum. Birthing stools such as this were used by midwives throughout Canada.
Permission: Mary-Kathrine Whilen (Curator/Administrator) mk.whelan@amherstburgfreedom.org
Every province holds some relics to Racism
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Communities in all of the Canadian provinces where Black refugees and immigrants settled were segregated.
An article in the Edmonton Bulletin cites the barring of Negros from city pools in 1924. These policies were changed through activism and advocacy in the City Council in 1925.
It is not surprising that Ida Johnson self-identified as mixed Canadian Indian and white as it was safer to be considered Indian. In fact, her son married in the Indian church. Their complexion probably allowed them to “pass” for a Native Indian. The descendants of Ida Johnson’s (who died May 2,1963) may still be living in Oakville.
Q. What can you tell us about the status of Black midwives and families, their oppression, their access to hospitals or education in the 20th century?
Andrew Tyrrell tells the story of his mother, Veronica Tyrrell, who was a British trained Guyanese midwife. He explained how the expertise and skills of Black immigrant midwives were not recognized. They experienced gaslighting, and racist exclusion from practice.
Veronica Tyrrell RN (Photo Courtesy of Andrew Tyrrell)
The story of Black midwives working in Canada is a story about immigration, settlement, creative community service, restraint of trade, missed opportunities, social innovation and grass-roots activism.
Lillie Johnson's story. Example of a Black Community Knowledge Keeper
Regardless of which hat she wore, Miss Lillie, one of the the founders of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ontario. Her advocacy ensured that in 2005, every newborn would be screened for sickle cell anemia in Ontario, saving thousands of lives. Lillie Johnson and many other immigrant midwives demonstrated what is known as “motherwit” in the Southern USA (Onnie Lee Logan Alabama Grand or Elder midwife, 1995). It is the integrated clinical knowledge, ancestral wisdom and culturally sensitive expertise that midwives apply to any setting in which they find themselves. They became innovators who creatively implemented protocols and policies that allowed their communities to survive and thrive.
Photo #1 Lillie Johnson (Born 1922) at Graduation as a nurse-midwife in Jamaica,
Photo #2 Upon her 1960 immigration to Ontario, Canada
Photo #3 Then as a retired PHN in Canada who inspires midwifery students, nursing students and public health activists in the community.
There are so many stories of midwives who were only allowed to credential as nurses. Those midwives achieved incredible breakthroughs in healthcare as they became advocates for social justice policies. These include Lillie Johnson, Public Health Nurse who fought to have sickle cell screening and hemoglobin electrophoresis diagnosis for all newborns instituted into the provincial and national newborn screening policies, thereby saving 1000s of lives. In 1981 she founded the Sickle Cell Association of Ontario, along with a group of other professionals. Lillie remains an active member and was instrumental in advocating for the inclusion of Sickle Cell Disease to newborn screening in Ontario in 2006. She was inducted into the Order of Ontario, in 2011, the province’s highest honour, for her Founding and policy promotion work with Sickle Cell Association of Ontario. She was named Toronto Public Health Champion in 2009 and the Province’s first Black Director of Public Health, in Leeds-Grenville and Lanark, Ontario.
Thank you
We hope that you have found these stories to be informative and empowering. Please give us verbal or written feedback here. Share the web gallery link with your friends, peers and colleagues. Ask your family and children to visit the Children’s gallery and provide us with feedback. Children are encouraged to upload their feedback using pictures or recorded statements here. By submitting these photos and recordings you are helping us to improve the gallery. We will ask for permission to share your children’s drawings in the gallery.
Footnotes
The Aspen Institute, Community Roundtable for Change. Glossary for Understanding the Dismantling Structural Racism/Promoting Racial Equity Analysis.
Braveman PA, Arkin E, Proctor D, Kauh T, Holm N. Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling: Study examines definitions, examples, health damages, and dismantling systemic and structural racism. Health Affairs. 2022 Feb 1;41(2):171-8. Retrieved from
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01394
Bridgeman-Bunyoli, AM, Cheyney, M, Monroe, SM, Wiggins, N, Vedam, S. Preterm and low birthweight birth in the United States: Black midwives speak of causality, prevention, and healing. Birth. 2022; 49: 526– 539. doi:10.1111/birt.12624
Craig P, Di Ruggiero E, Frolich KL, Mykhalovskiy E, White M, Campbell R, Cummins S, Edwards N, Hunt K, Kee F, Loppie C. Taking account of context in population health intervention research: guidance for producers, users and funders of research.
Hong X, Bartell TR, Wang X. Gaining a deeper understanding of social determinants of preterm birth by integrating multi-omics data. Pediatr Res. 2021 Jan;89(2):336-343. doi: 10.1038/s41390-020-01266-9. Epub 2020 Nov 13. PMID: 33188285; PMCID: PMC7898277.
Kemei J, Tulli M, Olanlesi-Aliu A, Tunde-Byass M, Salami B. Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Black Communities in Canada. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023 Jan 15;20(2):1580.
