Alicia Bunyan-Sampson
When I was 17 years old and about to graduate high school, I wanted to go to York University to study film. That was not the proper way for my very West Indian parents, and my grades were not the best, so film school was most certainly out of the question.
My mother heard about a volunteer program called Katimavik, where 10 Canadian young people would be picked to live together, travel to three different provinces over a nine-month period, and receive $1,000. For my mother, Katimavik was the quintessential Canadian experience; I think she forgot, though, that I was not just Canadian, but black.
After I applied, everything happened really quickly. I was accepted and got my instructions. A few months later, I was on a plane headed to Salmon Arm, B.C. There were 10 of us living in the house; everyone was white but me, and they were all from small towns across Canada. For most of them, I was the first black person they had seen in "real life," or the first black person they would be in close proximity with for an extended period of time. So, naturally, I guess … they had questions:
"Can you wear makeup?"
"Do you get hotter in the summer time … like you know, when you wear a black shirt you get hot?"
I answered all of these questions — because they were just questions, right? When they first began, I didn't really identify them as racist, and although I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was constantly singled out, met with a barrage of questions about my skin color, I didn't want to be difficult to my new friends.
It wasn't until I got sick and had to go to a walk-in clinic in town, that I realized that my being black was an issue for everyone. As usual, I was the only black person in the walk-in, and as I sat in the waiting room, I noticed a young white child staring directly at me, his eyes piercing for what felt like hours. Eventually, he stopped with the staring, and pointed and screamed "IT'S A MONSTER!" Nobody said a thing. I was frozen. He continued to point and scream. His mother had a disgusted look on her face and she did nothing. I ran out of the clinic and burst into tears. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know what to say.
When the three months in Salmon Arm had ended and we had to pack up to head to Peace River, Alta., I had cut off all my hair, dyed it blonde and developed alcohol, drug and cigarette addictions. I wanted to fit in and have the great Canadian experience my mother had said I was going to have. The drugs made things easier.
The racism in Peace River was very overt. It was violent, and I did not know how to process any of it. White men in pickup trucks would scream "n--ger... go home you black bitch," whenever I would walk down the street alone. I didn't understand why it was happening to me. I would occasionally mention the racism to my housemates, they dismissed me and said I was overreacting.
With my body, mind, and spirit engrossed in drugs and depression, I requested to be taken to the hospital because I was "sad and didn't want to be sad anymore." They committed me for a week and sent me back home to be evaluated by a doctor in Toronto. Once home, I sobered up and my doctor cleared me to go back. When I arrived back, I had clear eyes and I knew I could not stay in the program or else I may die (in many ways).
So I dropped out of the program and applied to College and essentially saved my own life.
Katimavik was a transformative experience for me. It made me understand what it is to be a black woman in Canada. That "Canadian" things were not for all Canadians. That being in close proximity to white bodies in Canada, being close to "opportunities", also meant you would be close to racist violence. I learned that if I were to survive in this country I had to understand (and love) who I am, but I also had to understand how I would forever be seen by white people. I had to realize that the Canadian experience my mother felt was owed to me was something I would never get. I had to accept the reality that more trauma would come my way, that racism will forever be in my Canadian Life, that I MUST love myself despite how much white Canadians hate me and my community, and it is my duty in my personal and professional life to destroy white supremacy and uplift Black Canadians in any way I can.
Alicia Bunyan-Sampson is a GTA (Greater Toronto Area) based writer/director, advocate, and academic. Her work primarily focuses on her identity as a black woman, an exploration of her own experiences of trauma and love and a deliberate experimentation of the intersection of white supremacy and black identity.