Some people collect history through archives. Others do it by listening.
Donna Paris does both.
The founder of In the Black Canada, Paris has spent years travelling the country — from Nova Scotia to the Prairies to the West Coast — recording the stories that rarely survive official archives. Not summaries. Not timelines. Stories told by the people who lived them, or whose families carried them quietly for generations.
What emerges is a Canada many of us were never taught to see.
In an August 2023 interview with BlackNovaScotia.ca, Paris reflects on growing up in Dartmouth during the destruction of Africville without knowing what was happening across the bridge; on Black communities that once existed across Canada: Prairie settlements formed by families fleeing Jim Crow, neighbourhoods like Hogan’s Alley and The Bog erased by “development”; and on discovering her own grandfather’s role in the No. 2 Construction Battalion decades after his service ended.
That delay isn’t unusual. Silence, she notes, is a pattern, not because these histories lack value, but because survival often demanded moving forward without looking back.
Paris’ work challenges that inheritance.
By pairing oral histories with photography and public exhibitions, In the Black Canada insists that Black history is not supplemental. It is structural. As one of her collaborators once put it, these are the “Black threads of the Canadian tapestry.”
This interview is not about nostalgia. It’s about recovery — and about what happens when communities finally hear themselves reflected in the national story.
PART 1 — Background, Origins & In the Black Canada
In Part 1 of this interview, Donna Paris reflects on her upbringing in Truro, Cornwallis, Dartmouth, and later Toronto, tracing the personal roots that shaped her work.
Donna discusses her career as an educator, the moment she wrote I Am Black History for CBC Radio, and how that piece sparked conversations that led to the creation of In the Black Canada.
She also walks through the project’s early web series, the Windsor interviews, and the decision to move from a collective model to independent, cross-country storytelling.
PART 2 — Oklahoma Migration & Prairie Black Communities
Part 2 focuses on one of the least-taught chapters of Canadian history: the early-1900s migration of Black families from Oklahoma and the U.S. South to the Canadian Prairies.
Donna Paris explains why families left Jim Crow conditions, how they were encouraged to homestead in Canada, and how federal policy quietly worked to stop Black immigration by 1913. She discusses Prairie communities such as Amber Valley, Breton (Keystone), Campsie, Wildwood, and Maidstone, and why many became unsustainable over time.
This segment grounds national myths in lived reality — policy, land, labour, and survival.
PART 3 — Lost Black Canadian Communities: The Bog, Hogan’s Alley, & More
In Part 3, Donna Paris turns to Black communities that no longer exist — not because they failed, but because they were deliberately displaced.
She discusses:
• The Bog in Charlottetown
• Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver
• Prairie settlements tied to the Oklahoma migration
Donna also highlights what remains today: churches like Shiloh Baptist in Maidstone, historical markers, plaques, and family memory. This segment examines what happens when development, policy, and erasure intersect — and why remembering place matters.
PART 4 — Why Halifax, Photography & Future Documentaries
Part 4 explains why Donna Paris and her partner, street photographer David Zaporozhye, are in Halifax collecting interviews and portraits.
Donna discusses photographing participants alongside their stories, attending the Africville Reunion and Emancipation Day events, and why Nova Scotia requires sustained, on-the-ground work. She also talks about the balance between words and images, her growing interest in documentary filmmaking, and the limits of what Canadians think they know about Black history.
As she notes, the Underground Railroad was never the end of the story.
PART 5 — Nova Scotia, Family History & the No. 2 Construction Battalion
In the final segment, Donna Paris brings the conversation back to Nova Scotia — and to her own family history.
She recounts discovering unexpected family connections through her podcast, learning about her grandfather’s service in the No. 2 Construction Battalion, and understanding why so many families carried these stories in silence for decades.
This closing segment reflects on memory, survival, and responsibility — and on why telling these stories now matters for future generations.
About Donna Paris
Founder & Host: In the Black Canada
Platform focus: Documenting Black Canadian history through oral storytelling, interviews, photography, and public exhibitions
Current project: In the Black Canada Podcast — featuring conversations with Black Canadians from Newfoundland to British Columbia
Background: Former educator with the Toronto District School Board; long-time advocate for community-based historical preservation
Work highlights:
National podcast series on Black migration, settlement, and memory
Cross-country interviews and photographic documentation
Public talks, exhibitions, and upcoming documentary work
Guiding principle: Black history is not supplemental to Canadian history — it is foundational
