Immigration: First Five Minutes

Five Generations Dept: Despite this lineage, my sense of belonging has always been questioned by non-blacks. "Where do you come from?" is a query I often tackle, usually in the first five minutes of meeting someone. Fair enough. With the exception of First Nations peoples, aren't we all from somewhere else? But it is disconcerting that "Montreal" is rarely a sufficient response. The followup question - "But where were you born?" or "Where does your family come from?" - indicates that to them I am either foreign, non-Quebec stock or, as some politicians say, part of "les autres.", according to Montreal Gazette. Yet how wrong and how destructive that assumption is. Though many white Quebecers still perceive black Quebecers as "other," many blacks are actually old-stock. Their ancestors might have been here when Parliament burned, before the Durham Report, during the conscription crisis, during the Prohibition vote, and they even voted in the election of Maurice Duplessis. It has been my mission over the past two decades to challenge that assumption by revealing the fact that blacks have played a role in Quebec since New France and i am not an immigrant. My family's roots pre-date Confederation, and in Quebec we have sojourned for about five generations. I am a Quebecer. Call me a Qu b cois if you will; it does not matter to me. This is my home, too. My roots are in the southwest of the island, straddling the communities of Little Burgundy, St. Henri, Point St. Charles and Verdun. I am a southwest girl, though to many of the black community I am simply from "downtown." So what pegs me as different or foreign? What do they see or hear in those first five minutes? Do they hear an accent? I don't have one. Perhaps it is the way I dress? I don't dress that differently, though I will admit to being fashion-challenged. Maybe it is my family name; after all, Williams is very English. Still, I don't think it is my name. Rather, given some of the more testy exchanges I have had, it must be because of the colour of my skin. Ah, brown skin - a black woman, clearly not from here . As reported in the news.
@t conscription crisis, little burgundy