Member Delegation: Threshold-Crossing Episode and George

member delegation: In They Call Me George, sociology professor and novelist Independence Cecil Foster makes the case that the moment was exceptional, a consequential threshold-crossing episode, according to Toronto Star. The men, former and current porters popularly known as George's boys after American magnate George Pullman's famous train service franchise had journeyed to meet federal government representatives with a goal to transform the country. Inside one of its cars a 35-member delegation of the Negro Citizenship Association. In place of one dominant idea Canada as a white country created for the habitation and benefit of people of European ethnicities they offered another a new nation state created out of all peoples of the world, a country of equality, where specific ethnic groups would not have all the privileges and others none. Cole Burston / For Toronto Star For Foster, these unobtrusive men on the transcontinental railway are as much iconic representatives of Canada and Canadian experience as Mounties, moose, beavers, and iced-over hockey ponds. A plaque to honour the first Black porters in Toronto is passed to the speakers at the 5th annual Underground Freedom Train Ride to mark Emancipation Day, the end of slavery, in Toronto on July 31, 2017. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.