In her article, “Black Parents Speak: Education in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada West”, Claudette Knight utilizes sources consisting of letters appealing to officials, protesting to government education officers, through documents about civil suits initiated by black parents committed to getting their children educated. Many of these letters and documents are correspondence between Egerton Ryserson and both black and white parents, asking him for advice regarding the ‘race problem’. Most often, his advice to black parents who wanted to send their children to a public school with an unwelcoming white community was to take legal action. Unfortunately, that’s not a practical resolution for anyone who cannot afford court fees, as some families eventually found out even if they were successful in their court case. Knight illuminates the ways that black parents were disregarded (albeit compassionately) by Ryerson’s when given advice on the best pursuit of action. Often, Ryerson’s advice to black and white parents was contradictory to the other. These inconsistencies were likely due to the necessary for Ryerson appeal to each individual audience, however, it makes one question his veracity.

In “White Supremacy, Chinese Schooling, and School Segregation in Victoria: The Chinese Students’ Strike, 1922-1923”, Timothy J. Stanley explores important questions to help us better understand the history of white supremacy and how it functioned in Canada, arguing that white supremacy was a dynamic system continually in motion. More specifically, Stanley examines anti-Chinese sentiments in Victoria, the call of white society for segregated schooling, and the response of the Chinese community during the “1922-3 Victoria School segregation controversy”. Stanley uses the experience of these Chinese Canadians to shed light on the complexities surrounding white supremacy (i.e. segregated schools) and the ways that the effected communities rose in solidarity to fight against it.

In the article “Black Nova Scotian Women’s Experience Violence in the Early 1900s: A Case of Colour Contusion”, Bernice Moreau considers these women’s experiences of “colour contusion” via their exclusion from the white educational system in the early 20th century. Moreau implores to understand the impact of educational violence on women and the results of such violence; widespread illiteracy, unemployment/underemployment, political powerlessness, social rejection, spiritual exclusion, economic deprivation, and various other negative elements imposed on the black community by white Nova Scotian society. Moreau effectively and informatively places his emphasis on the stories of ten black women whom he interviews for this study. Despite often being active agents in fighting against racial oppression and segregation, the black women of Nova Scotia’s experience of colour contusion (and presumably other races and genders) proves that the impact on an individual’s own self-worth is deeply damaged by racism and white educational exclusivity.

Education was important to all parents, regardless of race and ethnicity. Most parents hope to provide their children with the opportunities that they may not have had growing up. Education was (and still is) the  most efficient for parents to ensure their children become something or someone respectable. That being said, it was clearly important for all races and ethnicities to educate their children at all points in history – whether it was within a white public school or  whether they were driven to erect their own schools to ensure the education of their children. Each of these authors shed light on the Canadian past by illuminating the various ways that white Canadian society oppressed minority races and excluded them from their white public education system. Despite the current worldwide perception of Canada as a multicultural, accepting country, our past is still tied to a history of racism, discrimination, and oppression.