Cecil Foster

Cecil Foster is an author, academic, journalist, and a leading public intellectual on issues of citizenship, multiculturalism, politics, race, ethnicity, and immigration. His books include Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity, A Place Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada, which won the Gordon Montador Award for the Best Canadian Book on Contemporary Social Issues, and the novel, Sleep On, Beloved, shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. Foster was the editor of Contrast, Canada’s first Black-oriented newspaper, and senior editor for The Financial Post; he has also worked for CBC radio and television and The Globe and Mail. He lives in Buffalo, New York, where he is Chair of the Department of Transnational Studies at the University of Buffalo.

Website: cecilfoster.ca
Twitter: @cecilfosterca

Foster has dissected the myth of Canadian tolerance, born of our history as a haven for refugee slaves – exposing instead a past in which the English and French elites fought to create a white nation… Blacks and other Canadians of colour are not merely the beneficiaries of multiculturalism; they are its architects.” — Donna Bailey Nurse

FESTIVAL BOOK

They Call Me George

They Call Me George is a historical work of non-fiction that chronicles the little-known stories of black railway porters – the so-called “Pullmen” of the Canadian rail lines. The action and spirit of these men helped define Canada as a nation in surprising ways; affecting race relations, human rights, North American multiculturalism, community building, the shape and structure of unions, and the nature of travel and business across the U.S. and Canada. Drawing on stories and legends of several of these influential early black Canadians, this book narrates the history of a very visible, but rarely considered, aspect of black life in railway-age Canada and celebrates the porters who fought against the tide of Canada as White Man’s Country, open only to immigrants from Europe – and won.