# This Little Light of Mine: Addena’s Substack Discover more from This Little Light of Mine: Addena’s Substack This Little Light of Mine is a monthly newsletter about my thoughts, new writing, readings, workshops and interviews with the artists and community movers and shakers that inspire me. # This Little Light of Mine: Addena’s Substack February Newsletter [Addena Sumter-Freitag](https://substack.com/@addena) Mar 01, 2026 Whew! I made it again. And you’re here too. Welcome back. I love it that you are reading this Newsletter. Welcome back. I can’t express to you in words how happy and grateful I am that you come and visit spend some time with me each month. Thank you. 🥰 I hope you had a great month. I sure did. February is one of my favourite months of the year because it’s Black History Month. This is one of the few times when you can get to write about, talk about, and share Black History without some people getting defensive and misinterpreting what you write or post and think you’re _naming_ or _blaming_, when all you’re doing is _identifying_ or sharing what you’ve just learned about history, or sharing part of your history, proudly and unapologetically. So thanks to February! 🎉 In recent years, I’ve observed that many people are in denial about events and stories about their country’s History, especially the events and stories of Black History. Some people, it seems, would like to change or rewrite history, especially Canadian history (so far as it relates to our Black History). I mention that partly because of a recent personal experience. There is a Canadian Facebook group I came across called, “If you grew up in Winnipeg you remember”. It is full of great nostalgia. I thought, _hey, I’m a 7th generation Canadian, and I was born and grew up in Winnipeg,_ so I followed. I read a lot of posts. Ahhhh what great nostalgia! There were posts from people from many different generations. I actually recognized posts from many people who grew up the same time I did. A few people even went to the same High School. Anyway, after reading lots of posts one day, I wrote a post in the group. It was my poem: “Back In The Days” (which is a story about my older brother Leslie and what happened to him at a community Canteen Dance). Some people’s reactions were just surprising. They were comments like: “things like that **never** happened in Winnipeg”, and “I grew up in the 60s and 70’s and there was no racism” etc… Ad nauseam. I was gob-smacked! I wrote back in reply that my intention wasn’t to _blame, or shame_ anyone, I was just identifying what went on in my life and I asked those commenters, “how can you deny my reality?” Luckily, some other people came on the thread and said they’ve seen lots of racism during those times, and in later times, and/or they had friends who were Black who experienced incidents like that, etc. Here is an excerpt from the full story (not the short poem) that I posted in the “If You Grew Up in Winnipeg You Remember “group) about my brother Les and… ## “Canteen Dance” Well, Canteen Dance wasn’t anything like I expected. I thought it would be like something from an old movie, a nightclub like the one in Casablanca. You know. But it was just a big ol’ bare hall with hardwood floors, cement walls, and a bandstand. They switched to playing records when the band didn’t play, but mmm-mmm, I loved it! I am a great dancer too, because my brothers used to use me as their dance partner when they practised every day in our garage. Barry Desjarlais just asked me to dance. Me! I’m just a kid. Barry Desjarlais is way older than me. He’s my probably my brother Les’s age or even older like my brother Junior’s age, and Barry is one of the best dancers in all of Winnipeg, next to my brother, Les… And he’s French! When the music stops, everybody is staring at me…. This is the best night in my entire life! I called all of my girlfriends over and we went to The Can together. We were in there talking, and laughing, and gossiping, and putting on _much lipstick_, when Marilyn ran in **screaming**. _“They’re beating up Leslie outside. They’re beating up Leslie ’cause he won the dance contest. They’re killing him!”_ All of us girls ran outside. There was mass confusion out there. _“Did someone call the police? Call the police!”_ I pushed through the crowd to the front. Leslie was on the ground. His hands were moving up and down, up and down, (trying to cover his face, trying to cover his groin) There were four? Five? White boys kicking him. _Crack! Crack! Crack!_ I could hear the sounds their boots made as they hit his bones. _“Nigger! You always win the dance contest! You niggers always win.”_ I froze for a few seconds, then ran towards them, yelling. I felt like I was insane. I was so terrified. I pulled at those guys trying to pull them away and off my brother Les. I was kicking at them, scratching and clawing them, yelling, _“Not his face! Don’t kick his face! Don’t kick his face!”_ I pulled at them, swore, bit them. And all the while I kept yelling, “Help, help, help!” until Bunny Lane and Richard Williams and all of them (Black) cousins ran out of the canteen. And all of those White guys scattered like flies. Thank God for all those cousins! I got down on my knees and bent over Les laying on the ground. _“Leslie. Leslie…. I think he’s dead._ _Don’t be dead, OK Leslie? Don’t be dead. OK? Open your eyes. Please! Open your eyes… Oh God… I don’t recognize his face!”_ Leslie called my name and tried to talk to me. His lips were swollen up and puffy like a badly beaten-up boxer. Gently I put my hand out toward his lips, as he tried to talk. _“Uh-huh. What? .. Don’t talk, OK? ..Don’t talk. Them cousins have a car. We’re gonna take you to the hospital._ _What?”_ I struggled to try to prop Les up. I listened closely to try to understand what he was saying as he struggled to move his lips to whisper to me, and then I turned to the cousins… _“He says we can’t go to the hospital. You have to drive us home. We have to go home._ _It’s almost ten o’clock. We have to be home by ten o’clock or my Mom will kill us!”_ This is a photo of my brother Leslie (when he was a few years older than in that story). He was in a singing group with some friends from Winnipeg and they called themselves, “The Angels.” My brother Les had a beautiful Bass voice, and amazingly he also had an amazing Falsetto voice. I remember he used both when they performed. Their singing group, The Angels, got to be on National TV, which was really exciting for all of us. They performed on a national Canadian Talent Show. I think the show was called Star Search. I remember for sure though, they sang: _Ghost-riders In The Sky”_ “The Angels”: L-R: Les Sumter, Walter Teskey, Alfie Kowaluk, Brian Shane Owen Clark Collection. Photo contributed by Martha Sklar. Photo ID: OC-MSklar1. It wasn’t only Winnipeg that had racism and segregation in its history. It was most prevalent in Eastern Canada, especially Nova Scotia (perhaps from the remnants of Slavery in Nova Scotia and Quebec) but Black people experienced racism and segregated practices and policies across Canada in employment, housing, businesses, recreational facilities, and entertainment establishments. Here is an excerpt from a Story of Old Vancouver stories from MonteCristo Magazine’s article: _“The Fascinating, Problematic History of Vancouver’s First Restaurant Chain”_ story : Jessie Donaldson. This article that tells the history of one of the places Blacks, Asians, and People of Colour weren’t welcome: “The White Lunch”: Back in 1911, Thomas Sorensen, arrived in Vancouver with his wife, newborn son, and brother Neil, opening a cafeteria-style restaurant at 124 West Hastings Street—the unfortunately named : _“White Lunch”._ And this wasn’t just a name: _White Lunch_ was sadly emblematic of the period in which it opened. In the early 20th century, anti-Asian sentiment was rampant in Canada. Vancouver had already been the site of two race riots, and many establishments, including White Lunch, prided themselves on allowing only white servers and white clientele through their doors. However, it wasn’t long before the policy began to rub some locals the wrong way—even those it claimed to benefit: September 10, 1918, letter from an English resident to the _Vancouver Sun_, reads: _“Sir,”_ _“I read with indignation that the White Lunch people had refused to serve some Japanese businessmen who are in our city on a business trip…. I hope our Japanese friends got better treatment at the next place they called and that they will not go away with the idea that the feeling shown by the owners of the White Lunch represents the feeling of the people here, and I hope our city authorities will see than an apology is offered and that such a thing cannot happen again.”_ Photo: The interior of the White Lunch. City of Vancouver Archives credit. Photo: 100 Block Hastings Street, including a White Lunch Location Courtesy of UBC Library From Scout Magazine: The White Lunch was a prominent, chain restaurant in Vancouver with a deeply racist history, operating from roughly 1913 until the early 1980s. Founded by Scandinavian immigrants Neil and Thomas Sorensen, the cafeteria-style chain was established during a period of intense anti-Asian sentiment in British Columbia, which followed the 1907 anti-Asian riots. **Key Aspects of the Racist History:** - **Whites-Only Policy:** The name “White Lunch” was not merely branding; it was a policy promising that only white staff were employed and only white customers were served. - **Targeting Asian Communities:** The restaurant chain was intentionally located near Vancouver’s Chinatown to cater to a white clientele, acting as a segregated space, according to _Scout Magazine_. - **Prejudice and Exclusion:** The establishment was a reflection of the era’s rampant nativism, which included the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act. - **Lasting Legacy:** While the overtly segregated, all-white hiring policy was eventually phased out by the 1960s, the racist stigma associated with the chain’s founding remained until the last location closed in the 1980s. ## More Black History and Segregation and Racism in Canada Segregated Swimming Pools were all across Canada **Brown Skin Beach, 1932. City of Vancouver Archives #Park N9.5. From Hidden Vancouver : Walking Tours** **Vancouver:** From its opening in 1928 until 1945, Vancouver’s main indoor swimming pool, “Crystal Pool”, was racially segregated; “whites, negroes, and Orientals” could all swim there **, but not at the same time.** Asian and Black people could swim at the pool only one day a week. **Perhaps because of such racial exclusion, non-white folks informally claimed the beach at the old Kitsilano Indian Reserve below Burrard Street Bridge as their own. It became known as “Brown Skin Beach,” but was lost when the old reserve lands were developed into Vanier Park.** Today all of Vancouver’s swimming holes are racially inclusive, including the Aquatic Centre, which replaced Crystal Pool in 1974. **Edmonton City council passed an ordinance banning Black individuals from swimming** over the concerns of the white public over “mixed bathing. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that racial segregation was cut from the Canada’s laws. For those reasons, it makes sense that the swimming community is predominantly white. Black individuals were not allowed into the swimming pools until a few generations ago, and when that finally happened, public pools began closing en masse. At this point in the 1970’s white populations began flocking to the suburbs and backyard pools, or private clubs again separating the Black community from access and forming a divide not only built on a foundation of system Anti-Black racism, but now adding the barrier of socio-economic elitism to the fold. Regrettably I never learned how to swim. None of my family learned how to swim until my Niece’s learned, and both my nephew’s children’s generation learned. I always regretted that I couldn’t teach my daughter to swim. My Daughter, April only learned to swim (in about 2015) from getting swimming lessons from her friend Lora, who was once a Lifeguard. Now April is a strong swimmer. I am so proud of her. Here she is swimming over a mile across the Sea in Jamaica. _I wrote the following poem one day when I was thinking about Black History, and Slavery, and feeling such melancholy thinking about my many Ancestors who never had the opportunity to learn how to swim:_ **Once I Could Swim** Once I could swim Genetically Inherently And I lived by the Sea And swam by the Coasts of Ivory Once I could swim Genetically Inherently Before I arrived here Before you allowed me my last baths In the River By Asin Manso Before you bound and gagged me and fastened me down in your boats Despite the myths you perpetuate, Once I could swim Genetically Inherently Before segregation and Jim Crowe destroyed my form And your practice of lynching us from bridges Made over, and near water, a place I did not want to be Yet Once I could swim Stroke Powerfully, Skillfully, Masterfully, Loving being _at one_ with the water Its caresses giving me Joy Power And Freedom! That is why You worked with such precision To take that all away. © Addena Sumter-Freitag **Addressing Slavery and reparations to achieve healing for the families/ descendants of slaves : Canada has never apologized for its 200 years of Slavery or offered any monetary compensation to the Canadian descendants of slaves** If it could be figured out for the victims of the Holocaust, the Japanese internment camps, and reparations to slave owners (Just as the UK just ended paying slave owners families just a few years ago) it could be figured out In Canada. **Canada had (like the USA ) its own long history of slavery, it lasted over 200 years.** **Before and during European colonization, Indigenous People were enslaved. Indigenous people made up roughly 2/3 of the enslaved population at the peak of the practice in the late 18th century.** **Canadian merchants owned the largest number of slaves, but farmers, the political elite, and The Church were also slave owners. Enslaved people were used for servants, farm labourers, and skilled craftspeople. Their forced labour contributed to the success and prosperity of the British and French colonies that became modern day Canada.** **Enslaved people were looked at as property to be brought and sold. It was a violent system of abuse and subjugation. Europeans viewed African slaves the same way they viewed Indigenous people they enslaved. Both peoples’ were seen as less than human.** **The tactics used on African slaves was to “break them”.** **They used psychical and psychological control, they separated tribe members and separated families. They co-opted the enslaved peoples’ cultural identities by replacing their names, and forbade them to speak their languages. This was after they had subjected them to specialized “Seasoning Camps” where countless slaves died because there they were subjected to both physical and psychological torture and terrors designed to break their spirits and: “take the African out of the slave“.** **Their white supremacy beliefs justified this type violence and justified Black slavery for hundreds of years.** **In Canada, residential schools that operated from the 1880’s into the closing of the 20th century (1997) used many of the same, and similar tactics as these slave Seasoning Camps.** The Residential School Systems forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Aboriginal heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. **One of the objectives of these residential School’s practice of removing and isolating children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, was the claim that this practice would assure their assimilation into the dominant culture. The second objective, (based on the assumption that Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal ) was to erase the children’s pride in their cultural heritage, their language, their Spiritual beliefs and Elders their knowledge that would be passed on to them to help instil pride in them. **This cruel practices in the Residential Schools broke the Spirit of many children. Many Residential Schools achieved their main goal which was: “to kill the Indian in the child.” Residential School systems broke the Spirit of people in the same way the System of Slavery erased the Pride and killed the Spirits of their Black Slaves. Slave owners also achieved their goal with their slaves which was to “kill the African in them”. **The legacy of slavery lives on in anti‐Black racism in Canada today.** ### Critical areas of concern You never Speak of my exclusion (in my Homeland Of seven generations) Of my hope And pride Being smashed, And ground Into the earth of this.. _My home and native land_ Why is that? Why is there only a condescending _Oh I know, but things aren’t that bad any more.._ _Not like they used to be_ For you maybe … For you. My human rights, My exclusion From your _exclusive club_ Is still only an after-thought On your agenda I’m still only an “also” An “other” In your statistics. It is an outrage That 350 years Of denial of my human rights and equalities I Can still be shoved into the corner Like a naughty child! Is it because I have no land Or minerals you need? Because you never had to respect my people enough To uphold your promises To our loyalists Our patriots Our men who help build this country And our women who help raise your children That you can still keep us Pinned down Excluded Invisible Assimilate us into your multicultural “other”? You still continue To deny The daily violations Of my human rights ‘Basic rights’ to equity Which you describe as “fairness” “respect” And “affirmative action” (which, depending on which part of my country I live in, do I even qualify for) Until you understand And fulfill My need My right To expose Your present and historical injustices And violations Of my people In this land I look on you as cowardly And shameful My heart, And soul Are ripped apart By sorrow And turmoil Because, Like it or not I am equal to you And your Violations Weigh on me Like an albatrossian anchor That serve as my shackles My shackles ! This country still refuses to break from me. © Addena Sumter-Freitag **I had so many other stories and content I planned on including, but I will save them for next month, or in a later issue. See you then.** **I would like to close this issue out with a Tribute to a wonderful** _**Soul**_ **that left us on February 23rd to go on to her next journey : Gloria Filomena Last.** **Gloria was my longtime friend Glory’s Mom, and Mom to Glory’s husband Doug, and many of us, who got to know her over the years referred to her as** _**Mom**_ **. She was 97,** _**going on 57**_ **. Honestly! She had the biggest, youngest Spirit you could ever imagine, and she was so full of energy and Joy. She reputedly had a** _**funky-fashion-style**_ **and was full of pizzaz! Just picturing her and trying to describe her I’m smiling as I write. Just the thought of her warms your heart and gives you the best vibes. She would make incredible themed costumes and had no qualms about dancing her heart out in them. Gloria reputedly would light up a room and I found out it’s true. I remember her dancing on a video call on St. Patrick’s Day (I think it was) when she was 94. Did I mention she loved music? Speaking of music, Glory says her Mom** _**could play a piano boogie that would knock your socks off**_ **!** **She was a wonderful Mom and friend, and loved gardening and cooking, and spending summers at their family Cottage at Winnipeg Beach where she got to get together with friends and family, (and adopted family) and play games, and eat, and laugh. She loved to laugh! Glory tells us how her Mom’s laugh was so infectious it would get everyone around her going. I wish you all could have seen her and known her. She was generous, and kind, and full of joy and grace. And she was beautiful, even at 97 her beauty didn’t fade! I wish we could have all be blessed to have a Mom like Gloria Filomena Last. Glory, Aurelia, Doug, (and lil doggie Doug) were lucky to have her for as long as The Angels let her stay here.** _**Fly high Gloria! We will watch for your Spirit to Light Up our night skies, and listen for your boogie tunes in the air.**_ **Love,** **From Me, and Irv, and April.** **Our Tribute to Gloria Last** **♥️♥️♥️** Thanks for reading This Little Light of Mine: Addena’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.