Introduction: Reckoning with Race Well, at least there is one moment I can look forward to in this purgatory of a daily commute. As the Deerfoot Trail expressway winds through the heart of Calgary, it takes a wide curve west onto the Calf Robe Bridge, which crosses the swift currents of the Bow River. In that instant, the majestic range of the Rocky Mountains appears straight ahead on the horizon, their snow-capped peaks piercing the sun setting behind them. Each day, I gratefully breathe in this brief display of creation''s glory, just as the road quickly twists south again through the urban sprawl of the city.On this particular day, though, my ritual moment of gratitude is interrupted by the phone ringing through the car speaker.I press the talk button. "Hello, it''s Lance here.""Son," the voice rings through the speaker, "it''s your father.

I wanted you to know, the apology -- it''s happening." My father''s words immediately pull my attention away from the horizon, and I find myself staring back into a long and dark history of this nation. My father is referring to an apology that has finally been promised by the federal government for the discrimination that my grandfather George Dixon, along with six hundred other men, endured as soldiers of the only segregated Black battalion of the First World War. As descendants of Black folk in this country, it is not lost on us that it will be the first formal apology for any discrimination experienced by our people at the hands of the federal government. Recently, the government has initiated a litany of apologies for its unjust treatment of certain groups. The first was in 1988, when the Mulroney government apologized for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Since then, there have been official apologies to Indigenous people for the residential schools, to the Inuit for their forced relocation and the killing of their sled dogs, to the LGBTQ community for state-sanctioned discrimination in the workplace, to Chinese descendants for imposing an immigrant "head tax," and so on. It seems, at last, it is our turn.

"Is this for real?" I ask. "How do you know?""I got a call from Carol who helps run the Black history museum of Saskatchewan. She just got off the phone with a senior officer in the military. The date is already set, July 9th of next summer. It will mark the time they formed the battalion ."My dad''s voice falls quiet."Now that it''s finally happening, how do you feel?" I ask him.Another moment of silence passes before he slowly replies, "Truth be told, I never believed it would happen in my lifetime.

And now that it has come . it just doesn''t seem right that I would be the one to hear it. And really, of all his sons, I''m sure I would have been the last one my father would have chosen to stand before the prime minister of Canada on his behalf -- but that''s another story."From an early age, I knew about Papa and his role in the battalion because a portrait of him as a member of its marching band sat on the edge of the hutch in our living room. Strangely enough, as prominent as that image was in the memory of my childhood, I knew very little about what happened to him during the war. No doubt it was very difficult for my father, or any in his generation, to tell the story without reliving the painful racism they endured, and the shame they were taught to feel about being Black bodies in "a white man''s world," as they were so often told. It has taken a whole generation to find the collective strength to bring to light the painful irony of their struggle, that these men had to fight their own country for the right to fight for the freedom of others in a distant land. In effect, white society refused to see the souls of these human beings who, possessing hope and heartache, bravery and brokenness, simply desired to be treated as men like any other.

In fairness, if they had taught about the legacy of the Black Battalion in Canadian schools, I wasn''t around to hear it. Growing up as a biracial boy in Detroit during the ''70s, in the wake of race riots that literally burned through that city, there was no need for a history lesson to learn about the reality of racism. We were all too aware of the violence that still plagued a divided America across colour lines. And that reality quickly shaped my identity. Many states were still holding on to laws that defined people according to their racial heritage, even though the federal government had signed the Civil Rights Act six years prior to my birth. It didn''t matter that I was a light-skinned kid born of a white mother. Because my father was Black, the state defined me as Black. Those around me didn''t question it, for by then racial identity had become more than simply the colour of one''s skin.

Over the generations, race became as much about the collective culture and consciousness of existing as other than white.And the idea of "whiteness" in America was exclusive. So exclusive, in fact, that in the early days of constructing racial classes in America, even Europeans who were not of Anglo-Saxon descent were considered "non-whites." For instance, as the Irish showed up on the shores of America in the wake of the famine that impoverished their land (which many historians argue was the result of relentless colonial exploitation of their agriculture by the English), they were deemed by the British upper class as "European negroes." Initially, they were pushed into the same ghettoes as the Black and the Jewish people in the lower streets of New England cities.In a short time, however, a vast number of Europeans gave up their distinct languages and cultures to assimilate into the upper class of English-speaking white America. In my current work as a racial equity educator, we try to foster classrooms as places where students can reclaim their identities by learning about diverse histories, in order to reimagine a future in which they truly belong. Ironically, it is often white teachers and students who struggle the most with the exercise, for so many of their ancestors deliberately erased their own sense of history to be "normalized" in a racially segregated society.

And make no mistake, those laws of segregation were powerful in shaping society. They predetermined where people grew up, the kind of schools they attended, and the places where people worked and shopped. And nowhere was the segregated landscape of America more evident than at eleven o''clock on Sunday morning. The phenomenon of "Black" churches, of "Chinese" and "Spanish" congregations, betrays the painful reality that even our religious denominations were complicit in shaping a racially segregated society. Very few white Americans can imagine church being any different from what it looks like through their own cultural lens. For instance, folk attending white suburban churches may be puzzled to hear that inside the front doors of our church in urban Detroit, there hung a large picture of a Black man with an Afro hair style. Every one of us kids knew that was Jesus greeting us when we walked through the door. If anyone questioned that, they''d be met with an indignant glare -- "How else would Jesus look?"My father would tell you that life had meaning for him in Detroit.

This was the early ''70s, and he had become the producer of two popular locally syndicated television shows and was surrounded by creative and energetic people. He was also the pastor of a congregation that was consciously engaged in the social struggle of the day. Grace Episcopal Church was situated right across the street from a "blind pig," the infamous after-hours club in this predominantly Black neighbourhood that was raided by police late one night in July 1967. Dozens were arrested, hundreds more poured onto the street in protest, and before anyone knew what happened, the building was ablaze. It was the spark that set the city on fire, ignited by deep frustration over decades of systemic racism, police brutality, and lack of opportunity, leading to five days of intense civil unrest. The violence left forty-three people dead, thousands arrested, and large parts of the city destroyed, marking one of the most destructive uprisings in U.S. history.

Through his countless hours of working in the community, Dad was deeply aware of the unresolved racial conflict that still gripped Detroit. Over time, my parents watched the "white flight" to the suburbs, which sadly included some of their own acquaintances. Though the exodus of white families from urban neighbourhoods had already quietly begun, the 1967 riots accelerated their departure from the city, as many associated the unrest with declining safety and property values. Discriminatory real estate practices like "blockbusting" stoked panic, convincing white homeowners to sell quickly before other races took over their neighbourhoods. At the same time, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the growth of suburban housing developments made moving more appealing. Together, these factors led to a mass migration of white residents to surrounding suburbs, deepening racial segregation and economic decline in Detroit. They took their economic wealth that could have been a valuable asset to rebuilding communities. Instead, public institutions, like the education system, were decimated.

My parents, for example, couldn''t afford private schools, which left them no choice but to deal with the upheaval happening in our local schools.As the future became less certain, my parents made the hard decision to move back to Canada. My mom was raised in a quiet working-class neighbourhood on the east coast of Canada, and I suspect she thought it would be a better place to raise kids. In many ways she was right, but it turns out racism doesn''t just stop at the border, and there were still hard lessons to be learned on how to face it. I was around nine years old when my father found work as a summer camp director for kids outsid.