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Dr. Donald Wright, professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, and Dr. Suzanne Morton, professor at McGill University, have assembled a bibliography detailing the Black history of Atlantic Canada.

“Black History in Atlantic Canada: A Bibliography” is a 53-page list of books, articles and primary documents on Atlantic Canada’s Black history and the Black experience. It was launched on Aug. 16.

Dr. Wright and Dr. Morton are co-editors of the academic journal Acadiensis. They developed the bibliography to foster more research into the topic and to highlight the work that’s been done so far.

George Elliott Clarke, Governor General’s Award-winning poet and former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, provides the introduction to the bibliography. Clarke is known for chronicling the history and experiences of Black Canadians in the region.

“Every bibliography is either a yellow-brick-road to Oz (or self-deception) or a road to Damascus (or revolutionary Enlightenment). Upon entering this Africadian history bibliography, one need not abandon ‘hope.’ Nope! Just the blinkered purview of stereotype,” Clarke writes in his introduction to the bibliography.

Bibliographies are considered works in progress, with more resources being added regularly. Dr. Wright and Dr. Morton hope this bibliography will also inspire oral historians to record the memories and lives of Black people in the region, particularly those who struggled to find political and economic equality in the latter half of the 20th century.

“If this bibliography records Black history, it also reveals Black presence,” they write.