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TORONTO, Ontario – Zanana Akande, former MPP and prominent educator, will be receiving yet another award for her outstanding achievements and commitment to equality and justice for all Canadian citizens.
She is being presented with the Donald Moore Legacy Award on July 11, 2015, at the Third Annual Donald Moore Appreciation Brunch being held at the Ellas Banquet Hall & Hospitality Centre, 35 Danforth Road, Toronto. The event begins at 12:30 p.m.
This award, being presented by Barbados House, is in honour of Donald Willard Moore, a civil rights activist who tirelessly advocated for changes to be made to Canada’s discriminatory immigration policies during the 1950s.
Mr. Moore is noted for leading the first Black-focused delegation to Ottawa 61 years ago on April 27, 1954. This delegation, comprising both Blacks and Whites, met with the Minister of Immigration, Walter E. Harris, to present a brief protesting the inequitable immigration laws that were making it extremely difficult for Blacks and other visible minorities to enter Canada, and recommending changes to correct the inequality.
The immigration laws at that time created a rigid definition of “British subjects” who were allowed to enter into Canada. It stated in part: ‘British subjects by birth or by naturalization in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand or the Union of South Africa and citizens of Ireland.’
As Mr. Moore stated in his brief: “This definition excludes from the category of ‘British subject’ those who are in all other senses British subjects, but who come from such areas as the British West Indies, Bermuda, British Guiana, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Africa, etc…Our delegation claims this definition of British subject is discriminatory and dangerous.”
The landmark brief and the subsequent relaxation of immigration laws opened the doors for West Indian nurses and domestics to find employment in Canada, states an article in the City of Toronto Archives. The petition also paved the way for visible minorities from other regions of the world to emigrate here, thus becoming the catalyst for multiculturalism in Canada, the article adds.
