When musician, lyricist, artist, composer and drag performer Shadrack Jackman-McKenzie left Toronto to return to their hometown last year, they had a few concerns.
“When I was growing up, Barrie did not feel as diverse as it does now,” says Jackman-McKenzie, who is black, biracial and queer and uses non-binary pronouns. “As a 16-year-old kid going to the music shop down the road, I was stopped by the police. They asked me if I had anything in my pockets and told me to ’empty my hair’ [because] I had an Afro.”
“I didn’t really think about the incident until a few days later, when a teacher mentioned she’d witnessed it and explained I’d been racially profiled.”
Jackman-McKenzie’s landing was softened by their discovery of Uplift Black, an organization focused on building a space for the local BIPOC and queer communities to feel included. Each Wednesday evening, it hosts a drop-in program at its Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion on Dunlop St. At these events, it offers free yoga classes as well as music lessons in professional-grade recording studios.
“As an organization, we’re black, peer-led and rooted in anti-racism, anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia. It is a space for everybody to feel welcome and everyone is welcome to come through our doors. . . . Come as you are, whoever you are,” they say.
Several months after joining, Jackman-McKenzie was given the opportunity to become more involved at Black Uplift. “They sponsored my yoga teacher training program. Now I work here as the wellness co-ordinator — as well as at the yoga studio [Uplift Black] share this space with.“
Shelly-Ann Skinner, a black, queer event planner who founded Black Uplift in 2020, says Jackman-McKenzie’s story is not unusual. “Our organization is really rooted in personal development for artists, creatives and entrepreneurs — as well as anybody who works in social justice.”
When event planner moved to Barrie in 2012, she did not have a similar organization to turn to. Nor was she aware of the fact that the city had an established black community at all. “I heard a lot of people say, ‘there’s not many black people in Barrie.’ But black folk do live here — I can name nine businesses in the two blocks around us that are black-owned.”
“It is a narrative that says we don’t exist — and you still hear it constantly.”
Over the course of her first eight years in the city, Skinner’s desire to assert the black community’s existence only grew stronger. “It was 2020 and the Black Lives Matter movement was calling for more support and social programs in Canada. I was already doing advocacy work for both the local black community as well as the 2SLGBTQI+ community. It felt like the right time to create a space where we can bring those communities together.”
Four years later and Uplift Black is something of a local institution — both within the local queer and BIPOC community and without. It has established partnerships with numerous organizations, including BLM Canada, Transcare Plus and Barrie’s Gilbert Centre, as well as with Scotiabank, Georgian College and Hope for Refugees. The city has also tasked the organization with organizing events for its culture days.
If a majority of the people who attend its Wednesday night sessions are a member of either minority, it is a slim one. Free music and yoga lessons are, after all, also enjoyed by white people and heterosexuals.
Rapper Kirkland Brown, who is black, believes the group’s efforts to improve his community’s standing in Simcoe are beginning to pay dividends. When he moved from Mississagua to Innisfil in 2015, Nantyr Shores Secondary School allowed students to wear clothes emblazoned with the confederate flag.
Brown says it took a while for him to stop feeling isolated and homesick. Not long after his move, he even began performing under pseudonym Sauga City Outcast, a nom de plume he still uses.
“Back then, [anti-black racism] was rampant and out in the open. . . . Thanks to a lot of social justice movements, a lot of people have changed their ways. People are more inclusive — not just of Black people — but of all minority groups.”
“We’re not there yet, but we’re seeing steady progression.”
Skinner is somewhat less optimistic about how welcoming Barrie is to its BIPOC and queer residents. “When some of our members can’t even go out for a beer downtown on a Friday night without being called the n-word or the f-word, it feels like we still have a long way to go.”
Both Brown and Jackman-McKenzie are concerned that Skinner’s efforts have made her something of a lightning rod for local bigots. In recent weeks, she’s been harassed by a local man determined to see Uplift Black shut down. Despite their concerns, Skinner is determined to give the matter as little attention as possible.
“He has been saying that because we’re black-led, we’re a discriminatory organization and should be defunded,” she says. “He’s just struggling with the idea that an organization like ours needs to exist in our community.”
The organization is still working to break the narrative the local black population is almost non-existent. These days, it has become more focused on highlighting the black history of the region. Last month, she attended a walking tour organized by Uplift Black’s administrator — one that included many facts that have stuck in her mind.
“I don’t think many people realize this, but there have been black people in Simcoe since long before the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade [in the early 1830s]. Collingwood was actually the final stop on the Underground Railroad. We had many freedom seekers arrive, build lives and even found communities throughout Simcoe.”
