Canada and the Blackface Atlantic

Blackface emerged in the American South through figures such as Thomas Dartmouth Rice (often remembered as the father of minstrelsy) and his act “Jump Jim Crow.” It soon migrated north, taking root in Canada through such productions as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and popular performers like Colin “Cool” Burgess and the aforementioned Lavall.e. By the mid-1800s, the southern plantation was reframed, if unintentionally, as nostalgic, helping blackface minstrelsy evolve into its racially charged progeny. It also reasserted colonial hierarchies and stripped its Black subjects — especially within the Canadian context — of nationhood, citizenship and agency, as caricatures of African Americans shaped how Blackness was defined.

This isn’t simply a story of subjugation, though, as Thompson centres Black autonomy within her book. She highlights Toronto’s Black community, which unsuccessfully petitioned the city to revoke licences from circuses and menageries staging “certain acts, and songs” that depicted “Negro Characters” as early as the 1840s. Concert singers like Elizabeth Greenfield forced white audiences to reckon with their biased perceptions of Blackness by blending the African American experience with European-trained operatic mastery. Thompson, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Performance, also traces a Black theatrical circuit that gave Black men a performative measure of agency, which nonetheless provided some financial stability.

“To learn about blackface,” writes Thompson, “is to (re)learn the story of the Atlantic world and Canada’s place within it.” That is the book’s achievement; it reframes Canadian history through a practice most would prefer to ignore. By showing how caricature and culture were deeply bound to slavery, race and resistance, Thompson leads readers to conclude that blackface did not merely happen in Canada, it helped create both the “elusive structure of racism that [binds us all]” and, more disturbingly, our nation itself.