Panel Discussion on Blacks in Montreal and Quebec Sept. 19

The Center for the Study of Canada and the Institute on Quebec Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh, in conjunction with the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association, are sponsoring the panel discussion, which begins at 3:30 p.m. in the Alumni Conference Room, Angell College Center.

Three international authors, Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne, Frank Mackey and Dr. Dorothy Williams, will share history of blacks in Montreal and Quebec. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Center for the Study of Canada at 518-564-2226.
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Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne holds a master's degree in history from Universite du Quebec in Montreal. She is the author of Le Proces de Marie-Josephe-Angelique , which is about the trial of a black slave who was accused of the burning of Montreal in 1734. In her capacity as historian, Beaurgrand-Champagne has worked on the award-winning CBC broadcast, "Canada, a Popular History," and on numerous publications on such subjects as the life and times of French fur traders, the French attack against Deerfield, Mass., in 1704 and the daily life in New France. She is currently the reference archivist at the Montreal Center of Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Quebec (The National Archives in Quebec).

Frank Mackey was born near Montreal and graduated from Loyola College of Universite de Montreal with a degree in French literature. He has spent most of his working life as a journalist, in Alberta, Newfoundland, Quebec and London, England. Mackey is currently a copy editor at The Gazette in Montreal. He is the author of two books published by McGill-Queen's University Press, Steamboat Connections: Montreal to Upper Canada, 1816-1843 and Black Then: Blacks and Montreal, 1780s-1880s .

Dr. Dorothy Williams is a native of Montreal who earned a master's in history and a doctorate in library and information studies from McGill University. Williams founded Ethnocultural Diffusions to collect the oral history of Blacks in Montreal. For many years she has visited schools, universities, local TV and radio stations and many public institutions to inform Montrealers of their unknown history.  

Williams has written numerous scholarly and popular articles, including two chapters on Black print culture in Canada for the three-volume national study, The History of the Book in Canada . She has written two books devoted to the history of blacks in Montreal.  Her first book, titled, Blacks in Montreal: 1628-1986 An Urban Demography , was written at the behest of the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1989 during their study of racism in Montreal's housing market. Her second book, published in 1997, was The Road to Now: a History of Blacks in Montreal .  It remains the only chronological study of blacks on the island of Montreal. 
     
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