The good Black man, the one so many Black women say they've given up on finding, does he really exist? I see one every time I look in the mirror. My name is Jacob Voltaire and I was born in the City of Calgary, Alberta, to Haitian immigrant parents. My folks, Antoine and Magdalene Voltaire moved to provincial Alberta from their hometown of Port-De-Paix, Republic of Haiti, in the summer of 1988. My older brother Charlton was three at the time. Two years later, I came into the world. Sadly, though, my birth pangs were my mother's death throes, a fact that my father never let me forget.
My father and I have had a difficult relationship from my early years, but I now understand what makes him what he is and why he does what he does. I'm not excusing his drinking and womanizing, but I understand what drove him to do these things. Dad did his best to provide for my brother and I, but he was a lonely man, haunted by memories of our long-dead mother, whom I unfortunately never knew, and the hassles that he had to endure as an educated and ambitious Black man with an accent in the cutthroat world of Corporate Canada.
Growing up Black and male in Alberta is a lot like hiking through a minefield while blindfolded. Trust me on that one. I've got firsthand experience. The locals aren't too friendly to those different from themselves, and they're not shy about letting you know it. My father often told Charlton and I about the horrors he's endured as a Black immigrant as he sought to earn a living and take care of his family. Dad came to Canada with an accounting degree from the University of the West Indies, and found out that it was utterly useless.
Simply put, Canadian employers didn't trust or value credentials acquired in foreign institutions, especially countries they considered subpar. Which countries fall into that list? Any nation outside of America and Western Europe, ladies and gentlemen. Isn't that something. Canadians go to the Caribbean every year by the truckload for vacation and love showing everyone pictures of themselves frolicking on our crisp and heavenly beaches but they don't trust my region's educational institutions. For this reason, my father had to go back to school. He studied business at the University of Calgary, and completed his MBA in 1996.
A year later, Dad was hired by ATB Financial, one of the top companies in Alberta. At last, he was making decent money, and sent Charlton and I to a private boarding school, Cold Lake Christian Academy in the City of Cold Lake, Alberta. In hindsight, I now understand that my father meant well but sending two young Black boys to an all-White private school, far from home, in an environment as hostile to minorities as Alberta, wasn't his finest decision. For Charlton and I, this was the beginning of a long nightmare.
Surrounded by the sons and daughters of Alberta's elite, we were like fishes out of water. The only other non-White students there were a few Asians, a couple of Aboriginals, and that's about it. We were the only Black students. Our classmates weren't used to seeing Black faces and would often tease us. The teachers did little to stop it, indeed, some of them were downright condescending in their dealings with Charlton and I. My older brother tried his best to protect me.
Indeed, I think that's the main reason why Charlton joined the football team. By the time he reached high school he was already six-foot-one and weighed two hundred pounds. He was practically drafted onto the football team. While an average player at best, Charlton did acquire a degree of respect from his classmates after helping the team on a few occasions. He wasn't very good at catching the ball but he could slam into any opponent and take them out. When he did hit, he shrugged it off most of the time. That's my big brother, the strong, silent and resilient type.
Without Charlton to shield me from the brunt of the hassles that came our way, I don't think I would have made it. I was a nerd, the kind of guy who loved comic books and science fiction movies, and showed little interest in sports, or the opposite sex. For me, Cold Lake Christian Academy was pure hell. Every summer I'd come home to Calgary and plead with Dad not to send us back to the Academy. I just wanted to go to public school. Calgary was growing fairly diverse. In our neighborhood, situated within the pricy and restrictive Arbour Lake area of Calgary, we were the only Black family when we arrived but now I saw a few other minority families. For example, our neighbor Joseph Al-Nouri is Arab, originally from the City of Abu Kamal, Syria. He came to Alberta as a young man, studied economics at the University of Calgary, and married an Aboriginal Canadian woman from the Dene First Nations people, Mildred Nalren, with whom he has a daughter, Mariel.
Every summer, Mariel and I would hang out and play. We were borderline inseparable. I've always been shy around girls, but I felt comfortable around Mariel, the bronze-skinned, dark-eyed and raven-haired, bossy tomboy next door. Even though Calgary was growing fairly diverse, due to an influx of Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Somali and Arab immigrants, many among the local White people held onto their prejudices against the Aboriginals and First Nations people, the original Canadians.
Much of what I know of Aboriginal Canadian history I learned from Mariel's mom, Miss Mildred, as I called her. A short, slender woman with golden brown skin, long Black hair, dark eyes and sharp features, Mildred Nalren Al-Nouri was fiercely proud of her Dene heritage. She was fond of sitting us down, Mariel and I, and tell us about the great Aboriginal leaders of the past, fierce opponents of the White man as Europeans sought dominion over North America. I have much respect and affection for that woman.
As a young Black man in Alberta, I cannot escape racism, but I must never forget that I am not the only person who suffers prejudice and discrimination. The Dene people of Alberta have been here for thousands of years, and they're made to feel like second-class citizens by the rednecks in Calgary and Edmonton, in the same land their ancestors lived on. I swore to myself that one day, I would do my best to fight injustice. Prejudice against one is prejudice against all.
When we came home in Calgary, Charlton would spend all his free time with his buddies Omar and Rashid, two Somali youths who lived near Arbour Lake, or his girlfriend Roseanne Ashland, a tall, red-haired and freckle-faced plump White chick who lived three blocks from us. I honestly don't know what Charlton saw in Roseanne, since she cursed a lot, smoked, and often used slurs when referring to Aboriginals. Didn't Charlton suspect that Roseanne might say the same thing about Black people when he wasn't around?
