Beyond the Dream: Montrealers reflect on Martin Luther King Day
CBC talks to 5 Montrealers about the slain civil rights leader and his legacy
It's a highway to heaven / None can walk up there / But the purest heart;
It's a highway to heaven / I'm walking up the King's highway.
The old gospel song took on a different meaning at Union United Church in Montreal's Little Burgundy neighbourhood yesterday, where the faithful, young and old, gathered in their Sunday best for the annual service dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.
Joyce McLean worked the congregation, trying to get them to sing along with the band belting out the song. As Union United's worship leader, organizing the Martin Luther King service is up to her, and every year she gives it her all.
It's an important day of the year for her, McLean says, but it's even more important for the children in attendance.
"They can never forget who Martin Luther King was. He was a good man, somebody you could follow. You have to keep that memory alive," she said.
Martin Luther King Day in Montreal
Union United's service is one of the main Montreal events to commemorate the slain civil rights leader's birth on Jan. 15, 1929, and mark the day named in his honour, which Montreal officially recognizes on the third Monday of January.
As it does every year, Montreal's City Hall hosted its own Martin Luther King Day event today, a breakfast that brings together city officials and local organizations dedicated to the values of diversity, inclusivity, peace and intercultural and interfaith harmony.
This year, those gathered paid special tribute to Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond, who was recently selected to grace Canada's new $10 bill. Desmond's sister, Wanda Robson, was in attendance.
CBC News spoke with five Montrealers to see what Martin Luther King Day means to them. Here are excerpts of their answers.
Joyce McLean
Worship leader, Union United Church
In the United States, where Martin Luther King Day is a holiday, they say make it a day on, not a day off. Try to do something worthwhile. My daughter lives in Washington and she would try to take her kids to a soup kitchen to help out. If somebody helped me, I would gladly do a soup kitchen here. You just have to talk to me about it and see if we can get it together. We could do a soup kitchen downstairs after the service!
David Austin
Educator and author of Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex and Security in Sixties Montreal.
I have this old record of Martin Luther King giving CBC's Massey Lectures in 1967, and he talks about a number of things that actually break the mould in terms of our perception of who Martin Luther King, Jr. was. This isn't "I Have a Dream"; this is Martin Luther King talking about the war in Vietnam, and he's talking about the war that should be waged on poverty, and he's talking about human peace and understanding. This was the revolutionary Martin Luther King struggling for dramatic change in the United States — a complete change in our consciousness, a complete change of what it means to be a human being and what humanity means. If there was ever a historical moment when that was needed, I think we're in that moment right now. That for me is the Martin Luther King that I want to remember and I want my kids to know because he's kind of been reduced to this soundbyte of "I Have a Dream."
Just on a commemorative level, I think there should be a statue of Martin Luther King in some prominent, central place here in Montreal that acknowledges his importance and doesn't marginalize him, where a cross-section of people are forced to converge at one point or another.
Melissa Mollen Dupuis
Organizer, Idle No More Quebec
When I'm thinking of Martin Luther King Day here, I'm thinking of a big missing part in the knowledge of Canadian history, that people here have also had their civil rights denied. We have to honour King, he's a very important man, but we have to include the Canadian aspect. The actions of Viola Desmond are becoming better known — they put her on the $10 bill — but people don't know anything about the civil rights movement in Canada, or that slavery was an issue in Canada. There are people who believe there was no slavery in Canada. We often look to the United States and think racism and segregation were a system that existed there, but we don't look in our own backyard and that system was cohabitating with the Indian Act or during the Second World War when Japanese people were also oppressed.
On Martin Luther King Day, we should look at how history has treated people differently and to make that diversity of history public knowledge, because it's part of Canadian history the same way Jacques Cartier is, but it's not taught in schools. For me it would be to bring back into the light that knowledge and this history that's kind of invisible to many Canadians and not only highlighting the parts of history that you like better.
Jean-Sebastien Boudreault
Vice-President, Pride Montreal
Here in Quebec or Canada we don't really celebrate what Martin Luther King, Jr. did, or at least not enough. We know his name, we know a little of his legacy, but that's pretty much it. That being said, working for the last 10 years to achieve equal rights for the LGBTQ community here in Quebec and in Canada, I can really appreciate the struggle that he went through when he was fighting for the same kind of rights for black people. We need more people like him, we need more people who think about the greater good than about themselves, which unfortunately in these times is harder to find.
He gave his life for the community, for a better world, for everybody. And that's what we need to celebrate on these days.
Quincy Armorer
Artistic Director, Black Theatre Workshop
I think sometimes it's that because Martin Luther King was famous for being very American and our perspective up here in Canada is different, maybe that's where there is a disconnect. But in the business that I'm in, running a black theatre company, I certainly feel the effects north of the border of the struggles that Dr. King was fighting. That's why I like to go to events that celebrate him around the time of his holiday.
I think — I hope — that celebrations like Martin Luther King Day help people to not take for granted the benefits and the privileges that we now have. Certainly there's still further to go, and I say that loudly. But, at the same time, there were a lot of heroes, a lot of fathers and mothers who came before us who fought so that we wouldn't have to fight as much, and I appreciate any event and the organizations that hold these events that give us an opportunity to remember.
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