The Complicated History of Canadian Blackface | The Tyee

In 1841, travelling American circuses came to Toronto for the first time and blackface came with them. According to University of Toronto theatre professor Stephen Johnson and historian Karolyn Smardz Frost, members of Toronto’s black community petitioned city council annually until 1843 to prohibit these acts. But every year council rejected their pleas to censor these blackface actors and racist depictions, among them Jim Crow “at home” on the plantation.

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The Complicated History of Canadian Blackface | The Tyee

Nowadays it’s often dismissed as innocent and isolated. Here’s the context.