Celebrating Black History Month: Documentary and Q&A with Wayde Compton

Black History Month brings to us all the opportunity to educate ourselves and celebrate a community that has historically been subject to erasure here in Canada.

Our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee has organized informative and engaging events throughout the month to help bring awareness to the many contributions of Vancouver’s Black and African diasporic communities. The first event, held February 4, 2022, was a virtual screening of the 2016 documentary “Secret Vancouver: Return to Hogan’s Alley”. The documentary focuses on the historical Vancouver neighbourhood, now known as Hogan’s Alley, which was home to a concentrated Black community from the mid 1800’s until it was obliterated by urban renewal around 1970. You can view the documentary here.

The screening was followed by a Q&A led by guest speaker, Wayde Compton, whose interviews are featured in the documentary. Wayde is an award winning Black Canadian writer/poet and historian, from Vancouver and co-founder of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to the public memory of Vancouver’s historical black community.

A huge thank you to our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee for bringing us all together and creating an open platform for important conversations.