Please plan to join us for the next event in our Virtual Black History Series!
The Amherstburg Freedom Museum is pleased to host author and historian Cheryl Thompson in conversation with Irene Moore Davis on April 21st at 5:00 pm Eastern. We’ll be discussing Dr. Thompson’s latest work, Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, April 2026.) Register to join: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/…/15d55a18-fdec-4d5a…
In the early twentieth century, as variety shows flooded Canadian stages, new forms of blackface, inspired by modern forms of amusements, changed the theatre. In this era marked by progressive social reforms, the stage embodied the modern ethos of imitation, mimicry, and change.
Staging Blackface in Canada explores a twenty-year period in Canada’s history when there was no media regulation, and no mandate to promote Canadian culture. Through an examination of theatrical reviews, images, and textual records, Staging Blackface in Canada locates how the Canadian stage became a playground for ethnic jokes, racial caricature, and women’s emancipation. It also locates some of the first Black musicals and operas to appear on Canadian stages.
Cheryl Thompson lives in Toronto and is the author of Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812–1897 (2025), Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (2021) and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture (2019). She holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University.