Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897 - REVIEW

by Cheryl Thompson

Canada and the Blackface Atlantic traces the origins of theatre, dance, and concert singing in Canada and their connection to British and American song and dance traditions.

When theatrical acts first appeared in the late eighteenth century, chattel slavery had transformed into mass entertainment on minstrel stages across the Atlantic world. As railroads and theatres were built, local blackface troupes emerged alongside touring British and American acts. By the 1850s, blackface theatre could be found in remote Western outposts to stages in Central and Maritime Canada. This is one of the first books to connect the rise of Canadian blackface minstrelsy with the emergence of Black singers, and choral groups. It describes how Black performers who assumed minstrelsy's mask remapped plantation slavery on Canadian stages.

It begins with the conflicts that shaped North America - the American Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Next, it connects these origins with eighteenth-century British immigration, which brought folk dances and masking traditions to North America. From there, it unmasks when and how "Jim Crow" became an Atlantic world sensation, which set the stage for blackface to expand. Finally, it considers how Black acts reimagined the parameters of their own freedom.

Dr. Cheryl Thompson is an Academic, Public Speaker, and Director, Research and Creative Strategy of Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA), a project that is reimagining Black archives in the province of Ontario by making Black archival collections accessible and searchable via an open access online platform. She is also Director of Black Creative Lab, an incubator for digital content. She 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). Dr. Cheryl lives in Toronto, Canada.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press
ISBN-13 978-1771126540