--June 9, 2021.
QAHN Board member Dr. Dorothy Williams has been short-listed for the prestigious Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming.
In the words of Dr. Williams' nominator,
"Dr. Williams is the author of Blacks in Montreal, 1628-1986: An Urban Demography, and The Road To Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal,and Les Noirs à MONTREAL, 1628-1986, and the recipient of the Mathieu da Costa Award and others. Her scholarship has been groundbreaking in the province and she has a wealth of detailed knowledge about Canada's Black history. Thus, she has developed a program (kit) to promote the teaching of Black history in the education system in Canada. It is “The ABC's of Canadian Black History”. Every story explores the richness of Black history across the country. The program (kit) is currently being used within several boards in Ontario as it fulfills a desperate need to provide tools that will augment current history programs. This kit brings to the forefront parts of Quebec that hitherto fore history that has neglected. The expectation is that the Kit will be integrated into the Quebec education system in the next academic year. She is the foremost community consultant on the history of Black people in Montreal and in Quebec. Consequently, her knowledge of Black history in Montreal and Quebec has been used as a content for several Canadian films, research studies, plays, etc. She is a vaunted educator of Black history, teaching the only course on Black Montreal at Concordia University. She is a wonderful and humorous presenter. I believe that her body of historical and chronological work of Blacks in Montreal and Quebec, and her goal to teach educators about the value of inclusion and awareness of Canada's unknown black narrative, deserves official recognition from Canada, specifically the Governor General’s History Award."
Dr. Williams' many friends and colleagues at QAHN salute this important recognition of Dorothy's work.