Many years ago Alison and I took a trip by train from Toronto to Vancouver. To save money we rode “comfort class”—which isn’t all that comfortable; you pay for a single seat for the entire ride, no sleeping berth. We met some interesting characters in comfort class, and I have vivid memories of being awake in the wee hours of the morning having deep conversations with others who couldn’t get comfortable to sleep. One thing that stands out for me from that trip was the short stops we would make along the way. Often this would happen in extremely remote settings. Small communities with no road access had been built along the railway. Trains would stop to deliver supplies. If not for the railway, these communities would never exist.  

That cross-country trip reinforced for me what I had learned in Canadian History 101 about the historical importance of the railway to Canadian unity. The Canadian Pacific Railway, which was built in the 1880s, succeeded in linking the Pacific coast to the prairies and Great Lakes, and ultimately to the Maritimes. These are all very distinct regions, with their own different settler cultures. Without the coast-to-coast railway, it’s not certain that Canada would’ve survived as a single country. The railway was so central to the emergence and growth of Canada that Gordon Lightfoot sang about it in his 1966 iconic hit “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” These words toward the end of the song stand out:              

On the mountain tops we stand / All the world at our command / We have opened up this soil / With our teardrops and our toil

While Gordon Lightfoot views the railway project as a triumph, there’s another side to the story that’s not often discussed.  

To set that up, let me turn to today’s Gospel, where we encounter Jesus with his closest followers. They’ve been fishing all night, probably in the way they usually do, but they’ve come up empty handed. No fish. Jesus, who had been teaching the crowds on the shore from one of the boats, tells his followers to set their boats out in the deep water and lower the nets. At first they object—“What’s the point?” they ask—but when they follow Jesus’ suggestion, their nets are filled with so much fish that they begin to break. When they haul the fish in, the boats begin to sink. I think the lesson in this story is that we are invited to learn things, and to do things, that are different than what we’re used to or what we expect. Jesus’ followers were probably in the habit of fishing at night. Usually they’d haul in their fair share; sometimes they’d come up short. For once Jesus invites them to do things differently, and the result is rather shocking.  

We, too, are invited to learn things, and to do things, that are different. We’re invited to move into the deep waters at a time when it may be inconvenient for us, to learn things from a different vantage point about our country, to explore a side of history that is too often ignored or simply overlooked. I’d like to challenge us to keep that image in mind, of moving into the deep waters, as we celebrate Black History Month and deepen our knowledge of Black history in Canada.  

At the time Alison and I took that long train trip, we were part of the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields. In that congregation was a man named John Huggins, originally from St. Kitts (he died just a month ago at age 91). John and I hit it off the moment we first met. He told me stories of when he first came to Canada, what it was like to be Black in 1950s Toronto in a neighborhood with no Black people, and how he found work as a train porter, ultimately becoming active in the union.  

John’s life, I discovered, was not unique. Recently I watched a fascinating documentary film about Black train porters in Canada called The Road Taken (you can stream it for free on the National Film Board website). By the turn of the 20th Century, railway travel in Canada was booming. To service passengers for lengthy cross-country trips, train companies would hire porters to do the work of loading luggage, preparing sleeping berths, shining shoes, and attending to many other needs of passengers. Porters had to work long hours and were away from their families for several weeks at a time. When they returned home, it was only for a short layover before they were away again for another extended stint. That sort of work did not appeal to white men, especially when other opportunities were available to them for more pay. But for Black men—whether new West Indian immigrants, or African Americans getting away from the Jim Crow South, or those already with multi-generational roots in Canada—work as a porter was often their only option. Racial discrimination ran deep in the world of employment. In the 1940s, in a city like Toronto, Black men wouldn’t even be hired as cab drivers.  

Life as a porter, as my friend John shared, was hard. Being away from your wife and children was one thing. But on the job, porters frequently endured racial taunts and false accusations from white passengers. That sometimes resulted in porters being fired abruptly without any recourse. The union representing all railway employees in Canada was of no help. Initially it refused Black membership, but even after that changed, Black employees continued to be treated as second or third class workers. In 1939 porters in Canada joined the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a Black-led U.S.-based union, fronted by A. Philip Randolph, who would go on to play a major role in the Civil Rights Movement. The affiliation with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was instrumental in securing collective agreements with better working conditions. In 1954, after a lengthy struggle, the first Black train conductor was hired in Canada. A precedent was finally set: Black people could achieve career advancement. But employment discrimination would continue. It still happens today, more than we’d like to admit.  

For all the adversity they faced, Black porters made a lasting cultural impact on Canada. Since porters were away from home for such lengthy periods, they sought spiritual refuge at certain stops on the railway line. One example is Winnipeg, where porters would frequent Pilgrim Baptist Church, the oldest Black congregation in Manitoba. The church welcomed porters with open arms and became active in their struggle against employment discrimination. Another example is Montreal, which in the first half of the 20th Century was the railway hub of Canada. It was also known in some circles as Harlem North because of its growing Black community and jazz scene. Many porters found jazz irresistable, and its effect was multi-generational. The late great Oscar Peterson’s father was a porter, as was the father of Juno award-winner Joe Sealy who hosts a Monday evening radio show on Jazz FM 99.1.  

Why is all of this important? Because if we really believe that Black Lives Matter, as we declare each Sunday, then Black history also matters. But Black history is not usually part of Canada’s mainstream narrative. We need to venture out into the deep waters to do our own learning. When commit ourselves to that work, we are surely risking the nets of our assumptions breaking and the boats of our expectations sinking. But that, after all, is the point.