Former RCMP officer shines spotlight on Black history in Atlantic Canada
Craig Marshall Smith was born and raised in Nova Scotia. An RCMP sergeant with 28 years on the force, he is also a published author. A Black Atlantic Canadian himself, several of Smith’s books focus on the history and achievements of other notable Black individuals from or related to Atlantic Canada; his sixth and most recent book, Appointed to the Order: Black Atlantic Canadians, is no exception. The book showcases Black recipients of Atlantic Canadian honours, including the Order of Newfoundland.
Smith graduated from the RCMP training depot and officially donned the serge at age 35. Having some good friends who were already on the force, he did not go into the job blind to the challenges he might face as a Black officer, he says. He recognized that systemic racism still existed in Canada, and that the RCMP would not be immune to it.
“I went in realizing that, yeah, there were going to be some times when I’m probably going to arrest somebody who’s not really happy to see me,” Smith says, “and the easiest thing that they can throw at me is a derogatory racial slur.”
Fortunately, it didn’t happen as often as you might think. Of the few times it did, he says, “Usually the fellow was in the backseat of the car with handcuffs on and he was going to jail, and I was driving him there. And so, I didn’t let that stop or hinder me.”
Smith had several jobs before becoming a Mountie. He worked 12 years at the North Branch Library on Gottingen Street in Halifax, where he sometimes did school visits and talked about African-Nova Scotian history. While there’s a trove of material available on Black American history, there’s not as much on Black Canadian history.
When Smith started doing school visits in the mid-eighties, he says, almost everyone in the classroom would be familiar with Rosa Parks, but he was lucky if even the teacher knew who Viola Desmond was. Desmond, of course, was the Black Nova Scotian civil rights activist who refused to leave the whites-only area of a theatre and was subsequently arrested. Smith has familial connections to Desmond — he has a cousin who was her nephew. Desmond posthumously received a free pardon in 2010, which Smith attended.
Teachers would often ask Smith if there were books available about the topics he discussed as they would like to include them in the curriculum. This inspired him to begin writing books on the subject himself.
“Teachers were asking for it,” says Smith. “They were saying, ‘This is a void that needs to be filled.’”
His three most recent books have a particular focus on Atlantic Canada. He hopes that by including all of the Atlantic provinces in his work, the books will have an appeal in all four provinces as texts for students.
“I think it’s really important that we celebrate all of us and who we are and the contributions we’ve all made to the history of our country,” says Smith.
In Appointed to the Order, Smith highlights two Black recipients of the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first is Lanier Phillips. He was born in Lithonia, Georgia, in 1923, at the time one of the most racist states in the U.S. Phillips grew up in an era when lynchings were still commonplace. In 1941, after the United States joined WWII, Phillips, at the age of 18, enlisted in the navy. On February 18, 1942, the ship he was on, the USS Truxtun, shipwrecked off Newfoundland’s south coast. Phillips was among the 46 survivors who were rescued by fishers and miners from St. Lawrence. He was the only Black sailor among them. The rescuers brought the surviving sailors into the town to be cleaned, fed, and sheltered. It was the first time Phillips had ever been treated kindly by white people, and the experience changed the trajectory of his life. Following his rescue, he was moved to work tirelessly for civil rights. He fought racial discrimination in the United States, even marching with Martin Luther King Jr. He also made history when he became the U.S. Navy’s first Black sonar technician. He continued with his civil rights work after his retirement. Phillips remembered the kindness of the people of St. Lawrence his whole life and gave back to them as much as he could. His donations were such that the town used them to build a playground, which they named after him. In 2011, Phillips was awarded the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador for his work in civil rights in the U.S. He passed away the following year on March 11, 2012, at the age of 85.
“To see the act of kindness by folks that, for the most part throughout your life, had always looked at you in a negative light because you were Black — it just hits on so many levels of human kindness,” says Smith of Phillips’ story, “opening up people’s eyes to the fact that we are more alike than we are different, and that even in the wake of growing up in a time of tremendous bigotry, that you can have such acts of kindness, and then create a fulfilling relationship that would last his whole lifetime. It’s just amazing.”
The second recipient of the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador in Smith’s book is Dr. Lloydetta Quaicoe. Originally from Sierra Leone, she moved to Newfoundland in 1982. She has distinguished herself for decades in academia and by her dedication and support for a number of social causes. Her committee work has helped inform various public policy initiatives on culture, law, population growth, and immigrant integration. Quaicoe is also the CEO of Sharing Our Cultures, a program which engages high school youths in workshops which ultimately culminate in them sharing their cultures with the public and hundreds of Grade 6 students at an annual event at the Rooms. She was awarded the Order in 2019.
Smith says Quaicoe’s influence in so many sectors shows “the power of one.” He says a single person can have great influence and that, if people respect who you are and what you have to say, you can make great change.
“To be able to be in the presence of somebody who’s doing great things can only help to inspire those young people to think about what contributions to society they can make,” he says.
In addition to writing, Smith has done a great deal of work within the RCMP to combat racism and discrimination. In 2008, after a racial incident occurred in Digby, Nova Scotia Smith was asked to create a course that would help educate all levels of RCMP members on systemic racism, the experiences of Black individuals, Black history in Nova Scotia, and Black contributions to Canadian and Nova Scotian history. It was a one-day course he taught from 2009 to 2017. He was then asked to expand it into a week-long course, which he and four other African-Nova Scotian RCMP employees created. They started the course in 2018, and in 2023 it became a national certified course for RCMP members.
Following the death of American George Floyd in 2020 as the result of an arrest by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Smith says a lot of Black RCMP employees felt angry and disenfranchised. “The organization took a long time to come out and actually denounce police brutality against Black men,” he says.
In that time, Black officers created a network of their own. Smith and two other employees began calling members across the country, asking how they were feeling about the situation.
“A lot of folks expressed a concern and wanted to do something,” says Smith.
The group advised them to take part in Take A Knee events going on in their communities, and to show their uniforms, to demonstrate their support.
“We created the first racially diverse employees network in the history of the organization,” Smtih says.
The group continues meeting to talk about bringing about change in the RCMP.
When it comes to how the average citizen can combat racism, Smith says speaking up when you witness bigotry is invaluable. He advises people not to be the ones who laugh at derogatory jokes and says they should instead aim to be the ones who point out how wrong such jokes are.
“I try to tell folks it doesn’t have to be some big, huge overt thing you do to make a stand,” says Smith.
He insists that pointing out bigotry in a calm, quiet way can sometimes be even more effective than yelling or getting angry, and emphasized how much it means for someone outside a targeted group to intervene.
“When somebody who doesn’t look like me speaks up in that moment, you know the weight that gets lifted off my shoulders because I didn’t have to be the person to do it?” says Smith. “That’s an act of advocacy!”
According to Smith, sometimes departments and education centres segregate the purchase of Black materials. By this, he means that materials concerning Black people are often restricted to the diversity category rather than included in larger overall subjects such as history, music, social studies, etcetera, which have bigger budgets. In doing this, he says, “they are segregating the use and exposure of the material into learners’ hands.”
So, how do we make sure racially diverse and significant books like those by Smith get into schools?
Smith says sometimes it is the result of parents asking why the books are not available in the classroom or to their children. Smith has reached out to all the departments of education in Atlantic Canada about his book. The departments all have copies and are going to review the book to decide whether it should be added to the classrooms. Smith is not sure if it will happen yet, but if it does not, he says if it it will not be from a lack of trying or of attempting to open people’s eyes to how important it is that everyone’s history should be included in our learning.
Smith graduated from the RCMP training depot and officially donned the serge at age 35. Having some good friends who were already on the force, he did not go into the job blind to the challenges he might face as a Black officer, he says. He recognized that systemic racism still existed in Canada, and that the RCMP would not be immune to it.
“I went in realizing that, yeah, there were going to be some times when I’m probably going to arrest somebody who’s not really happy to see me,” Smith says, “and the easiest thing that they can throw at me is a derogatory racial slur.”
Fortunately, it didn’t happen as often as you might think. Of the few times it did, he says, “Usually the fellow was in the backseat of the car with handcuffs on and he was going to jail, and I was driving him there. And so, I didn’t let that stop or hinder me.”
Smith had several jobs before becoming a Mountie. He worked 12 years at the North Branch Library on Gottingen Street in Halifax, where he sometimes did school visits and talked about African-Nova Scotian history. While there’s a trove of material available on Black American history, there’s not as much on Black Canadian history.
When Smith started doing school visits in the mid-eighties, he says, almost everyone in the classroom would be familiar with Rosa Parks, but he was lucky if even the teacher knew who Viola Desmond was. Desmond, of course, was the Black Nova Scotian civil rights activist who refused to leave the whites-only area of a theatre and was subsequently arrested. Smith has familial connections to Desmond — he has a cousin who was her nephew. Desmond posthumously received a free pardon in 2010, which Smith attended.
Teachers would often ask Smith if there were books available about the topics he discussed as they would like to include them in the curriculum. This inspired him to begin writing books on the subject himself.
“Teachers were asking for it,” says Smith. “They were saying, ‘This is a void that needs to be filled.’”
His three most recent books have a particular focus on Atlantic Canada. He hopes that by including all of the Atlantic provinces in his work, the books will have an appeal in all four provinces as texts for students.
“I think it’s really important that we celebrate all of us and who we are and the contributions we’ve all made to the history of our country,” says Smith.
In Appointed to the Order, Smith highlights two Black recipients of the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first is Lanier Phillips. He was born in Lithonia, Georgia, in 1923, at the time one of the most racist states in the U.S. Phillips grew up in an era when lynchings were still commonplace. In 1941, after the United States joined WWII, Phillips, at the age of 18, enlisted in the navy. On February 18, 1942, the ship he was on, the USS Truxtun, shipwrecked off Newfoundland’s south coast. Phillips was among the 46 survivors who were rescued by fishers and miners from St. Lawrence. He was the only Black sailor among them. The rescuers brought the surviving sailors into the town to be cleaned, fed, and sheltered. It was the first time Phillips had ever been treated kindly by white people, and the experience changed the trajectory of his life. Following his rescue, he was moved to work tirelessly for civil rights. He fought racial discrimination in the United States, even marching with Martin Luther King Jr. He also made history when he became the U.S. Navy’s first Black sonar technician. He continued with his civil rights work after his retirement. Phillips remembered the kindness of the people of St. Lawrence his whole life and gave back to them as much as he could. His donations were such that the town used them to build a playground, which they named after him. In 2011, Phillips was awarded the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador for his work in civil rights in the U.S. He passed away the following year on March 11, 2012, at the age of 85.
“To see the act of kindness by folks that, for the most part throughout your life, had always looked at you in a negative light because you were Black — it just hits on so many levels of human kindness,” says Smith of Phillips’ story, “opening up people’s eyes to the fact that we are more alike than we are different, and that even in the wake of growing up in a time of tremendous bigotry, that you can have such acts of kindness, and then create a fulfilling relationship that would last his whole lifetime. It’s just amazing.”
The second recipient of the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador in Smith’s book is Dr. Lloydetta Quaicoe. Originally from Sierra Leone, she moved to Newfoundland in 1982. She has distinguished herself for decades in academia and by her dedication and support for a number of social causes. Her committee work has helped inform various public policy initiatives on culture, law, population growth, and immigrant integration. Quaicoe is also the CEO of Sharing Our Cultures, a program which engages high school youths in workshops which ultimately culminate in them sharing their cultures with the public and hundreds of Grade 6 students at an annual event at the Rooms. She was awarded the Order in 2019.
Smith says Quaicoe’s influence in so many sectors shows “the power of one.” He says a single person can have great influence and that, if people respect who you are and what you have to say, you can make great change.
“To be able to be in the presence of somebody who’s doing great things can only help to inspire those young people to think about what contributions to society they can make,” he says.
In addition to writing, Smith has done a great deal of work within the RCMP to combat racism and discrimination. In 2008, after a racial incident occurred in Digby, Nova Scotia Smith was asked to create a course that would help educate all levels of RCMP members on systemic racism, the experiences of Black individuals, Black history in Nova Scotia, and Black contributions to Canadian and Nova Scotian history. It was a one-day course he taught from 2009 to 2017. He was then asked to expand it into a week-long course, which he and four other African-Nova Scotian RCMP employees created. They started the course in 2018, and in 2023 it became a national certified course for RCMP members.
Following the death of American George Floyd in 2020 as the result of an arrest by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Smith says a lot of Black RCMP employees felt angry and disenfranchised. “The organization took a long time to come out and actually denounce police brutality against Black men,” he says.
In that time, Black officers created a network of their own. Smith and two other employees began calling members across the country, asking how they were feeling about the situation.
“A lot of folks expressed a concern and wanted to do something,” says Smith.
The group advised them to take part in Take A Knee events going on in their communities, and to show their uniforms, to demonstrate their support.
“We created the first racially diverse employees network in the history of the organization,” Smtih says.
The group continues meeting to talk about bringing about change in the RCMP.
When it comes to how the average citizen can combat racism, Smith says speaking up when you witness bigotry is invaluable. He advises people not to be the ones who laugh at derogatory jokes and says they should instead aim to be the ones who point out how wrong such jokes are.
“I try to tell folks it doesn’t have to be some big, huge overt thing you do to make a stand,” says Smith.
He insists that pointing out bigotry in a calm, quiet way can sometimes be even more effective than yelling or getting angry, and emphasized how much it means for someone outside a targeted group to intervene.
“When somebody who doesn’t look like me speaks up in that moment, you know the weight that gets lifted off my shoulders because I didn’t have to be the person to do it?” says Smith. “That’s an act of advocacy!”
According to Smith, sometimes departments and education centres segregate the purchase of Black materials. By this, he means that materials concerning Black people are often restricted to the diversity category rather than included in larger overall subjects such as history, music, social studies, etcetera, which have bigger budgets. In doing this, he says, “they are segregating the use and exposure of the material into learners’ hands.”
So, how do we make sure racially diverse and significant books like those by Smith get into schools?
Smith says sometimes it is the result of parents asking why the books are not available in the classroom or to their children. Smith has reached out to all the departments of education in Atlantic Canada about his book. The departments all have copies and are going to review the book to decide whether it should be added to the classrooms. Smith is not sure if it will happen yet, but if it does not, he says if it it will not be from a lack of trying or of attempting to open people’s eyes to how important it is that everyone’s history should be included in our learning.