Thanks for joining me for another episode of YQG In Bloom.
I'm your host, Tracy Martens, and today we are continuing our Black History Month with
Carlos Anthony, who not only wrote the new play for Act Theatre called The Price of Freedom.
He's also the star in it, which is amazing.
We're going to get to that in a moment.
And I have Elise Harding-Davis, who is one of the most knowledgeable women in Canadian
Black History.
You know a little bit of everything.
I have pages on her.
Hello.
Okay, Carlos, you have done everything between producer, director, screenwriter.
You're an author, and now you wrote for the stage.
What made you want to get into that?
I've always loved theatre and had an appreciation for it, but never had the confidence to dive
into it.
I've always wanted to seek like mentorship, just like advance in my practice.
And I've just been fortunate to be on Irene Moore-Davis' heart and mind when this opportunity
came to collaborate with the Act Collective.
Who came up with the idea for the John Anderson story?
Well actually, it's interesting how that happened.
So originally when they had reached out to me, I was like, let me see if I can find you
somebody else to write this, because I have no experience in theatre, and I just wanted
to meet expectations.
Then Moira Chris, Shelley and myself went on a date.
We went to the Amasburg Freedom Museum, and there I was able to learn a little bit about
black Canadian history.
And I'd watched this video, this YouTube video, that the Freedom Museum has.
And John Anderson's story was the one that like piqued my interest.
With my experience, just learning about like the Underground Railroad transatlantic slave
trade, it's always been very triggering and traumatic for me, especially being one of
like three black kids in my classes or in my elementary school.
When we would hear those stories, I would just want to like hide underneath my desk,
because everyone looked at me as if I was an enslaved person.
So when I learned about John Anderson's story, a man who like murdered a slave owner and
bounty hunter in self-defense and lived to tell about the story, I just thought that
this was a story that needed to be told.
But because he also changed our laws in Canada, the Webster Ashbury Act or treaty, and it
affected the way that the British governed us.
It also affected our relationships with the Americans.
And shortly after the trial, we went into the Civil War.
So I just thought it was super cool and writing it as like a spy thriller, rather than a triggering
traumatic story like most of the stories I had watched or learned about growing up.
I just thought it was super important and that it could change the perspective of many
other youth, including my son, who's in the room with us today.
I'm really glad that you said that, that you're doing it as like a spy thriller, because
I mean, stories like that are so profound and heavy-hearted.
But I mean, this has a really great ending for it.
He did a lot for black Americans, Canadians in general.
And it needs to be told without tissues in hand.
And then we have Elise here, who you ran the Amosburg Freedom Museum for how many years?
32.
Wow.
Yeah, it was mind and world changing for me.
Opposite to Carlos, truthfully, I was always very proud of being especially a descendant
of escaped slaves.
These were people who got up and walked away with nothing, to nothing, and made something.
And the John Anderson story is special because he was here in this community when he first
escaped from slavery.
So when I heard that a play was being written, one of the museum board members asked me to
come to the first act program that was deciding who was going to be what and what was going
to be where.
And I said, oh, good.
Yeah, sure, I'll do that.
And I listened and I thought Carlos had done an amazing job.
But there were little facets being a perfectionist and an historian that I wanted him to chat
with me about and see if we could make a more impactful presentation.
I'm looking at everything that you have done to help the black community in Canada is just
amazing.
Let alone Windsor.
And you're still continuing on with that legacy, which is just I find it just fascinating.
I think that I was God chosen.
I've had the opportunity to do so many things that I wanted to do again, like Carlos in
class, the only era of black history that was dealt with with slavery.
I came from a family and heard all kinds of different stories, and I knew that that was
not correct.
I was a little black kid in the front row, the egghead with the glasses with my hand
up.
And I'd always be told, well, thank you, Elise, not today.
I was never satisfied with that.
I had the opportunity from God knows where to become the curator of a museum that dealt
with black history and helped to legitimize us globally.
And that's what I've been doing.
I'm really honored that my interests asked me and trusted me with the story of the making
of the place of freedom.
And I was able to do the podcast at the Amesburg Freedom Museum, which I had no idea even existed.
I was blown away when I went there, and I'm really glad that they weren't ready for us
when we went there.
And I was able to just look at everything, and it was very, very emotional for me.
And you, Carlos, you are the author of the Global Student Reading List in National Best
Seller Shades of Black.
Can you give me a little hint as to what that's about?
Yeah.
So I wrote Shades of Black, I would say, probably in like 2022.
And it was just kind of a way for me to kind of like heal and process what my experiences
were like in high school.
I grew up in Rexdale, and the story is about me transitioning from a predominantly white
school to a predominantly black school and experiencing culture shock.
The way that I grew up to give you context.
My parents, they migrated over here from Guyana, which is in South America.
And they worked really hard to make sure that I had every privilege.
But whenever I tried to get closer to my Guyanese heritage and culture, they would mock me and
tease me, and it kind of like just pushed me away.
So I started to kind of become like an elitist, even though I didn't feel accepted by my white
peers.
And then coming to this like black school, especially what they're being like, you know,
Crips and Bloods and kids that are Caribbean or from Caribbean descent, and then kids that
are from Africa or African descent.
It was just, I was really just trying to like fit in.
And I feel like there are a lot of kids that are trying to fit in when they go into like
high school as far as like different cliques and crews.
So the story is about me as a teenager that's transitioning, trying to like fit in and navigate
like the Crips and the Bloods in the school.
And you also have a sequel or is it coming out?
So I do have a sequel.
It is coming out.
It was it was actually supposed to come out last year for Black History Month because
I'm like, this is a great opportunity to, you know, build on the momentum of black stories.
But due to creative differences, it's been pushed and hopefully it'll be out this year.
I don't know the exact date.
They have a placeholder date for now.
But the second book really focuses on more of the turf war between the Crips and the
Bloods.
And Romero, who is basically me, him trying to not join a gang but being pressured into
it.
I can't wait to read that.
It sounds really, really fascinating.
When did you co-found Millennial X?
Because it just seems your story just keeps growing and growing and you've done so much
as well.
Yeah.
So Millennial X, it's interesting.
It started in 2022.
And how that started was I had bad mentorship.
I had, the people that had mentored me that led to me eventually getting a book deal,
I had gotten them $135,000.
And as soon as the money came, our relationship changed.
So I didn't get paid what I was supposed to get paid out of the project.
And they were looking for someone to kind of replace me, like behind my back.
So what I was doing was I was actually practicing everything that I had learned from other mentors
that were mentoring me in filmmaking.
And a friend of mine over, he works at CBC, but we had worked together in HR prior.
And he was just seeing everything I was doing on social media and social media makes you
look bigger than you actually are.
So he reached out to me and he's like, we're actually looking to connect with artists in
the community.
And because we know how challenging it would be for us to compete with Netflix and Paramount
and the bigger networks.
So he said, we have this fund and it's not being used the way that it should.
Do you think that there could be an opportunity for us to collaborate?
So I told my writing partner at the time who became my business partner about the opportunity.
She came up with this proposal.
We pitched it to them.
And that's how Millennial X was created.
And how is it going so far?
It's been hard to manage because I am a full-time artist.
I was very fortunate last year to receive a grant from the Canada Council to tour across
Canada for Shades of Black.
So that made it very hard to manage it.
She's still like managing it.
And we also have Andrina Hoffordon, who is also helping to like manage it.
I've also been awarded like other grants to do like other productions that I've been
trying to manage as well.
Last year I directed like my first short film before I was just like writing and ghost writing
for like other people.
So it's just been hard to manage.
But we've done great work.
We did Nuwee Blanche last year.
Had thousands of people show up where we collaborated with BIPOC artists throughout Canada.
And we allowed them to screen their films in front of thousands of people.
And that was their second year doing that.
And to this day we've helped hundreds of people basically learn how to write a project, package
it, produce it.
And we connect them right to the broadcaster so they have an opportunity to pitch it.
For me, I just believe it being a one-stop shop.
And I think the problem with so many of these like mentorship programs is you learn one
thing but then there's no opportunity afterwards.
It's part of the reason why I love Act Windsor so much because you write a play with them
and then you actually get to see it live on the stage.
And we're so aligned on that.
And I'm so grateful to Chris and Moia and Irene for even connecting me with them.
And now I want to talk to Elise because I have pages and pages of stuff that you have
done on top of the Amesburg Freedom Museum.
I'm reading here and Elise, you have an impressive volume of work.
Well the base is anything black related I'm interested in.
And we'll research, interview, write, mull over and improve.
And it's just an ongoing life.
I've been all over the world.
But really the basis of what I do and why I do it is because I'm proud of my African
origins.
And your seventh generation.
Seventh generation Canadian.
Family's been here since 1798.
We are Canada.
Any facet of history that a person would like to look into, blacks have been involved and
have contributed so much that's just been overlooked.
And I intend for it to be looked at.
That's my life.
Have you written any books?
I have.
I've written several books and co-authored several.
In fact I'm researching a book right now on the Essex County area process called the
Refugee Home Society Group which involved Henry Bibb and his wife Mary and American
through Anthropists who helped refugee slaves settle in Essex County.
And it's fascinating.
It's just absolutely fascinating what people went through to get here, what they did once
they got here and how we have progressed to today.
Now you wrote the Black Presence in the War of 1812?
Yes I did.
1812 was a defining year in British Canadian history.
So fast forward 200 years, 2012.
There were little snippets, historica, so on and so forth but nothing about the black
presence.
So I said well, I sat down and in a month and a half I wrote the book.
Trying to help people understand our early presence here in Canada, we didn't start with
the Underground Railroad, we started the Underground Railroad.
From the late 1700s on through we were here and blacks fought in all the major confrontations
on the North American continent including the War of 1812.
And so I segmented it by province and I featured a few black heroes because Canadians don't
do heroes.
One being John Hall, John Daddy Hall who was born in Amasburg of a full blood Indian father
and escaped black mother.
And his story is phenomenal.
It's something that a play could be done on quite easily.
We'll have to put that in the Jizoo books.
Which is so, it's just growing.
It is.
I mean like that picture in the Amasburg Freedom Museum of all of the black soldiers
in that one platoon.
That's the second battalion from the first World War and over 100, close to 150 men from
Windsor Essex County were in that battalion, phenomenal stories there too.
It's never ending, really.
Chris don't even look at me.
I see you.
Chris look at me, I'll talk to you.
He's just, I want to add more to my plate.
I'm already full.
I'm bloated.
You're never full.
You think you're full?
You're never full.
God, we could do probably about four podcasts just on the history of Elise here because
you've also done the African Canadian tour program.
That's correct.
And you're still tour guide for that?
I am.
You know I've retired three times in my life.
Just like Michael Jordan.
And now that I'm retired, I'm busier than I was when I worked.
That's usually how it goes.
Yeah.
There's always something to do and there's always somebody calling me knocking on my door
tweeting me blah, blah, blah, blah.
Can you come and help with the play?
Elise, do you know anything about Elise?
Would you have time to?
And I really have a difficult time saying no because it's so important that black history
be given its proper place.
It's like this.
It's not like this.
We're not a whole bunch of militants hoping to be a part of the group.
We are the group.
That's how I see it.
I love it.
I love that.
And Carl, I see you are now acting.
You are the star in The Price of Freedom.
How is it acting your words?
It's challenging and unexpected.
When I wrote the play, I didn't write it to act in it.
I wrote it for other people to say those words and to act in it.
And for me, even as a writer, I'm like a method writer.
I've been writing a lot of projects so emotionally I'm on an emotional roller coaster because
I'm feeling all of these emotions as I'm creating all these characters.
Even preparing for this play, being angry, it just, I mean, obviously it's an emotion
that makes you feel upset.
But there are times when we're in rehearsal and I'm yelling at someone and then I just
feel like crying afterwards.
And I know for like John, even though he's not here to speak to me, that he must have
been on an emotional roller coaster from having to leave Missouri to doing everything he had
to do to come to Canada.
And then after being in Canada, trying to fit in.
And then this is something that's happening to him when he's like 19 years old.
You know what I mean?
At 18, I had a child.
So I can only imagine what it's like to have to leave and then not want to repeat what
had been done to you.
I can only imagine.
So preparing for this role has been quite challenging because I do want to meet expectations
and this is my first time acting, period.
And dude, the hardest one on stage.
Yeah, like I was like, I thought about it when we were like, you know, looking to like
cast other roles and I was like, well, maybe I could be a protest, you know, start off
something small.
And then I guess God had other plans.
I wish he had sent me a text message eight months ago because maybe it would have been
a different conversation.
But Chris has been incredible as a director.
The whole team really have like Christina Orlando has been great in just like encouraging
me and telling me that I'm doing a good job.
And Jackson has been giving me tips and some of the other actors like Jordan Youssef has
also been giving me some tips as well.
So it's just been I just been feeling so supported and my confidence is going up.
The more that I memorize my lines and the more that I work with like Chris and and everybody
else.
That's wonderful.
I can't wait to see this production.
I really can't.
And this is going to be in Windsor, Ontario, the Capitol Theatre on February 28th and March
1st at 7.30pm, I'm reading off of the thing here and March 2nd at 2pm, Capitol Theatre,
get online and get those tickets because this sounds like an amazing production.
I can't wait.
And I want to thank you both Carlos and Elise for being here today with me and sharing just
a smidgen of your stories because we could probably go on for another hour or two.
I can't tell you how proud I am to be involved in this podcast today.
It's like a combination of my dreams that a young black man has the ability not only
to write but to portray a history that happened right here and a young woman like yourself
to film this and make sure that the community is aware that something so wonderful is happening.
And by the way, the museum's 50th anniversary is this year, September 20th, not sure what
date the big event will be, but I'm so proud to still be alive to see some of the fruits
of my small endeavors come to something so wonderful.
And I'm very, very proud to be a part of this journey and to meet wonderful people like
you both and the people at the Amesburg Freedom Museum and to learn more about black history.
And I think that's probably why I've gotten so nervous when I've been doing these podcasts
is to make sure that I'm able to bring these stories out as well as what I can being that
I am less knowledgeable than what I probably should be.
And I'm glad that finally we are able to tell these stories and I appreciate you both and
I can't wait to see you Carlos on stage.
I will be there.
Yes.
I'm doing my own stunts.
I'm jumping off of a boat and a train and doing all my own fight scenes.
So it's a very new experience, but it's also a very incredible experience.
And I just want to say that I'm just thankful for Miss Elise for just providing me with
knowledge and information and just supporting me and just making sure that the story is
as authentic as it could potentially be.
I respect you.
I look at you as a legend and for me this is such an honor and a privilege that words
can't even be described or expressed in the dictionary.
So I'm just so grateful for you and so thankful that I have you supporting me with this project.
I hear your words and I appreciate it.
What I am is an old dinosaur full of ancient files to be used appropriately.
There's no point in having knowledge if you're not willing to share it.
And there's no point in sharing if you're not going to be honest.
And I'm very proud of you.
Thank you.
And on that note, I am going to say thank you for allowing me to share the story and
I hope everybody learned something this month, Black History Month.
My name is Tracy Martins and this is YQ Jean Bloom.