Bashir Mohamed digs through files at the Edmonton Public School Board archives.
This episode: The Trustee Enigma. Bashir Mohamed asks whether Edmonton has ever had a black public school trustee.
Looking for an answer takes us to the Edmonton Public School Board’s archives, a conversation with a current trustee, and to the centre of the conversation about modern-day racism in Edmonton.
This episode contains some explicit language.
Bashir poses with a photo…
A class photo from the 1932 Grade 8 class at Edmonton Technical School. Based on an entry in the school’s yearbook that that reads “Stanley Petherbridge was walking down the street with the Birth of a Nation behind him,” we initially believed the black student in the centre of the bottom row was named Stanley Petherbridge.
In this episode, we start our search at the Edmonton Public School Board archives at the old McKay Avenue School. Archivist Holly Platt compiled pictures of trustees dating back to 1885, when the school board was founded.
She also pulled up some fascinating class photos from the 1930s that feature black students, including the one above.
Listen first, then learn more about what happened next below the spoiler bar.
A collection of trustees from the earliest days of Edmonton’s public school board, back in the 1880s and 1890s. Donald Ross (top left) operated the first hotel outside Fort Edmonton, and John A McDougall (second from the left on the bottom) became a mayor of Edmonton, and later an MLA. [EPSB Archives – P85.17.1]Unfortunately, searching through pictures was inconclusive. As you can see by R V Johnson’s photos over the years, what looks like dark skin could just be dark photocopying. We decided to try other methods of research.
In this list of 1963 trustees, we thought R V Johnson looked interestingly dark in his picture…
But a similar photo in 1969 looks much lighter. We chalked this one up to dark photocopying.
The video of the incident that happened while Bashir was biking downtown a couple days after we visited the archives:
Some photos from Bashir’s subsequent meeting with Mayor Don Iveson (my favourite is the one where Bashir is framed by columns with pictures of previous mayors):
Bashir doing his first-ever media scrum, after meeting with Mayor Don Iveson.
Mayor Iveson and Bashir chat in front of the cameras.
It wasn’t intentional, but I laughed when I saw the juxtaposition in this picture of Bashir framed by pictures of our all-white lineup of previous mayors.
Thanks to current trustee Nathan Ip for providing us with what seems to be the definitive answer. Below, pictures of milestone trustees Nathan Ip, Mel Binder, and Lila Falman.
Nathan Ip, the first Chinese heritage public school trustee in Edmonton.
The top left modern portrait in this anniversary advertisement is Mel Binder, Edmonton’s first Jewish public school trustee.
Lila Fahlman (centre) was Edmonton’s first Muslim public school trustee.
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