2022-12-29
An activist and former football player examines the people and forces that shaped his inclusive social vision.
Born in Montreal to an upper-class Black Jamaican father and a working-class White Quebecer mother, Holness grew up in the Hindu faith his parents had adopted. His home life, however, was anything but settled. Restless and idealistic, his mother took Holness to live in an ashram in West Virginia, where she dropped in and out of his life. Her frequent absences eroded their bond, but the author still credits her with helping him understand love “as a force that could traverse geographical, racial and cultural lines, that didn’t depend on labels or conventions.” Reuniting with his mother in Montreal at age 9, Holness suddenly came into contact with people who, unlike the members of his ashram, judged him for being different. As he was settling into his new home and into renewed contact with his father, the author’s mother moved the family to a small majority-White town where school peers grouped him with “kids who wore baggy clothes and liked hip-hop.” From there, they moved to Ottawa and then back to Montreal, where he began dealing marijuana. His athletic gifts saved him from falling too far behind, and he attended college, where he embraced education rather than drugs as rebellion against marginalization. After a series of international development projects led him away from Canada, Holness returned to Montreal determined to tear down the barriers that tyrannized non-White, non-French minorities in Quebec. Though losing two bids to become mayor, he nevertheless brought—and continues to bring—much-needed attention to systemic discrimination. “I knew that the city couldn’t advance toward justice and fairness while ignoring the realities of intersectionality,” he writes. This brief autobiography about a unique individual will be of special interest to readers seeking to better understand Canada’s little-discussed racial issues.
Illuminating reading.
