Parliamentarian Donald Oliver was the first Black man to sit in Canada’s Senate

When Donald Oliver was growing up in Wolfville, N.S., as part of the only Black family in town, racism wasn’t just a concept, it was a daily experience. He knew what it meant to walk into classrooms, grocery stores and restaurants and be treated as lesser.

A half-century later, when he swore the oath of office in 1990 as the first Black man appointed to the Senate, it meant more than recognition of his distinguished career and his community leadership. It carried the weight of history, proving that the walls that once shut him out could be broken.