Casting Blackface in Canada: Unmasking the History of ‘White and Black’ Minstrel Shows

Abstract:Blackface minstrelsy was the dominant form of mass entertainment for over a century, from the 1840s through the 1940s. In Canada, there has been little scholarly research into the topic but for the work of Stephen Johnson and, in recent years, the works I have published on the subject. One of the reasons blackface has been understudied is the dearth of attention paid to histories of slavery. By exploring the history of casting blackface productions, both ‘white’ minstrelsy (white performers blackening up to imitate the song and dance of African-Americans) and ‘Black’ minstrelsy (Black performers in and out of blackface performing caricatures of themselves in front of majority-white audiences), we gain an understanding of how these shows were produced, and what audiences found appealing about them. Canada has produced its own blackface stars, like Colin ‘Cool’ Burgess (1840–1905) and Calixa Lavallée (1842–1891), both of whom toured the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth century and who not only performed in blackface but also produced songs, some of which are still known today, like “O Canada,” the Canadian national anthem, composed by Lavallée in 1880. Additionally, what the history of casting blackface in Canada shows is a long-standing desire among white audiences for depictions of the American Plantation South that often included the participation of local actors like playwright and writer Charles Wesley Handscomb (1867–1906), who moved to Winnipeg in 1879, who were often cast in touring minstrel productions to sing in blackface.