When Black Canadians tried to enlist for the First World War, they were turned away. Ottawa’s answer, in 1916, was a separate unit: the No. 2 Construction Battalion, formed in Pictou, Nova Scotia, and kept out of front-line combat. In 2022, 106 years later, the prime minister said sorry.
Remembrance Day is Wednesday, and it is a day to say who was in that battalion. About 800 Black men from Canada, the United States and the British West Indies were associated with it. The federal government’s own account is that they were wronged at every stage of their service.
“The members of the No. 2 Construction Battalion were discriminated against before, during and after their service in the Great War,” Defence Minister Anita Anand said when the apology was delivered. The unit “was officially disbanded without recognition for their service or sacrifices,” according to the government’s account of the apology.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered it on July 9, 2022, in Truro, N.S., to the descendants. “For the blatant anti-Black hate and systemic racism that denied these men dignity in life and in death, we are sorry,” he said. Ottawa committed to eight recommendations from a National Apology Advisory Committee, which consulted 690 descendants. The 4 Engineer Support Regiment was named to carry on the battalion’s lineage, and the unit was awarded the “France and Flanders, 1917-18” Battle Honour.
The anniversary is still marked. In July, the veterans affairs and defence ministers issued a statement for the 110th anniversary of the battalion’s formation on July 5, 1916, saying that “despite facing widespread discrimination, many Black Canadians stepped forward to volunteer.” Members of 4 Engineer Support Squadron took part in the annual ceremony in Pictou on July 4.
A statement cannot fill the gaps. Black Canadians’ wartime service went well beyond one battalion, in munitions plants and shipyards as well as the forces, and the Black North Initiative writes that it remains under-documented. It has called for Black Canadian stories in school curricula and for veterans’ data broken down by race and gender, so that Black veterans’ needs can be counted.
That is the unfinished part of the apology. A country that admits it refused Black volunteers owes more than a plaque: it owes classrooms that teach the men’s names and records that count the Black veterans living today. The ceremonies are Wednesday, Nov. 11.
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