Chuck Nisbett won’t ever forget the day he arrived in Canada as part of a black immigrant family from England.
It was January 1975 and his father met him and his brothers and sisters at Calgary International Airport holding parkas for all the kids as they walked off the plane into open air that cold and snowy day. It was the first time he’d ever felt a bite of winter that hard.
The 11-year-old Nisbett had another icy welcome waiting for him on his first day of classes at Dr. J.K. Mulloy Elementary School. He and his sisters, dressed in their school uniforms, were the only black kids in the school. He had just come in from recess to hang his coat in the cloakroom when another boy came up from behind him and said: “That’s my hook, n*****.”
“So I turned around and raised a knee and he dropped to the floor, just as the teacher came around the corner and said, ‘Charles!’ I said, ‘He called me a n*****,’ and she said ‘OK, go to your class,’ while he was still rolling on the floor. It was French class and six guys came by on the way to their seats and they said, “you’re dead after school.’ So I waited by the door after school and waited a half an hour and nobody showed up.
“The next day I saw the kid at school and asked him what happened and goes,’ No big deal,’ and that was it. We’ve been best buddies ever since. I’ve been friends with that guy for 45 years now. We go fishing for a week every year out of his trailer in Caroline, Alberta.”
After that day, Nisbett never had a problem he could tie to his race. Calgary was, as Nisbett described, “very chill,” a far cry from what the prejudice he experienced in the late ‘60s growing up in the only black family in the small town of Droitwich, England near his birthplace of Birmingham.
“Some people would just totally ignore us, some would not talk to us and some were outright nasty,” he said. “I started school when I was four and until I was 11-and-a-half and came to Canada, all I did was fight. I fought everybody and the only fights I lost were to my brothers. I got screamed at and called nasty names and I didn’t put up with it. I was the youngest boy and all my brothers taught me how to throw a punch and what to do.”
Nisbett stays well-tuned to news reporting and has given much thought to the circumstances that surrounded the death of George Floyd, the riots and protests that followed and the many other people of colour who have died as a result of police violence. He says it’s unfortunate police forces all over the world are bearing the brunt of people frustrated by what they see as lack of protection from law enforcement officers.
“That’s a shame. I was a photojournalist from 1987 when I went to work at the Medicine Hat News and I have worked with RCMP, city cops, you name it, across Alberta and B.C., and there’s no problem there,” he said. “You might find one or two guys who are uptight and a bit too aggressive but for the most part the cops are not a problem. It’s that one per cent who gets all the news attention and it makes every cop look bad.
“Our police forces have to a be a little more up front and think about how it looks and think there’s an eye on you all the time, because there probably is.”
Cell phones and dash cameras are prevalent now in society and the eight-minute 46-second recording of Floyd taking his last breaths as he suffocated with police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck galvanized the BLM movement.
“Cell phone cameras have opened up the shadows, showing more of what’s really happening,” said Nisbett. “I think it’s going to take a long time to settle down and I think it will percolate through into major politics and I can see it having an effect on the election in the States in November and on Canadian policy as well.
“It’s not going to just go up die down this time. We’re seeing more and more video and reports of other violence against blacks and other races coming forward and I think that’s going to happen more and more, kind of like the Me Too (Harvey Weinstein) thing happened.
“They’re talking about going to body cams for the RCMP and that’s great. But is that footage going to be used for the public? Probably not. It’ll disappear because nobody wants their organization to look bad.”
Nisbett acknowledges racism exists in Prince George, and he says Indigenous people are most often the targets, but he feels safe and welcomed wherever he goes in the city. The discrimination he’s encountered in the heart of British Columbia is more hidden and subtle than the type that’s happening in the United States.
“There is still systemic racism here, people learn it directly from their parents and their peers all along,” he said. “I meet little kids two or three years old and they’ll come and play with you and be happy as hell and they couldn’t care who I am, just a tall guy to climb. Then by the time they’re six of seven they’re like, ‘Oooh, let’s not go near the black guy.’
“Usually by the time they’re in their late pre-teens or early teens, most of them have decided it’s not a big deal, but you still get some people you see here who have got that attitude here. I think most of that is because we consume so much U.S. media and news and some of the ideas cross over, even to a small city like Prince George.”
Nisbett moved to Prince George in 1991 to take a job as a photographer for The Citizen. At the time there were just 10 black families who made their homes in the city and he says they all knew each other. Not so any more. UNBC and the College of New Caledonia have extended their reach and are attracting international students, professors and their families who have changed the face of the city.
“Now, I go down the street and there’s a lot more out and about now,” he said. “There’s a lot of blacks from Vancouver coming here to go to school. It’s totally different from when I first got here. Everybody knew the big black guy from the Citizen with the camera.”
Nisbett remembers showing up for an assignment with former Citizen reporter Charelle Evelyn, who is also black, and people greeting him to ask if Evelyn was his daughter or his wife, even through there’s no resemblance between the two. Nisbett and Evelyn both laughed to themselves about it, rather than take offence.
Nisbett and his wife Brenda were visiting Calgary a few years ago and went in to a supermarket close to where he grew up in the northwest quadrant of the city. After walking to the back of the store, Brenda pointed out that she was the only white person in the store.
“There was not another white face anywhere and I said, ‘Welcome to my world,’” he laughed.
