Foreword

TO HONOUR HER HONOUR

Always direct (even curt), our American neighbours shorten “vice-president” to the informal “veep.” If we work the same metamorphosis upon “vice-royal,” perhaps we conjure up “vicar,” a term relevant to Her Honour Dr. Mayann Francis, O.N.S., at least twice over. First, “vicar” is related to “vice,” and signals, thus, her service as the vice-regal representative—or deputy—of Canada’s constitutional monarch, i.e., Her Majesty the Queen. Secondly, “vicar” denotes a person who commands a church or chapel; for Ms. Francis, this word should remind her of her esteemed, Cuban-born father, George Anthony Francis, who, as Archpriest of St. Philip’s African Orthodox Church in Sydney, Nova Scotia, infused his daughter with Christian courage, pride in her African heritage, and a seldom-errant moral compass. Certainly, these ingrained gifts allowed Ms. Francis, as lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia (2006-2012), to navigate, deftly and elegantly, the Byzantine labyrinths of protocol and parliamentary procedure, and to outmanoeuvre the Machiavellian and re-educate the (unconsciously) racist. Such episodes are recounted frankly, with good humour, and with courtesy for all, but stern rebuke of bumblers, liars, and transgressors.

Then again, nothing less should be—can be—expected from a head-held-high Black woman, a lady of good upbringing and excellent posture, good manners and parade-square poise, good will and pointillist diction, plus that savvy vocabulary issuing le mot juste eloquence. Credit her mother, an Antiguan native, Thelma Delores, for Ms. Francis’s interest in the right words in the right order, in righteous speech and right conduct, in choosing the right hat to set off the right shoes, in being in the right places at the right time, to be able to lecture on equal rights, campaign for human rights, and never ever look like she didn’t have the right stuff to do the right thing. Maybe Ms. Francis learned also from her mother the efficacy of feminism—or Afro-womanism—to never let the masculine denigrate or degrade, deride or deprive. Thus, she possesses the smarts and the drive to conjoin know-how and ethics to can-do and work-ethic; to progress, to move-on-up, to be an X-ray technician here and a paralegal there, a runway model in Manhattan and a role-model in Nova Scotia, a CEO in public life and a churchgoer in private life. But she’s also acquired those essential Black woman complements: to “cut eye” at anyone who must be cut down to size; to tongue lash the obstreperously insolent and the self-righteous hypocrite; to espy faults and speak unstopped truth. She be indomitable, charismatic, glamorous, queenly in and of herself: just like mom.

Note that Ms. Francis’s memoir is steeped in the magical. Her parents married on Valentine’s Day, 1939. She was born at home (during what is now African Heritage Month) in 1946, delivered by a Black doctor who must have been one of the first to open an office in Cape Breton. Her background was immediately multicultural: American, Antiguan, and Cuban; anglophone and Hispanic; African Orthodox and Episcopalian. Her maturation in the household at 19 Hankard Street, Whitney Pier, Sydney, Nova Scotia, prepared her entrée to the prestigious addresses of the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office, Ottawa), Province House and Government House (Halifax), Wall Street skyscrapers (NYC), and, of course, Buckingham Palace. (But it also readied her to accept the embrace of our slave ancestors who haunt Elmina Castle in Accra, Ghana, still wanting to help us understand the tribulation of the Slave Trade and the torture of the Middle Passage.) Elizabeth, her middle name, was chosen in homage to the then-Princess Elizabeth (now La reine Elizabeth). What an auspicious foreshadowing of their later connection! In her girlhood, Ms. Francis saw her father integrate—and affiliate socio-politically—with “priests, rabbis, and ministers”; she overheard white parents begging him to intercede in their daughters’ love affairs with Black youths—and he did so, but still presided over interracial marriages, anyway. So Ms. Francis learned the facts of Canuck cosmopolitanism in her very household. Outside her doors, there were Jewish merchants and Dutch schoolmates, plus West Indian strivers and achievers. If an ignoramus called her “out her name,” someone prestigious called her gifted. So distinguished and well thought of was her family that when Ms. Francis needed resources beyond their means to attend college and university, a Scottish benefactor donated the necessary finances on condition of their acceptance of his eternal anonymity. The bon mot that “when one door closes, God opens another” is so applicable in the case of Ms. Francis that the proverbial door may as well be a revolving one. Seldom is she “between jobs.” More often, she is about to begin—or has just begun—one technical or managerial or bureaucratic position when the phone rings and she finds herself tapped to take up a higher calling, a more demanding and high-pressure post; to become the lieutentant-governor; to answer to a deputy minister and then be a deputy head; to swear in the premier, the most powerful person in provincial government. Her ascension is similar to that of Mary Poppins gliding up the banister, except that the gravitational forces arrayed against Ms. Francis were (and are) far greater than what the fictitious Ms. Poppins ever gets to experience. Ms. Francis’s Good Luck is always a product, first, of her Pluck—in acquiring requisite skills or knowledge—then being willing to be challenged in the application. Before she gets to curtsy to the Queen, there’s a lot of coffee, a lot of phone calls, a lot of late nights and early mornings, a lot of wear-and-tear on shoe heels and car tires, a lot of subway tokens and airplane tickets. If she’s had a charmed existence, it’s partly because she’s a Christian existentialist—though duly Protestant in work-ethic and archly Catholic in caritas.

So, yes, Dr. Francis’s story is practically every little girl’s dream-come-true: to be Cinderella, and to be elevated from drudgery to governance; to be a princess and reside in a castle. First, she’s a Helen Gurley Brown-gal, taking New York by strategy; later, she’s the appointed Monarch of the Bluenoses. Malcolm X beamed at her; Harry Belafonte touched her toe. Clearly, both saw they were in the presence of incarnate royalty.

But Her Honour’s story is also one of a Black woman’s constant struggle to receive the R-E-S-P-E-C-T that Aretha sings of and First Lady Michelle Obama writes about. Her Honour was the Canadian prime minister’s vice-regal pick, but one that the Nova Scotian State seemed reluctant to endorse. Ms. Francis found herself in the same Orwellian predicament that beset His Excellency Mr. Obama: to be nominally in power; to be, in fact, empowered; but to be stymied and checkmated by obstructionist politicos and by resolutely reactionary bureaucrats. The 44th—but first Black—President of the United States (2009–2017) got to move into the White House, but found it difficult to move his agenda forward; the 31st—but first Black—Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, found it difficult to move into Government House, and had to represent the Queen while working out of her cramped condo—for three long years. She also had to tussle with officialdom to try to requisition a proper limo so that she could discharge her constitutional duties and social obligations in something like deputy-majesty style, yes, but also comfort and, above all, safety. In her memoir, Ms. Francis sympathizes with the Obamas and with the 27th—but first Black—governor-general of Canada (2005–2010), Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean, given that all faced resentment from some white folks who could not tolerate their electoral or monarchical-appointment success. Her Honour—Ms. Francis—discovered that some “deplorables” (cf. Ms. Hilary Clinton) would spite protocol by refusing to address her with that primary, legislated moniker. She also found her entrée to her castle—Government House—delayed unreasonably, annoyingly, frustratingly. Indeed, she was kept from residing in the people’s-mandated lodging until a new government, of socialist orientation, assumed power and moved expeditiously—not with “all deliberate speed”—to end her de facto segregation and/or exile and allow her to reside in the mini-palace intended for every lieutenant-governor since a colonial Nova Scotian governor ordered its construction (utilizing Black slave labour) in 1800. Finally, Her Honour got to “come on home.”

Once properly installed in residence, Her Honour, feeling sympathy for and solidarity with Africadian (African-Nova Scotian) businesswoman Viola Desmond, who was jailed in 1946 for disobeying the tartan version of Jim Crow then-operative in a New Glasgow cinema, sought to rectify this racial injustice. On the advice of the new premier, and exercising the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, Ms. Francis issued Ms. Desmond a Free Pardon, the first to ever be granted in Canada, and the first to be granted posthumously. The effect of this majestic act was to nullify Ms. Desmond’s original conviction and thus to cancel her original “crime.” Not only was she now officially innocent; it was also officially registered that she had done nothing wrong in sitting in the “whites-only” section of the cinema. Thus was de facto segregation itself now declared to have been unjust.

One may deem it whimsical that Ms. Francis insisted, when granted her own coat-of-arms, that her beloved feline Angel be depicted at the crown of the heraldic emblem. Yet Her Honour was never, and is not, capricious. Indeed, the scriptural passages that front each chapter of her extraordinary and compelling story clarify that her direction, her course, has been set by moral conviction and a profound appreciation for being humane (including extending love and care to cats) and for the pursuit of justice. She has Christ in her heart, Angel on her crest, and the late Africadian radical activist Burnley “Rocky” Jones, O.N.S., as an exemplar. I love that Her Honour closes her memoir with a shout-out to Rocky, allowing that she has answered the question that he raised with her shortly after his induction into the Order of Nova Scotia in 2011: “Has racism raised its ugly head during your tenure?” Her considered reply, being positive, is negative. Still, the general tenor of this insightful and instructive memoir backs Dr. Martin Luther King’s aphorism, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Dr. George Elliott Clarke, O.C., O.N.S., F.R.C.G.S., Ph.D., LLD., etc.
E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature
University of Toronto

Chapter 1

The Beginning

We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

Romans 8:28

“My goodness, I disconnected the prime minister’s office; they wanted to speak to you,” said my executive assistant, Michael Noonan.

Laughing I said, “Someone is playing tricks on you.”

“No, I am serious,” he said, sounding panicky. “I have to call them back.”

Little did I know that phone call would change forever not only the course of my life, but the history of Nova Scotia.

Who would have thought or imagined that I, a Black woman, born of immigrant parents and raised in a province with a history of negative race relations and racial segregation would be receiving a call from the Prime Minister of Canada asking me to accept a position that would prove to be a great blessing, a very rewarding experience, even though there were times it was challenging.

In retrospect, the foundation for my successful journey was there very early in my life. I believe God’s plan for my path was laid out before I came into this world. I was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in a community called Whitney Pier on Cape Breton Island, three years after my sister Isabel, and three months after Viola Desmond, a Black businesswoman, was arrested on November 8, 1946, and later convicted, for sitting in a whites-only section in a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Who could have guessed that my life and Ms. Desmond’s would merge in 2010?

My parents were immigrants. My father, Archpriest George Anthony Francis, and my mother, Thelma Delores Francis, came to Sydney in 1940, the year after they were married. My father was born Jorge Antonio Francisco Francis Y Edivardis in Santiago de Cuba on February 16, 1908. According to Spanish custom my father had two last names, Francis and Edivardis. The father’s name is first, followed by the mother’s name. Since women did not change their last names when they married, it proved to be a valuable way to trace one’s ancestry. The father’s name, which in this case is Francis, is passed on to the children. His parents, Jacobo Francis Fedriche (Fedriche would be his mother’s name) and Ana Maria Edivardis, were born in Antigua, which was at that time an English colony. They immigrated to Cuba where my grandfather, who spoke fluent Spanish, worked as a bricklayer. Being bilingual endeared my grandfather to his new community, and he was highly respected. He was a member of the Masonic order called the Odd Fellows. I know very little else about my maternal and paternal grandparents.

My father, along with his sister Maria and brother Eduardo, left Cuba in 1929 for New York City. After a series of jobs, he decided to study for the ministry and became an ordained priest in the African Orthodox Church. The African Orthodox Church was founded in Chicago in 1921 by George Alexander McGuire, who left the Episcopal Church where he was studying because he experienced racism as a Black deacon. He also established, in 1922, the now- defunct Endich Theological Seminary to train African Orthodox priests, which is where my father studied in New York.

When he married my mother, my father had two children. My father’s first wife died at an early age. Together they had George Anthony and Eloise Yvonne, who were five and three, respectively, when their mother died. My father’s sister Maria decided to take the children to Cuba to be raised by my grandmother Ana and my father’s other sisters, my aunts Olga, Felicia, and Dora, who was the youngest. By this time my grandfather was deceased. George and Eloise remained in Cuba for close to ten years and returned to New York when the remainder of the family immigrated there.

In 1939, on February 14, my dad married my mother in New York City. My father was not a great fan of New York, so a year later, when the opportunity presented itself for him to pastor St. Philip’s African Orthodox Church in Sydney, Nova Scotia, he answered the call. George and Eloise remained in New York. Even after all these years, I still wish that my siblings had been raised in Canada with Isabel and me. I often wonder why it wasn’t that way. It is a secret the family has taken to their graves. My aunts were very hardworking and strong women. Somehow, I do not think my father would have petitioned them for his children to live with us in Canada. As close as I was to my siblings, we never discussed why we were raised in different countries. I did, however, ask my mother about this. Her only answer was, “That’s the way your aunts wanted it.”

Even though my brother and sister were raised in Cuba and Brooklyn, New York, the distance between us did not negatively impact the relationship I had with them. Every second summer, my parents, Isabel, and I would travel by train from Cape Breton to New York to visit family. Eloise called me “Freshie.” She told me that when I was a child, I was quick to speak my mind. She said I had a way of looking at someone, closing my eyes, and looking away. She referred to this as “cutting your eyes” at someone. In her opinion this was rude. We often laugh about this because she says I still have that look when someone does not please me.

George died in December 2014. He was a special brother and I miss him. He never failed to tell anyone whom he came in contact with about his little sister, the lieutenant-governor. Eloise still lives in New York. We became very close during the years I lived there. She is my buddy. When I was studying for my master’s in public administration, I attended night classes at New York University. I would often stay with Eloise and her husband because travelling alone at night back to Brooklyn where I was living was not wise. Whenever I wanted to go partying, Eloise, as tired as she was, would go with me. We always had fun. Or I should say, I always had a blast! Her husband, Morris, and I loved to tease my sister. Morris died on May 28, 2007, two days before I first met Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace. I was at the Halifax airport waiting to board my flight to London when I received the news of his death.

Eloise was and still is one of the greatest cooks I have ever known. This skill she inherited from our father and the aunts. She was a nutritionist. I can still remember her going to university at night, working during the day, taking care of her home, and staying up to the wee hours of the morning working on her school projects. I admired her determination. She graduated with her master’s from New York University. Years later, I would also graduate from the same university, prompted by her example and encouragement.

My mother, Thelma Delores, was born in Antigua on October 20, 1907. She left the West Indies for New York City when she was in her late teens. Her life in Antigua was from all accounts a sad one. My mother was a beautiful woman. People referred to her as the quintessential lady. Mother loved music. To hear her sing “O Holy Night” was so moving. She had a voice like her idol Marian Anderson, a famous contralto of the twentieth century who in 1955 was the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.

In her later years my mother suffered from dementia. It was difficult to watch her sink into a world where we could not reach her. When we played tapes of opera singers like Marian Anderson, and hymns or gospel music, a smile would come across her face. It was beautiful to witness this brief transformation. She died on December 3, 2000, at the age of ninety-three.

At my mother’s funeral I described her as a proud woman who walked with her head held high. Whenever she wore her chapeau, white gloves, and high heels, heads turned, people smiled, and the men tipped their hats because an African queen was passing by. Here is the tribute to my mother I wrote for the Halifax Chronicle Herald on May 26, 2006, “Celebrating Mother, a True Friend.”

My mother did not graduate from high school, and the dream of a diploma eluded her for many years. When she immigrated to New York, she worked in factories during the day and earned her high school certificate while attending school in the evenings.

When I was a child, she achieved her practical nursing certificate through a correspondence course. She treated the certificate like it was made out of gold. It was one of her most precious treasures. Her excitement made me proud. It taught me something about the worth of education, and it is a lesson I have carried with me throughout my journey. I laugh every time I think about the time I came home from school and told my mother I was going to quit school at the age of sixteen because school was too lonely and nothing related to me as a young Black girl. “Not under my roof,” was her reply. I will never forget the look of horror in her eyes. “Hold your head high and walk proud, because you can be somebody. You will stay in school. Life is about learning and having dignity and being proud of who you are.” Her words have guided me every step of my life.

In school, as Black children, we did not learn about Black history or about Black heroes. Because of this omission by the educational system, my mother, with her limited education, would talk about Black success stories. These included people like Ralph Bunche, an accomplished African American academic and United Nations diplomat, Mahalia Jackson, a famous gospel singer, Marian Anderson, and many others. She wanted us to know that we could be who we wanted to be and education was too important and precious to be taken lightly.

My mother was not perfect. Her cooking skills were not the best. My father made breakfast for my sister and me. He usually made bologna, eggs, toast, and hot chocolate. We were not so happy when our mother made breakfast. Eating porridge was not as exciting as eating fried eggs and bologna.

My maternal grandmother’s name was Louisa Wilson. From all accounts she was a very beautiful woman. Mother didn’t discuss her early life very much, and when asked, she would only give bits and pieces. My mother had two sisters and one brother. Her mother never married. Even though my grandmother was a single woman with four children, she was fully accepted in the community. Louisa Wilson was Creole, of mixed blood—Black, white, and Indian. She had long straight black hair. Both my mother and her brother were of dark complexion, and her sisters looked like my grandmother. I asked my mother if she knew her father. Her only recollection was of a tall dark man coming to visit. She said she called him “Pa.” His name was Henry George. I tried to trace the lineage but hit a brick wall.

One day my mother told me a story that brought tears to my eyes. I cannot imagine the pain she must have felt then and probably felt for the rest of her life. She and her brother were playing in the backyard of their home on Dickenson Bay Street in St. John’s, Antigua. A white man, who may have been a missionary because he was holding a book that my mother thought was a Bible, came into the yard. He noticed the children and asked who the pretty little girl was. According to my mother, her mother told the man that she belonged to a neighbour.

I do not know if my grandmother considered herself a Black woman (or for that time period, a Negro). My mom’s story led me to wonder if my grandmother would have been proud to be called “Negro” or “coloured.” My mother believed that my grandmother favoured mother’s two sisters, who had their mom’s high- yellow colour and hair texture. Some of my cousins who knew my grandmother confirmed that she did not like people with dark skin. I would have liked to have met her with my dark skin and kinky hair.

To understand my grandmother, we have to understand the legacy of slavery. My grandmother is an example of the negative psychological impact of slavery, colonization, and internalized racism. Light skin and straight hair are closer to being white, and there was the mistaken belief that someone with these features would be fully accepted by the white race and granted privileges. Fortunately this attitude has changed over the years. We see many Black women of various colours and hair texture on the big screen and on television, thanks to Black women writers and producers like Shonda Rhimes. Her television shows How to Get Away with Murder and Grey’s Anatomy are excellent examples of this. Nonetheless, there are still some Black people who have unfortunately internalized the negative attitude about Black women perpetuated by slavery and make stupid comments about “good” (i.e., straight) hair and “bad” (i.e., curly or kinky) hair. Black women, be proud of who you are regardless of your skin colour or hair texture.

In her late teens my mother left Antigua for the United States. She never returned there until after the death of her mother decades later. Neither my mom nor her brother attended their mother’s funeral. Now I understand why. My grandmother, I believe, was in her late eighties when she died. My mother did provide for her, often sending her money.

Little is known about my mother’s time in New York. I know she lived with her godmother who sponsored her to the United States. My parents took my sister and me to visit Mother’s godmother, whom we called Granny. I remember her as a tall, thin, dark-skinned woman with grey hair on her head and chin. I used to stare at her chin. I wanted to reach up and pull the hairs out. She always fed us white rice whenever we went to visit. My sister and I would cringe when she dished out our portion of rice, which resembled a bowl of white paste. Our parents left us no choice but to eat it. For them it was about respect and being grateful for the food placed in front of us. When I became an adult I did not eat white rice for many years.

How parents met in New York, I do not know. The bits and pieces I managed to extract from my mother do not fill in the blanks. I do know that her life in New York was hard, but she also had fun. She worked in factories, studied at night, cleaned her godmother’s place, and sent money back to Antigua.

When my father decided to move to Nova Scotia in 1940, my mother, from what I understand, was not keen. She didn’t want to move to a place that she thought was the end of the Earth. Can you imagine leaving New York after experiencing and taking part in the excitement of the Harlem Renaissance?

My mother’s arrival in Cape Breton months after my father’s arrival was very dramatic. When she purchased her train ticket in New York, the clerk sold her a ticket to North Sydney instead of Sydney. She arrived in North Sydney during a snowstorm. Meanwhile my father was waiting at the Sydney train station, twenty-two kilometres away. Imagine his face when my mother did not disembark! My mother was sitting in North Sydney, crying and afraid. She truly believed she had arrived at the end of the Earth. She was unaware that my father and Mr. Horton Murray, a Whitney Pier taxi driver and a member of my father’s congregation, were driving through a snowstorm to get her. Apparently, the railroad clerk had noticed her crying and called the Sydney station as soon as he realized that she was supposed to disembark there.

My parents began their married life at 19 Hankard Street, Whitney Pier, the house where I was born. As a child I thought the house was big, but it was a very small two-storey house, with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Isabel and I shared one bedroom, and Mom and Dad had theirs. It was common in our community that siblings shared a bedroom, regardless of the size of the room. The other bedroom was considered a guest room. The kitchen was where we ate our family meals. There was no dining room. When I delivered a presentation to students about my life as a child and showed them pictures of the house where I was raised, I overheard a young boy say, “That’s a shack.”

I was born at home. Dr. Calder, a Black doctor, brought me into this world. He was from the Caribbean and lived “over town.” Nurse Dobin, a white nurse, assisted in the delivery. Dr. Calder is also credited with saving my life. My mother told me that I developed pneumonia during a bout with the measles and almost died. Dr. Calder rushed me to the hospital and started immediate treatment. I dreamt that I was surrounded by plastic. I later found out it wasn’t a dream—I was in an oxygen tent.

My parents decided to name me Mayann Elizabeth. They wanted to satisfy both sides of the family. May was my mother’s sister and Ann is the English translation of my father’s mother’s name. Elizabeth, you guessed correctly, is after Princess Elizabeth, future Queen of England. My sister Isabel’s middle name is Victoria, so you can see that my parents’ admiration for the royal family was clearly a factor in our names. Is it possible my mother had some premonition that one day her second-born would be the vice-regal representative for Her Majesty? My mother and father were privileged to meet Princess Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the Isle Royale Hotel during the royal visit to Nova Scotia in 1951. I recall how excited they were to have the opportunity to meet the royal couple. The Isle Royale Hotel was located on the corner of the Esplanade and Dorchester Street in Sydney. It was demolished in 1985.

My early memories of growing up in Whitney Pier are good ones. Our family of four grew to a family of seven when my parents fostered three children, identical twins Deborah (Debbie) and Donna Marshall, and Karl (Howard) Francis-Williams. They were each three years old when they came to live with us. I was eleven when the twins joined our family in 1957. The guest bedroom became theirs. I was excited knowing that I would have two younger siblings. I have vivid memories of their arrival. It was a cold winter day. They both wore blue snowsuits. At first they would not talk. But when they went to their bedroom, we could hear them talking to one another and laughing. The next day, they started talking to us. It was beautiful.

Our family still travelled to New York to visit our relatives. The first time we travelled with the twins, we did not go by train. Instead, we travelled by plane. We all enjoyed our time spent in New York with our American Cuban family.

Isabel and I had already left home when Howard joined our family in 1965. The twins were thirteen years old when he came. Howard took over the guest bedroom and the twins occupied the room vacated by me and my sister. Howard and I both liked to eat and our dad loved to cook. Need I say more? Howard loved our family so much that he legally added Francis to his name. He had a special relationship with our parents. His dedication to them was remarkable. He was always there when they needed him. He often travelled with our parents to New York, Halifax, and Antigua.

We were blessed because all three remained with our parents well into their adult lives. Debbie and Donna, who are both committed to public service, now live in Toronto where their 102-year-old biological mother is also a resident. They are very close to their mother, which I think is wonderful. Their dad died when they were babies. Howard lives in Nova Scotia. Both his biological parents are deceased. We are all still close and often share many laughs and stories about growing up at 19 Hankard Street.