OUR PILLARS
The foundation of our mission is built on three essential pillars that guide our growth and ensure our impact.
Honor the Past
A living archive that safeguards the stories, artifacts, and oral histories of Black Manitobans — ensuring that the contributions, struggles, and triumphs of our communities are preserved, protected, and passed forward.
Celebrate the Present
A gathering place that connects Black Manitobans across generations, diasporas, and disciplines — offering space for education, healing, and the particular joy that happens when a community fully recognizes itself.
Build the Future
A cultural incubator that creates the conditions for Black creativity, entrepreneurship, and cross-cultural collaboration to flourish — producing the artists, ideas, and institutions that Manitoba does not yet know it needs.
PRESERVE THE LEGACY
The BCEC has grown from a founding meeting of 27 to over 60 active members, nine working committees, and a volunteer leadership team driving this vision with discipline and urgency.
We are not a single story. Black Manitoba never has been. We are the freedom seeker who crossed the Underground Railroad and planted roots in frozen ground. We are the Afro-Caribbean student who arrived at the University of Manitoba in the 1940s with a suitcase and a vision. We are the African family who chose this cold, unlikely, magnificent city and made it theirs.
Three distinct but interconnected communities. One braid. Strong precisely because the strands are different.
"Black history is not just for Black people — Black history is Canadian history."
- Honourable Jean Augustine