Islands in the North

This digital project (re)creates the space and place of Black Canadian/West Indian immigrants in twentieth-century Toronto, Canada. Marlene Gaynair uses spatial analytic software to transform analog documents into a multidimensional interactive mapping exhibition to create an ongoing public historical archive. Inserting pieces of oral narratives, music, advertisements, and photographs, Islands in the North makes space for “Blackness” in Canadian and Black Atlantic literature, histories, geographies, and experiences. 

Islands in the North is possibly the first digital map to challenge the narrative of the “Great White North” and “ethnic enclaves” in the heart of Canada’s largest and culturally significant city. Points of interest such as churches, nightclubs, beauty shops, groceries, and restaurants trace the development of Black Caribbean-Canadian communities and Black businesses, along with the dispersal of people and places over time. Black Toronto's mapping also highlights a long history of Blackness and belonging in the Canadian public sphere, even if the history texts and government do not fully recognize or acknowledge them. Through the (re)creation of space and place in the archive, the mapping of “Black Toronto” challenges what it means to be Canadian.