Dr. Rosemary Sadlier

Dr. Rosemary Sadlier

Dr. Rosemary Sadlier
By Francinne Buchner

Rosemary Sadlier is the author of Leading the Way: Black Women in Canada (1993), Mary Ann Shadd: Publisher, Editor, Teacher, Lawyer, Suffragette (1994), Tubman: Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Her Life in the United States and Canada (1996), The Kids Book of Black Canadian History (2003) and she is among the authors of the textbook, Black History: Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas (2009). Nova Scotia will be the first province of Ontario to incorporate the textbook into their high school curriculum.

As a child growing up in Toronto, Sadlier did not know any Black authors. Sadlier thought about majoring in English, but something innate within her, led her to Sociology – because there was no Black History program and sociology was the closest she was going to come, if she was going to have any focus on ethnic or cultural studies of any kind.

She is dedicating her life work to placing, establishing and underscoring that there is an African-Canadian story and she is motivated to correct wrongs and misinformation that have been written and that have yet to be written. She is achieving this through her full-time volunteer work as president of the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS), whereby the existence of this organization will re-educate Canadian society; making it morally accountable in their telling of Black History in Canada, starting with the re-education of a generation of young people.