Cecil Foster is an acclaimed author, academic, and journalist. He has worked with major print and broadcast media in the Caribbean and Canada including The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio and TV, Chatelaine, and Maclean’s.

His book Blackness and Modernity: The Colour of Humanity and the Quest for Freedom won the Canadian Sociology Association’s John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award, and A Place Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Contemporary Social Issues. His novel Sleep On, Beloved was shortlisted for the Ontario Trillium Book Prize.

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada was inspired by his fascination with “the narrative of how Canada was built by the railways,” says Cecil, “how Canada was held together by a thin ribbon of steel. But who manned those railways?” A Toronto Star review praises his exploration of the largely erased “role that Black train porters played in furthering social justice and shaping Canada into the country it is today.”

Born in Barbados, Cecil is Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Director of Canadian Studies in the Department of Transnational Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Appearing in: 44. Fighting for Their Rights: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters in Early Canada  

Website: www.cecilfoster.ca
Book: www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-release/they-called-us-george-a-history-of-the-black-train-porters-in-canada