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When Gwen Lord applied to become a teacher with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal in 1961, she was relieved the interviewer was someone she knew well, the father of a best friend. She hoped graduating top of her class with a bachelor’s degree in science and a specialty in education from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) would trump skin colour.

It would not.

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“Gwen, you know we don’t hire coloured,” her friend’s father said. Seeing her dejection, he backtracked, and told her she couldn’t be hired without a teaching certificate. She knew this to be a lie — they were hiring teachers out of high school back then. But she played along.

“I went to Macdonald College (and) took this little Mickey Mouse course. Got this piece of paper only to find that the PSBGM came to our campus and hired everyone! … People who couldn’t teach worth a damn.”

Everyone but her, that is, and the two other black students in her class. Until the class protested, and forced the board to hire her.