Mostly known for Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day, with February mostly behind us it makes for a perfect time to consider what this past month has meant, both traditionally and historically. With the CBC show Book of Negroes (with Cuba Gooding Jr.) recently being aired and in a month celebrating love and romance, February was a time to reflect on tolerance, gratitude for others and basic human compassion. The fact that Black History Month and Valentine’s coincide in the same month makes for a good moment to think about how we treat each other, both currently and in the past. What other month would be a better cue than this to start thinking about putting aside our differences and doing something to increase the general well-being of the people in our lives, to co-operate and to function as a unified group.
With the tradition of Valentine’s Day being celebrated throughout the ages, it’s interesting to note one of its varied historical stories tells of a man named Valentinus who was martyred for illegally marrying couples. According to folklore, Valentinus was a holy priest of Rome during a time when marriage was banned by Emperor Cladius the second, who was intent on expanding his territory. Either married men could not enlist or simply made for poor soldiers because they feared leaving their families, both through death and travel. Another story tells of a man jailed who fell in love with his jailer’s blind daughter and after curing her sent the first Valentine. It was signed, “From your Valentine.” It’s nice to think this annual tradition has roots in something so special and benevolent.
Seeing what Valentine’s Day has become we can see how things change as we move forward through time. As there was the martyr of Valentinus, so too there are people in our day and age who have made great strides to alter our world for the better. We are all familiar with the name Rosa Parks. In 1955, she was involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama that helped dismantle racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws. The laws were basically U.S. codes of separation enforcing who could use what, do what and where people would be allowed. Canada had its own version of these types of intolerant actions. Our history is somewhat as sullied as our neighbours’ to the south.
The Book of Negroes, also published as Someone Knows My Name, is an award-winning novel by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. The novel was adapted into the mini-series and parts of it were shot in Nova Scotia. The series tells the story of freed African American slaves who asked to leave the United States and resettle in Nova Scotia. After the war of 1812, refugees in the province faced many hardships that excluded them from Canadian society. The government withheld land grants, an influx of white settlers increased competition for employment and immigrants were often perceived as slaves. Extreme poverty became a reality for many of these settlers. The way things used to be is not acceptable today, but this form of intolerance used to be a reality.
It takes great strides to change the world for the better. We all have the ability to step outside our comfort zones and become better people, whether it be looking up to someone like Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. and if we want to change the world first we have to change ourselves. We can do little things like volunteering in our community and getting involved, or if too busy we can simply take the advice I found in an article while researching the history of Valentine’s Day. When teaching children about this day, we can strip away all the over commercialized romance and over spending, plus the over sexualized aspects of Hollywood’s trumped up romantic love.
The purpose of February may be to look at our past and think about doing something to increase the general well-being of the people in our lives. If we want to create a more tolerant and peaceful planet it’s important to understand how cruel the human race really can be. Instead of finding fault in the people around us maybe February is a time to focus more on the appreciation of others and the acceptance of our differences because, as they say, one of the ways to know where we are going is to know where we have been.
