Bajan

By Tony Best

As billions of people around the world observe Women’s History Month this month, hailing women’s contributions to the advancement of human civilisation, the success of a Bajan immigrant in fighting racial discrimination in Canada is being recalled.

She was Gloria Baylis, a highly trained Black nurse who in the 1960s, successfully hauled executives of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel before Quebec top provincial courts, accusing the hospitality facility of racial discrimination.

In the process, Baylis wrote her name in Canada’s history books as the first person there to challenge and win a court case of employment discrimination based on race, thus paving the way for people of colour to be hired for jobs that were effectively restricted to whites. Interestingly, her achievement went largely ignored for decades, according to the Montreal Gazette, a major English language newspaper which recently detailed how the Bajan helped to eliminate a significant racial barrier in employment.

“My mother was not afraid to stand up for what’s correct or what was right,” said Frank Baylis, a former Liberal Party parliamentarian in Ottawa. “And we were brought up that way.”

The Gazette described the Bajan differently: the actions of the Barbadian nurse were greeted as a moral victory for minorities in Canada. In its recent story, the Gazette painted a picture of her as an enterprising professional who raised her family and worked hard as a nurse in Montreal hospitals until she founded a highly successful medical company in the 1980s. She died six years ago at the age of 87.

Here’s how the paper recently recalled the story: “In the fall of 1964, Gloria Baylis made her way to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal in the hope of applying for a part-time nursing position advertised in a local newspaper. A Black woman from Barbados, Baylis had trained as a nurse in England before moving to Montreal in 1952. Having already worked at the Montreal General (hospital) and Hotel Dieu Hospitals, she was highly qualified for the hotel position. But her hopes were dashed as soon as she arrived at the hotel. “I am sorry the job is filled,” an employee overseeing the hiring process curtly told her,” stated the Gazette. “When she inquired about another position, she was told that job too was taken. That night, however, Baylis heard from a friend of hers who had applied for the position. Her friend who was white, had not only been told that it was still vacant but was granted a future interview with then in-house doctor, signalling that (the) selection process was still on going.

“Suspicious, Baylis placed an anonymous call to the hotel next morning to once again ask about the positions. This time she was told the hotel was still looking to fill them,” it reported. Baylis’ reaction was immediate.

“I was indignant and angry and planned to go to see the man to, in the vernacular, give him a cussing out,” the Bajan wrote in a 1994 letter to Canadian historian Wendy Mitchinson. “However, another friend, Black and a member of the Negro Citizens Association, persuaded me not to,” Baylis recalled.

Actually, a day before the Bajan visited the hotel, a new law had gone into effect in Quebec titled, An Act Respecting Discrimination In Employment.

Preceding the Quebec charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, it aimed to curb any workplace discrimination based on race, colour, sex, religion, national extraction, or social origin.

“Together with the association, Baylis decided to bring forward a complaint against the hotel. Arguing she was racially discriminated against, her case became the first (in the country to test the (Quebec) province’s new law.

The trial began on March 23, 1965, reported the paper.

Only person

“The evidence presented throughout the trial showed that nearly two dozen people had applied for the nursing positions. Though it would turn out the hotel had in fact filled the positions before Baylis applied, she was the only person not asked to come in for a subsequent interview or told her name would be kept for future reference.

“The hotel, then operated by the Hilton chain, had argued for its part that it had strong antidiscrimination policies in place and could not be held accountable for the actions of one employee,” the paper recalled.

In all, the trial lasted eight days spread out over several months, and Baylis, then a 35-year-old mother of two children, attended every session.

And when the verdict was handed down, the court ruled against the hotel and imposed a fine of (Canadian) $25, the minimum set by law.

The hotel appealed the ruling right up to the Quebec Appeals Court which upheld the original decision in 1977, finding that employment discrimination was “contrary to the public interest,” stated the Gazette.

Looking back, the Bajan’s son said recently: “I don’t think she perceived it herself as a major case at the time.”

But the former parliamentarian said that as he grew up in Canada, its significance sank it.

Little wonder he recently opposed a secularism law in Quebec and recalled how his Bajan mother had fought discrimination all the way.

Gazette.)