'It was kind of scary': How this 99-year-old blazed a trail for Black teachers in Ontario

Millie Burgess says she spent much of her career relishing telling strangers she had 20 children and watching their jaws drop.

Burgess, 99, wasn't their mother. She was an elementary school teacher who considered the children she taught each year to be like her own, five days a week during school hours.

Born in Bermuda,  Burgess was the first female teacher of African descent to teach in the Ontario school system, according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission's records, and may be the first Black woman in Canada to complete a teaching degree. 

"At first it was kind of scary, but I got over that," said Burgess, who landed her first teaching job in Toronto in 1957 after completing her training in Ontario and teaching in Bermuda.

"Toronto didn't have that many Black people," Burgess said during an interview with CBC Toronto in her retirement home in the Don Mills neighbourhood of Toronto.

CBC Toronto first heard about Burgess's story recently after receiving an email from one of her godchildren, who said the former teacher would be 100 in July of this year and "some recognition would be nice for her." The email included a link to a 2012 article in a Bermudian newspaper about an honour she received from the Ontario Black History Society.

Burgess recalls the culture shock of starting to teach in downtown Toronto schools filled with children who were often newcomers and didn't speak English, but who were mainly from European countries.

She says she sometimes found it difficult launching a career in a country where she initially had almost no contact with people from her background.

But she says it wasn't the children who made it difficult, it was some of their parents.

"It didn't seem to bother the kids …They responded to me just as if I was a regular teacher. I didn't have any trouble with that, but some of the parents did … a lot of the parents," she said.

She recalls parents registering their children and bringing them to her class and asking when the teacher was arriving, unable to believe that she could be the one leading the class. On at least one occasion, a parent told the principal he wouldn't have his child taught by a Black teacher, she says.

Through all the challenges that came with being a trailblazer in her profession, Burgess persevered and is now being celebrated by other Black educators for opening doors for others.

Some time into her career, she was joined by other Black teachers, including a handful of her siblings who were also some of her first pupils. They were inspired to enter the profession after Burgess taught them over summer holidays years earlier. 

Cheryl Ann Darrell, Burgess's goddaughter and niece, recalls stories her mom, Cynthia Darrell, and her Aunt Millie would tell about what a difference it made to not be "the only one" by having each other as Black teaching peers.