Becoming an Antiracist Educator : The Life and Work of Timothy J. Stanley

Becoming an Antiracist Educator honours the enduring influence of Timothy J. Stanley, a visionary historian whose work has reshaped how racism, racialization, and historical consciousness are understood in Canada. This timely collection gathers scholars, teachers, and community advocates who reflect on how Stanley’s scholarship and mentorship have challenged and guided their own commitments to antiracist education.

Spanning generations and disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors offer deeply personal and politically grounded reflections that connect Stanley’s insights to the pressing realities of our time. They engage questions raised by the toppling of colonial statues, the resurgence of anti-Asian racism, and the uncovering of unmarked graves at residential school sites. Together, they show that antiracist teaching is not only about critiquing systems, but about reimagining how we understand the past, how we tell our histories, and how we live with one another in the present.

Concluding with a moving epilogue by Stanley, this collection speaks to educators, researchers, and community members seeking to confront racism in schools, museums, universities, and public life. It offers both a testament to his legacy and an invitation to carry that work forward with courage and care. Becoming an Antiracist Educator is an essential resource for educators, scholars, and community members committed to interrupting racism in schools, museums, universities, and beyond. It offers not only an archive of Stanley’s impact but a roadmap for those seeking to carry his work forward in practical and transformative ways.

Also, listen to the FooknConversation podcast (episode 9):
Dr. Stanley shares his perspectives as a historian about the invisibility of everyday racisms in Canada. He discusses some of the following concepts: the rise of anti-Chinese racisms, the tragic death of Colten Boushie, the grammar of settler colonial racializations, racisms, and organized exclusions, the genealogy of Canadian settler property rights, removing monuments, the genealogical privileging certain inclusions and exclusions, living in Montreal as a mixed race youth, banning public expressions of faith in Quebec, the removal of national statues, living in China, and so much more.
Link: https://www.fooknconversation.com/podcast/episode-09-timothy-stanley/

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. He continues to address the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in partnership with Survivors from the Algonquin First Nations communities. His teaching and research are situated within the wider international field of curriculum studies. As a curriculum theorist, he draws on different life writing research methodologies―autobiography, ethnography, oral history, and narrative inquiry―to co-create, co-support, and co-sustain culturally responsive, relevant, and relational curriculum with school leaders and teachers seeking to serve the public good. He is the host of the FooknConversation podcast.

Mark T. S. Currie is Adjunct Professor at the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. His post-doctoral research focuses on small-town communities in southern Ontario, investigating whether community members remember and/or see racism occurring in the town; if they see their town as an antiracist community; and how Whiteness is maintained or disrupted in the memories and perceptions of the town. This post-doctoral research builds on Mark’s PhD in Education, which focused on sociohistorical geographies and enacting antiracisms in downtown Toronto. Mark holds a Master of Arts in Island Studies from the University of Prince Edward Island, for which he investigated postcolonial education and cultural identity on the Caribbean island of Dominica. He also achieved a Master of Teaching from Griffith University, for which he conducted action research on in-class student motivation in a secondary school in Cape Town, South Africa.