Portia White: A Celebration of Her Life and Legacy

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Portia White: A Celebration of Her Life and Legacy

Over many months of thoughtful planning, our students have been actively engaged in learning about Portia White and her cultural impact as a Canadian legend, international musical star and breaker of racial barriers. We will unveil a plaque in her honour as part of a larger student-led commemorative ceremony, with some very special guest speakers and performers. It is indeed an exciting and significant moment as we come together to pay her this richly deserved tribute and students will be dedicating time in class to view the ceremony.

It is our hope that Portia’s reputation, as the first Black Canadian concert singer to achieve international renown, will be buoyed by the installation of this memorial. It will stand in its honoured place as a testament to her achievements both on and off the stage, and in recognition of the impact she has had on Branksome Hall as a beloved voice and music teacher.

To view the ceremony, which took place on Monday, April 11, 2022, please see the video below.

See more videos from the ceremony

Meet Our Special Guest Performers & Speakers

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Measha Brueggergosman-Lee

Singer, actor and writer
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Measha Brueggergosman-Lee’s career effortlessly embraces the broadest array of performance platforms and musical styles and genres. She has presented innovative programs at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, both the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Madrid’s Teatro Real, as well as at the Schwarzenberg, Edinburgh, Verbier and Bergen Festivals with celebrated collaborative pianists Justus Zeyen, Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, and Simon Lepper. Her first recording for Deutsche Grammophon, Surprise, includes works by Schoenberg, Satie and Bolcom.Her subsequent disc Night and Dreams, which features songs by Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Schubert, Debussy, Duparc and Fauré won several awards including a Juno. Her recording of the Wesendonck Lieder with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra earned her a Grammy nomination. In 2018, Measha released her memoir “Something Is Always On Fire”, published by Harper Collins and its debut landed on the best-seller’s list.
Elizaveta Kozlova’15

Singer and Branksome alumna
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NYC-based soprano Elizaveta Kozlova is an active performer and music entrepreneur who has been presented nationally and internationally. Elizaveta has appeared as a soloist at the Moscow International House of Music as a member of Vladimir Spivakov’s Youth Foundation. She made her Lincoln Center debut as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with the New York Lyric Opera in 2018. Read her full biography here.
Shakura S’Aida

Singer and former Branksome parent
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Brooklyn-born, Swiss-raised & Canadian-based Shakura S’Aida has performed at festivals in Dubai, Australia, Rwanda and Russia, in her four-woman tribute to Nina Simone, “The Nina Project” and in shows including Schitt’s Creek. From her beginnings as world-music band Kaleefah’s lead singer, this versatile vocalist and consummate entertainer has blown audiences away with her scorching vocal style. Read her full biography here.
Sheila White

Curator
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Toronto-born Sheila White received an environmental Urban Hero Award in 2020, a federal Canada 150 medal in 2017 recognizing her voluntarism, and in 2014 was the African Canadian Achievement Award winner in the Politics category for her roles as a former candidate and political adviser. Sheila is writing a book about her parents’ interracial marriage in Toronto in 1947 which will be published later this year.

Currently Sheila chairs the Communications and Community Outreach Subcommittee of the National Apology Advisory Committee, which is steering the Government of Canada’s formal event July 9 to apologize for systemic anti-Black racism men in the military experienced during the First World War.

Sheila was curator of two historical exhibits, one focused on Portia White, a collection now housed on loan at the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, and the other a rare collection of memorabilia from the First World War to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the war’s end.
Dr. George Elliott Clarke

Author, poet and professor
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The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has also taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. His recognitions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Fellowship (US), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and International Fellow Poet of the Year, Encyclopedic Poetry School [2019] (China). His acclaimed titles include Whylah Falls (1990, translated into Chinese), Beatrice Chancy (1999, translated into Italian), Execution Poems (2001), Blues and Bliss (selected poems, 2009), I & I (2008), Illicit Sonnets (U.K., 2013), Traverse (2015), and Canticles II (MMXX) (2020).

Photo Credit: Harvard University

Portia White Plaque

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Written By Dr. George Elliott Clarke

Portia White Celebration collaborator, author, poet and professor, and Portia’s great-nephew. (Plaque will be unveiled on Monday, April 11 in front of Portia White's family.)
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Named after a Shakespearean heroine, Portia May White seemed destined for the stage, a venue she would conquer as a contralto of soul-stirring coloratura. Born in Truro, Nova Scotia on June 24, 1911, White was the granddaughter of Virginian ex-slaves, and the daughter of the first Black officer (non-commissioned) in the British Army, Rev. Capt. Dr. William Andrew White (1874-1936).

She earned much applause for her bravura choir vocals in her father’s church, and then wowed Halifax music lovers with mezzo-soprano solos that thrice won her the Helen Campbell Kennedy Cup (1935, 1937, 1938), the highest honour at the Halifax Music Festival. However, White’s income as a segregated school teacher was too paltry for her to aspire to world-class vocal training. Fortunately, a Jewish refugee from Mussolini’s Italy, a classical baritone and medical doctor, Ernesto Vinci, became White’s teacher, while the Halifax Ladies’ Musical Club covered her tuition.

Soon, White was as prominent a Nova Scotian symbol as the Bluenose racing schooner. But how could she gain the world’s attention?

Enter Dr. Edith Read, Principal of Branksome Hall, who, impressed by White’s talent, arranged her debut concerts in Toronto in 1941, and New York City in 1944 and 1945. Critics could not believe their ears! Interpreting European classical pieces, Canadian folk songs and African-American spirituals, White’s bel canto descanting left audiences tearful and joyful, and had reviewers ransacking glossaries for superlatives.

White’s stardom saw her tour North America widely and also Panamá, Colombia, Curaçao, Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada and Ecuador (where she sang above the clouds in the Andes). She spent much of 1946 in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Sadly, throat problems curtailed White’s concert career. She withdrew from the stage in 1952 to teach voice and music at Branksome Hall. Her private pupils numbered such luminaries as Lorne Greene, Dinah Christie and Don Francks. In 1964, she accepted a Command Performance—to enthrall Queen Elizabeth II.

White died of cancer in Toronto on February 13, 1968. Her legacy endures.

As Canada’s first Black singer of international renown, Portia White represents Black excellence, fostered in part by her association with Branksome Hall.

Listen to Portia Sing
In 2019, Sheila White, Portia’s niece, curated the Portia White Exhibit to mark the 50th anniversary of her passing, on February 13, 1968, with the Don Heights Unitarian Congregation and the White family. Artifacts had been carefully preserved by family archivist, Vivian White, Portia's sister-in-law, to form a display to celebrate White’s life. Listen to audio clips here.

Photo: 1944 tour

Meet Portia White

Celebrating Portia White
The CBC's Colleen Jones looks at the history of the singer who sang to audiences all over the world in the 1940s.
One Heart Broken Into Song
Written by George Elliott Clarke, directed by Clement Virgo. ‘One Heart Broken Into Song’ is the story of a willful young woman of 18, Lyla Cromwell and her lover, 21-year-old dandy, rider of a white horse, Hank.
Read about Portia White
A selection of reading materials.

Portia's Legacy Remembered

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Measha Brueggergosman-Lee

"It's my great pleasure to contribute to this celebration of a Canadian musical pioneer, for whom wider name-recognition is long overdue, as we heighten her profile and honour her place, her voice and her legacy as a groundbreaking force on the world's concert stage."
Dr. George Elliott Clarke

It is a testament to the avant-garde pedagogy and the visionary commitment to social justice that Branksome Hall responded so readily and cheerfully to my pipe-dream that there could be--
should be--a plaque erected here to represent Canada's first internal Black star of stage and hall. Branksome Hall has seized upon this opportunity to explore and advocate for Black Excellence within its own precincts, and all of its students and faculty have engaged with this idea of honouring Portia White with gusto and incredible imagination. As Portia White's great nephew, I am thrilled to see the plaque dream come to fruition, so that Portia White's name, already integral to the history of Branksome Hall, is now inscribed on its very hallowed premises.
Principal Karen L. Jurjevich

“This is an opportune and important moment, with our ongoing strategic focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, to showcase the significance Branksome Hall and Principal Edith Read played in Portia White’s life and career while we study our history and celebrate Black excellence within the student curriculum and broader community.”
Jill Strimas, English Department Faculty

"Symbols and monuments create meaning. This is both a lasting tribute and a commitment to diverse, equitable and inclusive spaces at Branksome Hall."

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We wish to acknowledge this land on which Branksome operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and go to school on this land.*

*The Land Acknowledgement may evolve as we honour our commitment to Truth and Reconciliation in partnership with Indigenous communities.

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