{"id":986,"date":"2017-06-22T00:07:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T04:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/activeseniorsdigest.ca\/wp_activeseniorsdigest\/?p=986"},"modified":"2017-06-22T00:07:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T04:07:12","slug":"teaching-younger-generations-the-right-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/activeseniorsdigest.ca\/wp_activeseniorsdigest\/?p=986","title":{"rendered":"Teaching younger generations the right way"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Inspired through her own experiences with racism, Jennifer Dance was inspired to start writing. The fruits of her labour have lead to three novels and an upcoming play.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Graeme McNaughton\/Active Senior’s Digest<\/p>\n

Jennifer Dance has seen and experienced her fair share of injustices in her life.<\/p>\n

But it is because of those adversities \u2013 and the hope that the future can learn from the past \u2013 that Dance has taken pen to ink. And the Province of Ontario noticed.<\/p>\n

One of the winners of the province\u2019s Ontario Senior Achievement Award, honouring her work, Dance is the author of three books \u2013 Red Wolf, a book about the residential school system set in the late 1800s; Hawk, on the oil sands in Alberta and the effect it has had on local indigenous populations; and Paint, the tale of a wayward horse in the Great American Plains during the westward expansion of the late 1800s \u2013 targeted towards younger readers with the hope of teaching them of the struggles of others and to avoid prejudice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are the leaders of tomorrow, they are the ones who can change the world. Children are inherently passionate about what is fair and what is not. They are not born racist,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey learn racism and hatred, but they can be steered on a path to equality and compassion if their hearts are touched. The feedback that I get from students and teachers is that my writing is able to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dance says her drive to right the wrongs in the world began when she was a teenager living in Trinidad and Tobago and met a boy named Keith.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since I was 17, I\u2019ve had a passion for justice and equality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes back to 1966, to that pivotal moment in my life when I met the boy who I would later marry. It was not a time when white girls dated black boys, but I was na\u00efve and I really thought that we could make a difference, and show those around us that skin colour didn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as Dance learned, her relationship with Keith was not something many were on board with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality was harder than I imagined. When I was on my own, I was treated completely differently from when I was with Keith. I heard things that people may not have said if they had known my husband was black,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The couple later moved to Great Britain, where Dance was originally from \u2013 however, it was there that the author saw those racist slurs turn violent.
\n\u201cThe day-to-day racism that we experienced as a couple culminated in an unprovoked attack by skinheads. Keith was left with a fractured skull and broken ribs. It took a while, but he recovered and we came to Canada looking for a safer place to raise our mixed race family,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cShortly after we got here, Keith died unexpectedly\u2026a complication from the earlier head injury. I was 30. I had two toddlers and was five months pregnant. It was hard. But life went on and I came out of it with an even greater passion to fight racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

A single mother living in a new country, life moved on for Dance, although she knew she wanted to teach the younger generation to not repeat the mistakes of generations past. It was then that the idea for her first novel, Red Wolf, began to grow in her mind. Over the years, the idea grew and grew until she finally put pen to paper and wrote the tale.<\/p>\n

By the time it was complete, Red Wolf was a story that took over 30 years for Dance to tell.<\/p>\n

Now with two more novels \u2013 those didn\u2019t take near as long to go from the idea stage to paper \u2013 Dance is returning to her original passion: musical theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote for the stage, first. Musical theatre is my thing! I was a songwriter long before I was a novelist. Music combined with lyrics can be extremely powerful,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut unfortunately, stage shows, especially musicals, are very expensive to mount and you need a lot of people backing you \u2013 creatively as well as financially. This wasn\u2019t happening for me so I started writing books, always hoping that someday my books would come to the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

While her new project, Dandelions in the Wind, is not based on one of her literary works, it does deal with a prejudice that Dance has personally experienced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is based on my life story as a white woman married to a black man in the 1960s. I have transplanted the racism that we experienced in the UK into the backdrop of the American Civil Rights era, creating a vehicle that sheds light on the history of racism and its legacy. It really is my life\u2019s work,\u201d Dance says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the message will be more powerful on the stage than it could ever be on the page. Music, drama, lyrics, lighting, and archival photographs all come together. It\u2019s incredible to be on the brink of achieving this dream, but it\u2019s scary too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dandelions in the Wind is coming to Daniels Spectrum in Toronto from Feb. 8 through 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Graeme McNaughton\/Active Senior’s Digest Jennifer Dance has seen and experienced her fair share of injustices in her life. 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