Research Collaborator

University of Guelph

Cecil Foster is a well-known journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, academic, and public intellectual. He was a journalist/columnist in Barbados before moving to Canada, where he reported for the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. Dr. Foster also worked as a senior editor for The Financial Post, national radio news and national television news for CBC Toronto and for CTV News Network. In 1995, his novel Sleep On, Beloved was shortlisted for the prestigious Trillium award. In 1996, his non-fiction book, A Place Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada, won the acclaimed Gordon Mantador Award for the best Canadian book on social and contemporary issues. Since then he has published an account of his life entitled Island Wings: A Memoir and five books of non-fiction, including Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity, a 2005 study of multiculturalism in Canada. His most recent book — on identity, immigration, and multiculturalism — is Blackness and Modernity: The Colour of Humanity and the Search for Freedom, published in 2007 by McGill/Queen's University Press. Dr. Foster now divides his time between his writing and research and teaching. He earned a BA in economics and a master's PhD in social and political thought from York University.