Content warning: sexual abuse
Yellow was Auntie Dean’s favourite colour. It wasn’t just bright or warm — it was her. For my mom, Lisa, yellow is a lifeline to her sister’s memory, a vibrant reminder of the woman who gave everything she had to hold our family together. “She could brighten a room with her smile,” my mom often says:, “Her heart could brighten the world.”
For me, yellow is resilience. It’s the colour of survival, of hope, of love lived out loud in a world that tried to quiet it. Yellow holds the promise that Auntie Dean embodied — a promise to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, to love fiercely, and to leave this world brighter than she found it.
But this story isn’t just about Auntie Dean. It’s about the systems that shaped her, broke her, and ultimately could never contain her. It’s about the harm Black communities have endured and the ways we reimagine, survive, and thrive.
“One of my earliest memories,” my mom once told me, “was watching Auntie Dean be raped.”
My mom was just a child then, too young to understand what she was seeing. Their beds were situated side-by-side in the girls area of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. My mom remembers lying in bed as an older boy climbed into Auntie Dean’s. She heard her sister cry, but she didn’t have the words to stop it. When the boy finally left, she crawled into bed beside Auntie Dean, trying to comfort her.
“She was the one who’d been hurt,” my mom said, “but she held me.”
That night set the tone for their relationship. Auntie Dean became my mom’s protector, even when she was the one who needed protecting most. Years later, my mom hit her lowest point, struggling with addiction and trying to raise me and my brother on her own. Auntie Dean stepped in again to support. “She was firm, but she didn’t make me feel worse,” my mom recalled. “She just held me through it, like she always did.”
That love wasn’t just for our family. Auntie Dean had a way of making strangers feel valued. She would take in anyone who needed help — underdogs, outcasts, people the world had cast aside. “She’d give you the shirt off her back, her last five dollars, and a place to sleep,” my mom said. That capacity for love came from a place of survival.
Auntie Dean spent four years in the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, a place that promised safety but delivered a myriad of atrocities instead. Founded in 1921, it was meant to be a refuge for Black children who entered the care system. Instead, it became a site of systemic neglect and abuse, where children were seen as less than human. The most painful truth is that much of this harm was inflicted by other Black community members, a reality that speaks to the deep-rooted complexity of lateral violence and its role in perpetuating intergenerational harm against Black bodies.
Auntie Dean carried those scars with her for decades. For years, other survivors were silenced, their experiences dismissed. But when two survivors learned that a former staff member who had abused them was working with children again, collective action began to take shape. My aunt became involved because she couldn’t stay quiet any longer. She became one of the lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the home and the Nova Scotia government. It wasn’t just her story she told — it was the collective pain of hundreds of Black children who’d been harmed and ignored.
“She never wanted to tell her story,” my mom said. “She didn’t want to relive it. But she knew it wasn’t about her anymore — it was about all of us.”
Against her doctors’ advice, Auntie Dean continued her cancer treatments while testifying. She travelled across the country, recounting the unimaginable for the sake of justice. Though she ultimately beat breast cancer, the fight took its toll. Reliving that trauma reopened wounds that had barely healed, leaving her body and spirit deeply worn down.
I remember visiting her shortly after, around Christmas time. Despite being declared cancer-free, her complexion appeared grey, her energy was dull, and she coughed in an erratic manner I had never heard before. Shortly after, despite her strength and determination, her struggles with and the resurgence of her cancer ultimately overtook her. In 2015, just a year after hearing Nova Scotia’s public apology, Auntie Dean passed away.
I remember visiting her in a Calgary hospital during her final days. Despite her condition, she encouraged me to sneak her out to a nearby Wendy’s. Auntie Dean was always a rebel who refused to remain silent, and I embraced that same ideology. I couldn’t say no to her request. I followed through, and on our way back, as we said our goodbyes, Auntie Dean looked at me and made me promise to “do nothing but great things.”
I carry that promise with me every day. I think of her when I work with young people, helping them find their voices. I think of her when I walk into a room, trying to make it just a little brighter.
Last year, my curiosity brought me to the site of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Now known as Akoma, it has been reimagined as a community space dedicated to Black empowerment. Akoma, meaning “heart” in Akan, stands as a powerful testament to what’s possible when we dare to transform spaces of harm into places of hope and renewal.
Walking through Akoma, I felt both the weight of its history and the hope of what it could become. There’s a corner of the space dedicated to the survivors — a quiet acknowledgment of the past. But the rest of the site is alive with possibility: Black-owned businesses, community programs, and services that reflect the resilience of our people.
And yet, it’s complicated. My mom told me that many survivors wanted the building burned down and erased from existence. “Sometimes I think they were right,” she admitted. But she also sees the potential in what Akoma has become.
In so many ways, Black resilience is about reimagining what we’ve been given — turning harm into healing, refusing to let systems define us. Black History Month is about honoring legacies like Auntie Dean’s. It’s about remembering the fights for justice that didn’t just happen in courtrooms but in kitchens, classrooms, and living rooms. It’s about survival and transformation.
Auntie Dean always brought our family together, whether it was through a family barbecue or another listening session of the live version of Mariah Carey’s “The Emancipation of Mimi” album. Her love kept us united, and though her absence has led to ongoing rifts, her courage inspired others to find their voices.
Her life taught me that healing is not just a personal journey. It’s also political, communal, and deeply connected to the systems we strive to change.
Yellow isn’t just a color. It’s her legacy. And it’s my promise to carry that legacy forward.
