The Wes Hall Award for Black Journalism seeks to provide more representation in media

The founder of a new foundation wants to change the face of corporate Canada and the face of the Canadian media. 

Toronto entrepreneur Wes Hall, who founded the BlackNorth Initiative (BNI) in the summer of 2020, challenges major companies to acknowledge and end anti-Black systemic racism head-on. 

It’s also supporting young people to be the change. At Toronto Metropolitan University, that means BNI has created a new $5 ,000 scholarship for a first-year Black journalism student.

Hall (external link) , who is also the first Black Canadian on CBC’s Dragon Den, visited TMU on Nov. 7 as part of his launch for his memoir, No Bootstraps When You’re Barefoot. It describes his journey from a plantation in Jamaica to Toronto, becoming one of Canada’s most powerful people.

Hall says he was motivated to create the award to encourage Black storytellers to become journalists and increase their representation in newsrooms.

 “If you look in the newsrooms in most organizations, you see other people of colour, but you really don’t see Black people there,” Hall said. “Who’s there telling my story?” 

“If we don’t have black folks in positions of telling stories, black stories, chances are those stories won’t be told, so we want to encourage storytellers, writers, journalists, and the only way to do that is to hopefully put some scholarship aside to get them encouraged to get into the profession,” says Hall.

Journalism chair Ravindra Mohabeer says that this award recognizes the shared value between the school of journalism and Wes Hall that voices and stories must be diverse for society to thrive.

“This award will assist an emerging Black journalist as a part of Mr. Hall's wider commitment to address the ways that journalism makes some issues and people seem to be more important and others less,” says Mohabeer. 

The winner for 2022 will be announced at Journalism's award ceremony on Nov. 28. Future students can apply for the award by submit a 250-word personal statement describing how the award will help them and make a difference to their community.