While walking high schoolers through the Vancouver neighbourhood where the historic Black community of Hogan’s Alley was located, Ruby Smith Díaz sometimes asks the teens to snap a photo of something that resonates with them.
Smith Diaz, an arts-based facilitator, educator and artist, leads those tours as part of her workshop series exploring Black history and the Black Canadian experience with secondary students and fellow teachers.
Once, a student shared a photo of a mosque after their tour had stopped at Fountain Chapel, one of the few landmarks still remaining after Hogan’s Alley was largely demolished in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
She described the mosque as
