Portia White

Portia May White was born on 24 June 1911 in Truro, Nova Scotia, the third of 13 children of Izie Dora White and the Reverend William A. White. Her mother was descended from Black Loyalists, and her father's parents were former slaves from Virginia; he was the first Black graduate of Acadia University. At six she began singing in her father's church choir, under her mother's direction.

Unable to afford professional training at first, she trained as a teacher at Dalhousie University from 1929, and taught in Africville and Lucasville, two small, mainly Black communities near Halifax. Having begun paying for vocal lessons, she later won a scholarship to the Halifax Conservatory of Music, and in 1939 another to study with the Italian baritone Ernesto Vinci, who trained her as a contralto.

She made her national debut at Eaton Auditorium in Toronto in 1941 and soon won acclaim, though she faced racism on the road. After many failed attempts to book a New York venue because of her race and gender, she gave a recital at New York's Town Hall on 13 March 1944. She was the first Canadian to perform there, and the New York press called her performance remarkable and her voice magnificent.

The Nova Scotia Talent Trust was established in 1944 to enable her to concentrate on a professional career. She returned to Town Hall twice more, in 1944 and 1945, signed with Columbia Concerts, and toured Canada, the United States, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and later France and Switzerland. She was known at the time as Canada's Marian Anderson.

White moved to Toronto in the 1950s, where she became a sought-after voice teacher for aspiring Canadian theatre and television performers. She died there on 13 February 1968, aged 56. She made no studio recordings, but audio of her 1944 and 1945 performances survives. She is a Person of National Historic Significance and has appeared on a postage stamp. A life-sized sculpture was carved in Truro in 2004, and Nova Scotia awards an annual Portia White Prize to an outstanding artist.