Canadian jazz music legend Eleanor Collins passed away yesterday, Sunday, at the age of 104 in the city of Vancouver in the province of British Columbia on the Pacific coast of western Canada.

Collins was a silver screen star in the 1950s and 1960s and helped break down racial barriers in Canadian artistic circles.

Like hundreds of Black farmers, Eleanor's parents left the U.S. state of Oklahoma to settle in the province of Alberta. The migration of Black people came after the Canadian government announced the sale of land to be fertilized and cultivated, for a nominal amount not exceeding 10 dollars.

At the age of fifteen, Eleanor won a singing competition that allowed her to sing on a local radio station in Alberta.

In 1939, Eleanor settled in the city of Vancouver where she sang there with gospel choirs of Black communities and several jazz bands.

The couple settled in the city of Burnaby near Vancouver and were the first Black people to live in the neighborhood.

Shortly after, the local white community launched a petition to force them to leave the neighborhood, but the couple stayed despite the racial persecution they faced.

The first Black artist on television
Eleanor Collins, nicknamed Canada’s First Lady of Jazz, first appeared on television in 1954 on a pioneering musical program featuring a mixed cast and broadcast live in Vancouver.

In the same year, Collins participated with her four children in a musical play, in which she played the role of an African American woman.

A year later, in the summer of 1955, Collins launched her own national weekly television show. The program was simply titled "Eleanor." She thus became the first non-white person to host a national television show in North America.

She preceded the Canadian jazz legend by a full year, African American jazz musician and singer Nat King Cole, who was one of the first African Americans to host variety shows in American television history, an honor often attributed to him.

A tumultuous career crowned with the Order of Canada

Collins continued her career for several decades in many diverse TV shows and also gave musical concerts in Vancouver, but she did not record any music album.

Collins could have gained international fame and headed towards international concert halls, but she preferred to limit herself to contributing to the Canadian music scene in the largest cities of British Columbia province and the third largest Canadian city, Vancouver, and devoted herself to her family.

In 2014, at the age of 95, Eleanor Collins received the Order of Canada for her career as a jazz singer and for her contribution to breaking racial barriers.

In 2022, Canada Post issued a stamp bearing her image in honor of her life and career as an artist, musician, and activist.