She created a major awards show for Black Quebecers. She says the real work is just beginning
CBC
CBC Quebec is highlighting people from the province's Black communities who are giving back, inspiring others and helping to shape our future. These are the 2024 Black Changemakers.
In the days leading up to the inaugural edition of Gala Dynastie in 2017, the tiny but mighty production team behind the event was forced to hold meetings in an unusual location: A hospital room.
Carla Beauvais, one of the event's creators, was close to giving birth.
"I've never seen a person so driven and so fearless," Marjorie Morin-Lapointe, Beauvais's friend of more than 20 years, recalled with a smile.
"We would meet there, and honestly we had fun.… She was just so motivated to give birth to this other baby at about the same time as her real baby."
Heading into its ninth year, Gala Dynastie has cemented its place as a major event in Quebec's arts and culture scene, bringing together a who's who from the province's Black communities.
Although the gala garners the most attention, the Fondation Dynastie she co-founded also offers programs for Black people aspiring to venture into arts, media and culture.
The foundation and the gala were born, at least in part, out of Beauvais's desire to highlight Quebec Black excellence while simultaneously addressing the inequities that made the event so essential in the first place.
That divide between the privileged and the unprivileged has been top of mind for Beauvais going back to her childhood in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighbourhood.
Beauvais was born to working-class parents from Haiti.
They scraped together whatever they earned working in textiles on Chabanel Street — the heart of Montreal's garment district — to send their daughter to private school.
To go from her home to Collège Français in the Mile End neighbourhood, she hopped on city buses. Many of her classmates, however, pulled up in luxury cars.
Whenever she'd lose her bus pass, she felt so guilty that she would sometimes take the hour-long walk to school instead of asking her parents to buy a replacement.
She was focused on making them proud and showing them that their sacrifices were worth it.
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