... having been breathed out

From Constance Backhouse's Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 (Chapter 7: "'Bitterly Disappointed' at the Spread of 'Colour-Bar Tactics': Viola Desmond's Challenge to Racial Segregation, Nova Scotia, 1946"), a long excerpt that's relevant to my novel-research and which I also thought might be of more general interest as well:

Carrie Best, who was born and educated in New Glasgow [Nova Scotia, where the managers of the Roseland Theatre refused to sell Viola Desmond a ground-floor ticket on the basis of her race], was well acquainted with the egregious forms of white racism practiced there. A woman who defined herself as an 'activist' against racism, she did not mince words when she claimed there were 'just as many racists in New Glasgow as in Alabama.' She was thrown out of the Roseland Theatre herself in 1942, for refusing to sit in the balcony, and tried unsuccessfully to sue the theatre management for damages then.

Nor was she a stranger to the heroism of Black resisters. One of her most vivid childhood memories involved a race riot that erupted in New Glasgow at the close of the First World War. An interracial altercation between two youths inspired 'bands of roving white men armed with clubs' to station themselves at different intersections in the town, barring Blacks from crossing. At dusk that evening, Carrie Best's mother was delivered home from work by the chauffeur of the family who employed her. There she found that her husband, her younger son, and Carrie had made it home safely. Missing was Carrie's older brother, who had not yet returned from his job at the Norfolk House hotel. Carrie described what ensued in her autobiography, That Lonesome Road:

In all the years she lived and until she passed away at the age of eighty-one my mother was never known to utter an unkind, blasphemous or obscene word, nor did I ever see her get angry. This evening was no exception. She told us to get our meal, stating that she was going into town to get my brother. It was a fifteen minute walk.

At the corner of East River Road and Marsh Street the crowd was waiting and as my mother drew near they hurled insults at her and threateningly ordered her to turn back. She continued to walk toward the hotel about a block away when one of the young men recognized her and asked her where she was going. 'I am going to the Norfolk House for my son,' she answered calmly. (My mother was six feet tall and as straight as a ramrod.) The young man ordered the crowd back and my mother continued on her way to the hotel. At that time there was a livery stable at the rear entrance to the hotel and it was there my mother found my frightened older brother and brought him safely home.

This was but one incident in an increasingly widespread pattern of white racism, that exploded with particular virulence across Canada during and immediately following the First World War. White mobs terrorized the Blacks living near New Glasgow, physically destroying their property. White soldiers also attacked the Black settlement in Truro, Nova Scotia, stoning houses and shouting obscenities. Throughout the 1920s, Blacks in Ontario and Saskatchewan withstood increasingly concerted intimidation from the hateful Ku Klux Klan. But race discrimination had a much longer history in Canada.

( THE HISTORY OF BLACK SEGREGATION IN CANADA )