Millie Burgess says she spent much of her career relishing telling strangers she had 20 children and watching their jaws drop.
Burgess, 99, wasn’t their mother. She was an elementary school teacher who considered the children she taught each year to be like her own, five days a week during school hours.
Born in Bermuda, Burgess was the first female teacher of African descent to teach in the Ontario school system, according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s records, and may be the first Black woman in Canada to complete a teaching degree.