An Ontario arbitrator has ruled that a Toronto high school teacher who was fired after wearing a Halloween costume involving blackface four years ago should be reinstated and compensated for lost wages.

In a decision last week, arbitrator Norm Jesin wrote that the teacher had gone to Parkdale Collegiate Institute in October 2021 after dressing in black clothes, wearing a black face mask and painting his face black to present “a scary persona, like that of a zombie” for Halloween.

The decision says multiple students were upset by the teacher’s blackface after he removed the black mask while teaching and later attended a school assembly.

It says the Toronto District School Board fired the teacher after an investigation, but the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation called it “an e

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