August 1 marks Emancipation Day in Canada and many other countries. Great Britain on Aug. 1, 1834 established the Slavery Abolition Act, which put an end to the centuries-old system of colonial enslavement of Africans throughout the British Empire, which included the land now known as Canada.
I can’t say I’ve explored a ton of Black history places in Canada, but here are a few I can recommend in Ontario. These are all excerpts from stories/blog posts about places and people that celebrate this province’s rich Black history. All of these places are within a few hours of Toronto.
BUXTON NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE AND MUSEUM
Not far from Chatham you’ll find the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum, part of the 9,000-acre Elgin Settlement put aside for Black settlers in 1849. It’s a marvellous place to learn about Canada’s and Ontario’s Black history.
I drive along roads in the town of Chatham-Kent that are ramrod straight as I head to Buxton from the lakefront town of Erieau. The road to freedom for Blacks escaping slavery in the U.S. was anything but straight and easy, I think to myself.
I was lucky enough to get a tour of the museum and grounds from Shannon Prince, one of the warmest and most engaging tour guides you can find. She was a true delight, and insisted after an hour tour that I give her a farewell hug.
Prince, a sixth generation Buxton resident, shows me the awful wooden compartments (not beds, most definitely not beds) that some slaves slept in as they came to North America (Canada had slaves for more than 300 years and it wasn’t abolished here until 1834). Prince said there sometimes three or four people to a tiny bunk and no washrooms. One can only imagine the conditions.
As we tour the museum, Prince slips a pair of heavy metal shackles around my ankle so I can get the briefest glimpse of what it might have been like, not that three seconds gives anyone a real picture of a slave’s existence 200 years ago.
A sign at Buxton Settlement in Ontario. JIM BYERS PHOTO
I ask if there aren’t times she feels just sick about the past she explains every day.
“I feel honoured to be able to tell the story,” Prince answers. “If my ancestors hadn’t survived I wouldn’t be here. But it does get emotional at times, especially when you see things going on today. The other day I was explaining the history to someone and I just started crying. Some people just can’t pick up the shackles.”
(For a short video on the Buxton site and a ringing of the “liberty bell” outside the museum, click here)
For slaves who escaped the U.S., Buxton must have seemed a paradise. They had log cabin homes of reasonable size (mandated at 18 feet by 12 by 24) and with a kitchen, main-floor bedroom and upstairs loft for the kids. There was a one-room school next door, which Prince attended as a little girl and which you can tour.
In addition to the terrorizing images at the museum, there are displays of hope and courage. I was particularly taken with a display about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black woman in North America to operate a newspaper, called the Provincial Freeman. I think I’d have liked her.
“There are only three Black farmers left in the entire Buxton Settlement area,” Prince tells me. “My Mom is still here and the family farms soybeans, wheat and corn right there, across the street.”
SHEFFIELD PARK BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM
A horrifying display at the Sheffield Park Black History Museum in Grey County, Ontario. JIM BYERS PHOTO
The Sheffield Park Black History Museum is a great facility in Grey County, near Collingwood, with a big barn used to house African artifacts and displays about the chilling horrors of slavery. No matter how many times I see those artist depictions of human slaves crammed into filthy holds on a creaking ship I still feel my nerve-endings go numb. It’s just so insanely and unbelievably awful to see. But important to remember.
I wandered around the grounds for a while checking out small homes that have been turned into display spaces on the area’s maritime history and athletic feats. There’s also a mockup of a small church and a school house. The final building on the circuit contained a series of books and clothes and other goods for purchase. On one end of the room, however, were impossibly racist postcards on display; depictions of Black children with their pants down and supposed jokes about eating watermelon. To say they’re offensive is a monstrous understatement.
“I can’t believe these cards,” I tell curator and museum co-owner Carolynn Wilson.
“And those,” Wilson replies, “got sent through Canada Post.”
Just south of Owen Sound you’ll find the marvellous and spacious Grey Roots museum. When I was there a few years ago they had a display on the area’s black history. There were tales of fully qualified Black nurses being refused a job in the area, forcing her to go to Guelph to work.
There’ was also a bit that explained how the Ku Klux Klan had meetings in the county as recently as 1926. On the other hand, Owen Sound had a Black mayor by 1982.
NIAGARA BOUND TOURS
Burr Plato plaque at Drummond Hill cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario. JIM BYERS PHOTO
I didn’t get to take her tour, but I was in Niagara Falls last autumn and heard a presentation about Black history tours you can take with Lezlie Harper through her company, Niagara Bound Tours.
“Niagara is so rich in Black history,” Harper told us. “My tours aren’t about what the white man did to the Black man but how Black people rose above adversity.”
Harper tells stories about such figures as Burl Plato, who had to swim across the Niagara River from the U.S. to gain his freedom. He went on to become a member of the Niagara Falls city council.
Harriet Tubman, a legendary historical figure, brought enslaved Black Americans into Niagara Falls over a suspension bridge near the current Whirlpool Bridge.
She also told us how the meeting that resulted in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was held in Fort Erie, Ontario.
The Niagara Falls History Museum has terrific displays about Niagara in general and the Underground Railroad. It’s only a short walk from the museum to the Drummond Hill Cemetery, where you’ll find Burl Plato’s final resting place.
