The tide is high at a wide sandy point off Martinique Beach in Nova Scotia. The waves are slender and short, my surfboard a sharp single-fin incision. As the cool Atlantic waters glaze my Finisterre wetsuit, I paddle and paddle until my board finally lifts up. I pop up over a wave, feet planted, arms balanced, the wind boosting me to shore just a few seconds before I fall.
Just 30 miles east from the beach, tucked between Highway 7 and an evergreen wilderness of balsam fir and pine trees, sits the largest Black community on the island of Nova Scotia: North Preston. The town was first settled by Black British Loyalists after the American Revolution, who left New York harbors in 1783 seeking freedom. Just as I did as a toddler, crossing the vast Atlantic Ocean from Angola to the United States.
More Black settlers followed as the decades passed, some from Jamaica, others to escape the War of 1812. But no place is immune to racism’s grasp, not even the great outdoors. As I travel along the Nova Scotian peninsula, by car, kayak, surfboard, and sailboat, I uncover the reality of the world before my time.
On a clear and sunny afternoon in late July, I land in Halifax in Nova Scotia after recently learning about the first naturalized Black communities in North America. I needed to come here myself to experience their history. Photographer and friend Sinuhe Xavier joins me to document the journey.
Across a bridge over the harbor, coming from the airport to the city center, I find Mary’s African Cuisine. Normally, I’m averse to restaurants that group different cultures under a single continental umbrella. But after some friendly banter, founder and chef Mary Nkrumah assures me she’s worked on her menu across multiple borders. Sinuhe and I gush over Senegalese chicken yassa, Kenyan roti, Ghanaian curry chicken, Moroccan falafels, universally loved plantains, and borderless jollof rice.
The food reminds me of the area’s African roots. On the northern edge of the city, Barrington Street feeds into a loose and fractured road that crosses over train tracks. An idyllic Black community once sprawled 500 acres here at its peak: Africville, settled in 1848, where sandy-colored homes sat along the coastal slope. For over 100 years, it remained autonomous with its own school, post office, shops, corner store, and church. It was the type of place where doors stayed open on summer days and Sunday potlucks were neighborhood tradition. Today, all that’s left is a museum that replicates the original church.
“Even before the first deed, there were Black folks living here,” Juanita Peters, the executive director of the Africville Museum told me. “In the 1900s, to have land pieces under Black names was an extraordinary feat on this side of the world.”
I look at a map dotted with historical Black settlements in Nova Scotia. I count 48—the first of which, Birchtown, is a two-and-a-half hour’s drive southwest from Africville, settled after the American Revolution.
After the United States gained its independence from Great Britain in 1783, while peace treaties were being signed in Paris, the last British forces stationed in New York evacuated their posts. Throughout the war, thousands of formerly enslaved African descendants had become soldiers, carpenters, shoemakers, engineers, and tradesmen loyal to the British crown. To avoid recapture after the British defeat, these Black Loyalists, with aid from accomplices like acting commander Sir Guy Carleton and Brigadier General Samuel Birch, evacuated on 81 ships to Nova Scotia.
These Black Loyalists chose to escape the bondage that awaited them in the United States. To do so, they submitted to being packed on top of each other in the lower quarters of ships, cramped among the cargo, risking disease in drenched conditions, holding onto ambitions in spite of the situation.
The ships first landed in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, in the spring of 1783. The rocky harbor soon became the center for the largest community of free Black people outside of Africa at the time. Founded by bands of Black Pioneers, an all-Black British military unit, Birchtown sat off the boggy marshlands opposite the forked cove leading to Shelburne, a white community.
Shelburne had work. When given opportunities, the Black Loyalists worked as woodcutters, small-scale fisherman, and road builders in their new lives. But Shelburne didn’t allow Black residents. So, the population of Birchtown kept climbing, reaching north of 2,500 by 1784.
Though the British government assured the Black Loyalists land for their services, few received even a fraction of the agreed 50 acres. In reaching this “promised land,” the Black Loyalists were exploited in miasmic perpetuity with already limited resources.
Unable to receive quality provisions to integrate into their new environment, Black settlers built makeshift A-framed shelters out of branches. They worked the acidic soil they were given. They remained resilient against an onslaught of violence from white extremists.
The original settlers of the land, the Mi’kmaq people, aided the settlers in preparing for brutal winters. But attempting to build a life, let alone a community, under the scarce conditions without civil and systemic support proved a tremendous mission. By 1792, many left to continue their search for freedom closer to their roots, resettling in Sierra Leone. Those who remained had to keep fighting.
On a dark morning off the ocean coast of Luanda, on a dingy, faded fishing boat, my mother’s arroz doce sat heavy and warm in my belly. I looked at the mosaic shores of a land I’d soon forget. A continent connected to parables of my mother’s father, who spent much time exploring the countryside of the formerly known Kwilu district of the then-occupied Belgian Congo. He lived an influential life seeing the country gain its independence in the ’60s. He was revered in Kinshasa during a period in which Western powers backed militias to maintain their colonial grasp on the land and the resources.
By the late ‘90s my family, originally of the Mbala tribe, had relocated to Angola, where I have my earliest memories. Spotty flashes of summer’s spent in backyard pools filled with laughter. Rainy seasons verdant with birthday celebrations in our Sunday bests. Comfort memories of creamy tomato and black bean stew, feijoada, over steamed rice. Early mornings fried with scrambled egg sardine sandwiches.
These sunny memories are the only connections I have left to a land swallowed in conflict and shattered dreams. Beyond the rays, Angola was still in its own struggle in pursuit of complete sovereignty from the Portuguese.
So, in 2001, I set off in a rickety boat to a plane. The first of many adventures; the one that incited my continued pursuit of the unknown. Two decades later and I’ve started to discover reflections of my journey through the stories I travel to tell—even here, in the freezing ocean off Martinique Beach, where I fall off my surf board again.
Members of North Preston Surf are flying on their longboards in harmony with the sea. The community organization aims to increase participation in surfing for Black Nova Scotians, a small but impactful regenerative practice, considering the history here.
North Preston was settled by Black Loyalists in the late 18th century, then by Maroons exiled from Jamaica, and then permanently resettled by Africans escaping America in the early 19th century. During the last resettlement, the War of 1812 began. The U.S. was in conflict with the British Empire once again. As Americans fought for their freedom to trade and set the tone for their Western expansion, Britain would recruit formerly enslaved Blacks with the same promise as in Birchtown.
The community was given land unsuitable for crops: physically barren, socially isolated, and economically siphoned. The refugees did what they could with what they had. They worked on public roads for the province and put up government buildings—essentially erecting modern day Nova Scotia’s infrastructure—but had no municipal support of their own.
Even now, the settlers’ ancestors need better roads, grid systems, housing development, and clean drinking water. But they maintain their resolve to make things better, no matter the pace. Bylaws restrict residents from accessing the local Long Lake, which they’re fighting against. They’re seeking support for better trail systems in the woods in their backyards.
There hasn’t been any conclusive answer from the local governing boards as to why they’re not permitted to enjoy their natural spaces like nearby neighboring communities do. Even more so, why aren’t they given the same standard public development services that their taxes cover?
As we walked through the neighborhood and spoke to locals, I learned there’s a general consensus that those in governing positions simply just don’t care. History shows they never did. The people of North Preston have had to fend for themselves for the past two centuries. As progenitors of the Maroons, who were adamant in preserving their freedom against the British in Jamaica, there’s a model of resilience in how the people in North Preston live their life today.
Five minutes from the middle of North Preston is the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia. It sits at a turn off Cherry Brook, across from Black-owned, all-day breakfast cafe The Opus. Centenarian birthdays are celebrated here. It’s the intersection of southern fried chicken and waffles paired alongside the Canadian hallmark platter, poutine. It’s a place where townspeople come to look for old friends, catch up with the staff, or simply seek nourishment.
Perseverance here is staunchly Afrocentric. The community holds fundraisers for neighbors going through hardships. In between the deep-fried haddock tips, fish cakes, and lobster rolls, it’s a comfort space for so many African-Nova Scotians today. A physical infrastructure they can take pride in, pour into, and call their own. But behind the joy of marveling at a place that opened up in 2022, there’s an uneasiness given the history of Black properties demolished in the past—specifically in Birchtown, our next destination.
Sinuhe and I drive towards Birchtown to visit the Black Loyalist Heritage Society. On our way, cutting into Mahone Bay and through Lunenburg, we stop at our friend Jason Ransom’s ocean retreat as a blood orange sunset paints the sky.
The following morning, on satin-soft water, we take a Zodiac, an inflatable motor boat, out on an early expedition scoping for seals and island hopping. Jason’s oceanfront dock is a great launching point as we pass troupes of sleeping lobster boats. Bobbing seals stop their sunbathing for a precautionary dip underwater. Their round gray heads occasionally sprout up from ghostly depths.
We go deeper over the Atlantic, toward Hell Island, where a prevailing fog meets us. I’m in an ethereal place between Neptune and the ashes of my ancestors. This is Black adventurism. I can’t help but see the world as a chrome display of what’s transpired and where I currently stand.
After a stretch on Long Island, we head back to the campsite retreat. We’re swallowed by an inevitable fog with Jason’s insight guiding us through the bay. Before modern navigation tech, lobster fisherman and sailors risked their lives in this maritime fog.
The next morning, I pull a kayak into the water and look over across the dock to see a stumpy islet. According to local town history, it’s where the Black fisherman would eat their lunches, since they were barred from stepping foot on this side of the island into town. I imagine the risks they took just to be kept in the fringes of the communities they worked to uphold.
We say our goodbyes and drive down to the south shore to meet up with Andrea Davis, the executive director at the Black Loyalist Heritage Society. Exiting Fishermen’s Memorial Highway, which splits through a white birch and red maple forest, we take the lighthouse route to get to the Heritage Centre.
Some folks working at the Heritage Centre trace their lineage back to the Black Pioneers. Others trace back to bakers, farmers, and community leaders. But as Black bodies tend to be commodified, displaced, and moved around to appease the existing power structure, they’ve lost the lands they owned.
In July 1784, in what is depicted as Canada’s first race riot, unsettled white extremists took it upon themselves to burn Black Loyalist homes. The arsonists were fed up with Black workers taking up work opportunities.
The fire didn’t stop there. Centuries later, in 2006, the Heritage Centre was burned down in an arson attack. It took six years to receive enough funding to rebuild. Many historical documents were destroyed. No one was ever held accountable.
“It takes all of us to keep this heritage alive,” says Davis. “I can only hope and push for more togetherness when it comes to protecting our shared history.”
That night, we stay at the Loyalist Inn on Water Street in Shelburne. The shops, pubs, and fish shacks are white-owned. People go in and out of clandestine coffee shops, sunbathing on the back porch of the Emerald Light, oblivious to the reality of how this came to be.
Today, even Birchtown is primarily white with a population in the low hundreds. There’s no Black-owned eatery, bait shop, mercantile, or hardware store in the area. Houses lay dilapidated and eroded. The ramifications of intentional economic deprivation.
Those Black Loyalists who did eventually receive some land, it turns out, were never given the titles allowing them to pass it on to their children, let alone even sell their plots. The Nova Scotian government barred them from accumulating the wealth that they risked their lives for.
Birchtown’s heritage center is the only place where we can acknowledge their legacy. People whose descendants are not only alive but still call this area home. Instead of seeing the legacy in the social establishments that make these towns a delight, we only see it through the eyes of the bloodline that remains.
We drive back north, passing bakeries in LaHave, people gathering for antique markets on a sunny day. As we get back into Halifax, I look west in the evening sky and see the Big Dipper peering down. While eating oysters at the Muir Hotel near Halifax Harbor, I learn there’s an Africville reunion happening tonight.
Since 1848, the city of Halifax refused the tax-paying residents of Africville street lights, paved roads, and sewage disposal. In 1917, two ships, one carrying munitions, collided off the north part of Halifax Harbour. Over 30,000 were affected by the explosion and tsunami recoil that ensued. The shock decimated the port as well as a great part of the city.
Although the Canadian government provided aid in the aftermath, Africville saw none of it. Instead, Halifax turned the area into an industrial zone, expropriating the community still living there, establishing an open-pit dump. In the ’60s and ’70s, the city bulldozed the remaining houses in Africville without consulting the residents.
I pull into the lot surrounding the Africville Museum. There’s a chorus of cars with license plates from all over North America parked all the way back near the train tracks. It’s a transcendent tailgate across the diaspora. Luthor Vandross is playing over the loudest speakers. Someone’s uncle is emceeing. Folks are dancing as grills fire up. A Black woman double-fills my plate with red beans and rice, oxtail with extra sauce, jerk chicken, and Caribbean macaroni and cheese. Despite the intentional inequity, the community, now displaced, still finds ways to bring their village together.
The next day, I’m rotating the winch as the jib sheet is hoisted up on the 36-foot Little Wing. A few degrees against the wind, south of Georges Island, two skippers are with me making sure I don’t steer us into anything charted. They recount sailing tales to Morocco and Australia as we cross an imaginary line between Connaught Battery Park and McNabs Island. It’s my last sunset in Nova Scotia.
Behind the helm, I’m over-adjusting to the occasional wind gust. I’m still not used to the subtle shifts of the vessel. Near Herring Cove—where there are too many parked boats for comfort—the wind suddenly sweeps onto the starboard side, I align well with the motion pulling out a buttery U-turn to head us back north.
I’m reminded of a call I had with Heather Kelday, the executive director at Nova Scotia Sea School.
“Sailing isn’t just about experiencing elements of nature out at sea,” she said. “It’s learning to be mindfully integrated as humans to the environment but also to each other.”
As I explore the natural world, I see how those who look like me have been socially isolated and environmentally siphoned, forced on to barren lands. But I also find the resilience, richness, and loving nature of Blackness still in existence. Though I’m far removed from those rainy seasons in Angola, I find those parts of myself that were missing in places like this.
The late Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind, reasoned that “… We need the sun, the moon, the stars, to evoke a world of mystery, to evoke the sacred.” We also need our cities and towns, the places we call home, to care about the marginalized to reflect the vibrance of the natural world.
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Publish date : 2024-11-13 02:22:00
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