The first black person who, according to historical records, set foot in Canada was an African named Mathieu de Costa, who at the beginning of the 17th century acted as an interpreter for the French colonizers Champlain and De Monts. But the great exodus took place between 1783 and 1785, during the American Revolution, when slaves known as black loyalists fought on the British side with the promise of freedom and land in return, and three thousand of them they settled in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
Thus arose the communities of Birchtown, in Shelbourne, at one time the largest black settlement outside Africa, and of Africville, in Halifax (the capital), an area of ??approximately fifteen square kilometers around the Seaview Baptist Church, with shops, a school and a post office, extremely humble, but where everyone knew each other, children ran in the streets and doors could be left open. It was home to several thousand people (construction and dock workers, fishermen…) and almost a hundred families, until the authorities decided to evict them to develop an industrial area. And they did it without any considerations.
Not that the City Council had made life easy for them, because blacks in Canada were also victims of racism and discrimination, especially in order to get jobs, and in some cases white neighbors threatened them to leave. It was clear that they were not loved, because although the inhabitants of Africville paid taxes like everyone else, they were never able to have sewerage, running water and garbage collection, among other basic services. Next to their neighborhood, since there was no better place, a prison, an infectious disease hospital and a landfill were built instead.
But despite all this, Africville continued to be their home, until in 1964 the councilors decided, by majority and without consulting those affected, to destroy the area and move the families to blocks of officially protected flats scattered around Halifax, soulless. Adaptation was very difficult, and many fell into drug use, alcoholism, unemployment and dependence on state subsidies. Those who were able to present the land ownership title – there were not many – were paid their value. The vast majority, despite the fact that several generations of ancestors had already lived there, were tried to silence them with a miserable and paltry compensation of $500 at the time.
The destruction of Cape Town’s (artistic and mulatto) District 6 by the apartheid South African government is internationally known, and so is that of many communities in cities across the United States, but Halifax’s District 8 (where today it would have been Africville) is not so much, not by a long shot. The houses were demolished at the same time they were left uninhabited. The Baptist church fell on the night of November 20, 1967 (today it is a museum that tells its story), and the last house was razed in January 1970, fifty-three years ago.
A decade and a half later, the Africville Action Committee was formed, made up of former residents, who demanded compensation. In 2010, the city’s mayor officially asked for forgiveness, and part of the agreement was the construction of a replica of the Seaview church. However, not everyone considers this to be enough. Most of the residents of the neighborhood when the forced expropriations took place are now dead, and those who were children then are now grandparents. Some stayed in Halifax, others emigrated, even to the United Kingdom, and continue to fight for some money that is not frills and really compensates for their enormous loss. Every year they settle in houses on wheels and tents in the old streets of their neighborhood, to remember him.
In all of Canada there are one and a half million black people, 4% of the total population. Of the 400,000 inhabitants of Halifax, only 10,000 are black, some of them descendants of those original residents who fought with the English in exchange for promises of land and freedom. Behind the boardwalk, seafood restaurants, boutiques and museums of Nova Scotia’s capital that tourists visit, there is a tragic story hidden: the destruction of Africville.
