This year for Black History Month, I have decided to do a bit of research into black history in my home and native land, Canada. Since there are 4 Mondays in February, I am going to focus on 4 different regions of the country. Last week I looked at British Columbia. This week, I am focusing on the prairie provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Anyone who has been to the prairie provinces knows that they are a place unlike any other in the world. Canada’s early history is inextricable from the frontier and mass settlement across its middle territory. Canada’s present, certainly, relies heavily on its ability to produce abundant agriculture including grains, vegetables, soy products, corn, and cattle. Worn almost completely flat by glacial retreat, the prairie provinces are rich in soil, but sparsely populated. Even casual students of Canadian history know that none of this development would have been possible without the federal government’s policy of actively courting immigrants to settle on nearly free land.

Once again, our casual history of the prairie provinces overlooks the contribution and longevity of the black population.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, black history in the prairie provinces seems to be sparked by events in the United States. When the state of Oklahoma was created in 1907, strong segregation laws were passed that marginalized black Oklahomans. This act, coupled with the Canadian government’s policy of trying to attract immigrants from the United States to the fertile and largely uncultivated prairies, inspired black Oklahomans to migrate north and settle in Canada. Between 1907 and 1911, more than 1000 African-American settlers moved into Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Of course, no good thing goes unpunished. Frank Oliver, federal minister of the interior, passed the Immigration Act in 1911, granting the government powers to restrict immigration to certain ethnicities. This policy goes a long way to explain the ethnic makeup of Canada – ethnicities can be traced like tree-rings to “date” when families probably arrived in Canada. As was the case everywhere, black immigrants were not welcomed with open arms, many forced to pay something akin to the Chinese “head tax”. The Immigration Act would essentially choke off black settlement in the prairie provinces for the next 60 years until Caribbean countries were declared “desirable”, and a large wave of Trinidadian, Guyanese, Jamaican, and other West Indian immigrants entered Canada.

It is interesting to note that black families who settled in Alberta were able to maintain their homesteads at a rate significantly higher than average. One potential explanation for this phenomenon is that families that were prepared to endure the hardships involved in getting there in the first place were both more resilient and more stubborn than people whose passage was easier. However, the small number of black settlers meant that the black presence in the prairies was then, and continues to be, small. Calgary is a notable exception, with a black population of 2.2% (slightly below the national average, but much higher than in most other Canadian cities).

A friend of mine pointed me toward a black pioneer of a different stripe – Dr. Alfred Shadd. Born in Raleigh, Ontario in 1870, Shadd was one of those multi-talented and dedicated individuals that kind of makes you feel bad every time you spend a Friday on the couch eating Cheetos. Doctor, teacher, farmer, editor, and politician, all in one amazing black package. It is important to remember that after the outset of Confederation, the prairies were much like the Wild West – a largely untamed area that was far removed from a centralized government and many steps behind in the level of technology that was enjoyed by the major cities in the east. As a result, it was possible for men like Shadd to achieve a greater level of success out of sheer necessity.

This same friend knew about Shadd because an ancestor of hers ran against him in Kinitsino in Saskatchewan’s first federal election. A strong supporter of decentralized government and greater chez nous provincial control, Shadd ran as a conservative. He lost the election by fewer than 60 votes (a result my friend attributes at least in part to a campaign by racists to ensure that a black man didn’t hold office), but still led a remarkable life. It is interesting to note that Shadd and the man who defeated him (one Thomas Sanderson) were actually great friends and remained so after the election.

Anyone in the area of Edmonton who cares to do so should visit the Shiloh Baptist Church Cemetery, one of the few established historical burial places for black settlers in early Canada. There is a similar cemetery in Chatham, Ontario that I have visited myself (more about that next week), although the Shiloh site is not as rigorously maintained. Sadly, because black history was not (and still is not by many) considered worthy of preservation, it has declined greatly and is more totemic than informative. However, it remains an indelible link to the real contributions that black Canadians made to the foundation of Canada.

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This year for Black History Month, I have decided to do a bit of research into black history in my home and native land, Canada. Since there are 4 Mondays in February, I am going to focus on 4 different regions of the country. This week, I am focusing on British Columbia, the land of my birth and where I currently reside.

British Columbia joined the Canadian federation in 1871, four years after Canada became a country. A coastal province, much of British Columbia is covered in thick forests, the result of abundant rains coming from the ocean and falling on the windward side of the Rocky Mountains. British Columbia is predominantly populated by the descendants of British immigrants, including English, Irish, Scottish, and even many Germans and Dutch. A more recent influx of South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) immigrants has been matched by one from China, Japan, and Korea. In fact, the history of British Columbia cannot be told without making repeated reference to China, as workers from China connected the province to the rest of the country through construction of the railroad. This construction should not be thought of as some sort of equal partnership between the British and Chinese, but rather immigrants leaving their homeland and facing dangerous work for little pay, working for British-Canadian companies.

However, this view of history does neglect the meaningful contributions that black immigrants and Canadians have made throughout the province’s history. To be sure, the black population of British Columbia has always been vanishingly small. However, in my pokings around the internet, I discovered that the first governor of Vancouver Island was a black man, one Sir James Douglas. It’s the result of the fact that he was a Hudson’s Bay Company man that we know so much about his life – the Bay was the single largest corporation in the territories at the time (of a relative scale to the British East India company).

Reading his history, I am reminded of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – the story of a people who come to a ungoverned wilderness and through backbreaking labour manage to wrest it into a thriving community, while being beset with the consequences of their own human foibles:

As senior company officer west of the mountains, Douglas encouraged the traders at Fort Langley to supplement fur exports with farm produce and other commodities. Knowing that the innovations on Vancouver Island would in time destroy the fur trade, he jealously guarded the company’s rights in New Caledonia, on the mainland. He scrutinized the company’s civil and military expenditures in the island colony, and paid into a trust fund all revenues from sales of land, timber, and mines.

…

A fur preserve boasting a single stockaded fort only a few years before, Vancouver Island was now a colony with limited representative government. Compared with neighbouring Washington Territory where land was free, the colony’s population was small, but it lived in peace without Indian warfare. Through Douglas’ efforts, large-scale farming, saw-milling, coal-mining, and salmon fishing had been established. He had plans for government buildings for his diminutive capital, and was endeavouring to have Esquimalt become a naval base. His accomplishments offset the criticism of his rule by Blanshard, Cooper, and Admiral Fairfax Moresby before the select committee of the British House of Commons in 1857. When the government converted Vancouver Island into a crown colony in 1859, the governor it chose was James Douglas. It was already known in London in 1857 that gold had been discovered on the mainland, still under HBC control. A colonial officer of Douglas’ experience would be a good man to have standing by.

…

“I spoke with great plainness of speech to the white miners who were nearly all foreigners representing almost every nation in Europe,” he reported to the Colonial Office on 15 June 1858 after his first visit to the goldfields. “I refused to grant them any rights of occupation to the soil and told them distinctly that Her Majesty’s Government ignored their very existence in that part of the country, which was not open for the purpose of settlement, and they were permitted to remain there merely on sufferance, that no abuses would be tolerated, and that the Laws would protect the rights of the Indians no less than those of the white men.”

History likes to make heroes of its great men, and so we must be careful when viewing the accomplishments of Sir Douglas. I am sure that the miners had no shortage of criticisms for the heavy-handed enforcement of company policy by this foreign Guayanese half-breed who had managed to get himself appointed governor. While he appears to be defending the native people in the above quotation, he had a long series of struggles and what would be, in today’s view, be called abuses with the Native population. There was apparently little love lost between Douglas and the various Native bands that inhabited the area. I don’t doubt that Douglas’ own view of them was steeped in the anti-aboriginal racist attitudes of the time, but it is still commendable that he at least appeared to consider them as equally deserving of rights and protections as the white miners. To the extent that he viewed them both as interlopers on Her Majesty’s rightful lands… well let’s just say he’s not a saint.

What’s curious (may not so much) and interesting about the linked writeup is that it makes nearly no mention whatsoever of the fact that Douglas was black. To be accurate in a mathematical sense, he was “half” black, but by the standards of the time he would have been considered black. He was an advocate of the abolition of slavery:

He was disturbed by the presence of slavery. “With the Natives, I have hitherto endeavoured to discourage the practice by the exertion of moral influence alone,” he informed the company in London. “Against our own people I took a more active part, and denounced slavery as a state contrary to law; tendering to all unfortunate persons held as slaves, by British subjects, the fullest protection in the enjoyment of their natural rights.” In 1849 he ransomed a slave with goods worth 14 shillings.

This account is somewhat confusing, as the British Slavery Abolition Act was signed in 1833, before the supposed “ransoming” of the slave. There may have been de facto slavery still practiced in British Columbia after the act was signed, or the date might be confused with an earlier time. At any rate, Douglas’ story is an interesting one.

Other notable stories

While Douglas’ story is interesting, there are a couple of others I found particularly cool. The first is of the area formerly known as “Hogan’s Alley”. This is an area of Vancouver that technically still exists, although it looks a bit different from then:

To now:

This was an area settled by newly-arrived blacks in the early 1900s, many of whom had jobs as railway porters. It is still very proximate to the train station, but the area was mostly wiped out by the construction of the Georgia/Dunsmuir viaducts (which can be seen in the background of the picture). You can actually see my old apartment in this particular shot.

There’s more information about Hogan’s Alley and some more famous names from British Columbia’s black history at this link, as well as info about a few events that I am going to try and check out.

Next week, the prairies.

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