« Survol des réalités économiques acadiennes sur les pourtours du Golf Saint-Laurent, 1760-1830 ».

This short text explores some realities of the ways Acadians integrated the Atlantic economy after the Expulsion of 1755-63. Although the fisheries became predominant all along the Gulf of St. Lawrence coast, Acadians also got involved in agriculture, forest industry, shipbuilding, etc. 

Nicolas Landry

Ce texte s’inscrit dans le projet Ecologies, Knowledge, and Power Projections in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region, c. 1500-present, sous la direction de la professeure Elizabeth Mancke de la University of New Brunswick et le professeur Joshua MacFayden la University of Prince Edward Island. Parmi les lignes directrices de cette démarche, mentionnons l’analyse des relations entre les communautés côtières autour du Golf Saint-Laurent. Pour notre part, notre recherche porte sur la période d’établissement acadien dans cette région au lendemain de la Déportation. Toutefois, cette série de textes courts désire informer le lecteur sur un certain nombre d’aspects venant compléter notre recherche soit les relations que les Acadiens entretiennent alors avec une triangulation des forces externes à leur groupe soit l’Église, les marchands anglo-normands et les gouvernements coloniaux. Entre autres, lorsque vient le temps de servir dans les forces de milice. 

Ce billet n’aborde pas une activité économique en particulier, mais aspire plutôt à démontrer qu’une bonne partie des Acadiens du Golfe pratiquent une pluralité d’activités. Quoique la pêche joue un rôle central dans la région, la majorité des familles y ajoutent une agriculture de subsistance de même que la coupe du bois, la construction navale ou encore la chasse au morse et la pêche aux huîtres. 

Exploiter la terre en contexte de prolétariat agricole

Après le traité de Paris de 1763, des Acadiens sont libérés des forts Cumberland, Edward, d’Halifax, d’Annapolis Royal et de Fort Frédéric à la rivière Saint-Jean. Certains d’entre eux sont déjà employés par les Britanniques aux travaux publics ou à la remise en opération des levées d’aboiteaux à compter de 1764. Et ce, au bénéfice de nouveaux colons anglo-américains ou Planters. Graeme Wynn estime qu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, il y a environ 7000 colons anglo-américains occupant les anciennes terres acadiennes. Il n’est cependant pas de ceux pensant que ces colons Anglos-protestants n’ont aucune maîtrise du système agricole des aboiteaux. Il estime plutôt que ces derniers commencent déjà à se familiariser avec ce système durant la Déportation[1].  

J.F.W. Des Barres – Source Wikipedia

N’empêche que certains Acadiens deviennent « métayers » de grands propriétaires de terre tels J.F.W. Des Barres, qui en recrutent dès 1760 pour les établirent à la « grand prée » de Ménoudie. Il répète le même processus pour ses terres de Napan-Mencanne. En 1766-67, Des Barres installe la famille de Jean Bourque à Ménoudie en lui fournissant des « instruments aratoires » en retour de la moitié de leur récolte[2]. En 1769, Des Barres propose une nouvelle entente avec neuf tenanciers acceptant de lui remettre une portion du produit de leurs récoltes (un tiers des grains) et de l’élevage du cheptel qu’il leur a fourni[3].

Il va de soi que le travail des marais constitue alors un héritage de l’ancienne Acadie, le marais étant au cœur de toutes les activités économiques et sociales de la communauté acadienne à Menoudie et Napan. Le travail se déroule souvent en clans apparentés, mais non sans tensions en certaines occasions. En 1795, le village de Menoudie est compact et compte une quarantaine de maisons ayant chacune un petit lopin de terre et des granges. Il s’y trouve alors 18 tenanciers et 8 familles de jeunes gens dépourvus de « biens » et demeurant chez d’autres habitants; « vivant à leurs crochets ou travaillant pour eux »[4].

Mais l’importance de la culture du foin de pré ne se limite pas au sud-est du Nouveau-Brunswick. Ainsi, au nord-est de la province, le foin « salé » est effectivement primordial à l’alimentation des bestiaux. Le foin salé pousse au « ras des marais, à l’embouchure des rivières et des barachois »[5]. Selon Philippe Basque, sa consommation accroît la soif des vaches qui consomment ainsi davantage d’eau, ayant pour effet d’accroître la production de lait. La coupe du foin de pré se déroule d’août à octobre et on l’entrepose sur une plateforme nommée « chafaud », érigé dans le pré à 60 cm du sol. Le foin y demeure jusqu’à l’hiver, lorsque le sol devient suffisamment gelé pour supporter le poids des chevaux ou bœufs pour le transport vers la grange[6]. Lorsque les terres sont distribuées aux colons du 17 juillet au 14 août 1809, l’on y indique à qui l’on offre des sections de terre cultivables et des marais ou se trouve du foin de pré. Dans ce cas-ci, l’on offre à 40 habitants des terres dans le marais, à 7 autres des terres sur le pourtour du marais de l’île au Foin dans le secteur Sheila, à 6 personnes des terres à Windmill Point (Chemin Grand Carey a Six Roads) et à une vingtaine d’autres concessionnaires des terres à La Dune-de-Tracadie. Dix habitants de Tracadie reçoivent même des terres marécageuses situées dans la baie de Tabusintac, situées à presque 20km de Tracadie[7].

Revisiting the Shrinking City: Population, Re-industrialization and Democracy in Saint John, Part Two

By Greg Marquis

This is part two of a two-part series. To read part one click here.

The newest manifestation of a regional growth agency, Envision Saint John (2021), describes itself as a “sales, marketing and support engine” for attracting people and investment to the greater Saint John area. It represents and is supported by the City of Saint John and surrounding communities: Rothesay, Quispamsis, Grand Bay-Westfield, Fundy-St. Martins and the Fundy Rural District. Its strategic plan has set a 10-year population growth target for the Saint John area of 25,000. Through financial support and cheerleading, the provincial government has been a key player in the coalition in part because Saint John, despite its relative decline vis à vis greater Moncton, is still an important driver of the provincial economy. The current premier, for example, who spent his career working for the Irving interests, has supported converting the underused Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal near Saint John into an export facility to send natural gas to Europe. This also ties in with his interest in reviving interest in shale gas fracking in New Brunswick, which created political turmoil in 2013. Recently Repsol, which owns the Saint John terminal, announced that the project is not feasible because of the distances to market.  Another area by which the Province can influence the business climate is taxation. Starting in 2013, Service New Brunswick began to lower property taxes on pulp and paper mills, including the J.D. Irving paper mill in Saint John. Assessments later increased but recently the company appealed the 2021 figure, which led to the newest assessment being lowered and a refund being issued. All of this affects the City of Saint John’s operating budget. [1]     

Container Cranes at Port of Saint John. Photo Greg Marquis

Port and transportation improvements are classic public projects (or private sector projects funded by the taxpayer) in the region, and in recent years provincial and federal governments have supported expansion plans of Saint John’s port facilities and the Irving-owned Saint John Southern Railway. The federal minister of Transport has described the upgrades as an example of “nation building.” Because governments tend to repeat funding announcements, the specific levels of taxpayer support to infrastructure projects in a given year are not always clear. In 2020 Canadian Pacific, which had once connected Montreal to Saint John, giving rise to the latter city’s Winter port, purchased a rail line in Maine that provided access to Saint John via the N.B. Southern. In 2022 the provincial and federal governments announced more than $37 million to support modernization of Port Saint John facilities on the west side of the harbour.

Revisiting the Shrinking City: Population, Re-industrialization and Democracy in Saint John, Part One

By Greg Marquis

This is part one of a two part series.

Things are changing in Saint John – at least on the physical level.  On the west side of the city (west of the St. John River) a new line of wooden poles and electrical cables runs in from an industrial park at Spruce Lake, where several giant wind turbines have been erected.  The Burchill Wind Project, whose majority shareholder is the Neqotkuk Maliseet (Maliseet at Tobique), is designed to supply electricity to Saint John Energy, a municipal public utility. A few kilometres away, also on the west side of the city, residents of a suburban neighbourhood that dates to the 1960s are being affected by the expansion of a railroad logistics park that brings increased freight train and transport truck activity, with associated noise and traffic. If you leave that neighbourhood and drive to uptown Saint John via the Reversing Falls Bridge, you will pass by a giant metal “monopole” carrying an electrical supply cable across a bend in the river. The visual effect, compared to streetscapes in other urban centers, is jarring and it is not clear that residents, who no doubt had looked forward to the addition of greener energy to their power grid, knew what was coming. The reason that the wires, monopoles and other poles exist, according to a communication from N.B. Power, the provincial public energy utility, is that both utilities agreed “that granting access to N.B. Power’s transmission lines for the project would be in contravention of the Electricity Act.”[1]

Monopole on Main Street, Saint John. Image: Greg Marquis

The new monopole sits on the eastern side of the Reversing Falls gorge, the key site of Stonehammer, North America’s first UNESCO Geo Park. Further to the east, a series of 90-foot monopoles runs below Fort Howe, along Main Street, an urban wasteland type expressway created in the 1970s. Speaking of tourism, students from your children’s school can no longer visit the New Brunswick Museum which began operating in the city in the 1930s. Why? Because the provincial government closed the museum’s exhibit space in uptown Saint John in late 2022 and shipped its collections to a storage facility. In 2018, the newly-elected Higgs Conservative government cancelled a $50 million commitment from the previous Liberal government, effectively stopping a project to build a new museum on Saint John’s waterfront. With the collection (which includes some of the oldest museum exhibits in Canada) sitting in a warehouse, New Brunswick is the only province in Canada without a provincial museum. Based on the lack of public commentary, political and business elites do not seem overly concerned.  But they are excited that the Harbour Bridge is being resurfaced.  To paraphrase the opening of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between, this is Saint John: “they do things differently there.”       

In 2017 I published the blog post “Growth Fantasies and the Shrinking City: Researching the Saint John Experience,” based on not only my personal experience and involvement with the community, but also urban studies research carried out as part of Major Collaborative Research Initiative and Community-University Research Alliance projects, funded by SSHRC. Six years later, the long-term demographic decline discussed in that post have been altered by Covid-19, a small bump in inter-regional migration and an influx of refugees. The Shrinking City, at least for the time being, is holding its own, having reached a population of more than 73,000 in 2022 and featuring a skyline no longer bereft of construction cranes. Just over 1,700 people moved to Saint John in 2021-22.  The stabilization of population pales with the continued growth of the Halifax Regional Municipality, which gains several thousand people a year in good times or bad. Between 2016 and 2021, New Brunswick’s population grew by 3.8% (the corresponding national rate was 5.8%). Statistics Canada reported in late 2022 that the province had added 21,000-25,000 people in the past year. Much of that increase came from international migrants; despite anecdotal evidence of people moving from high-cost regions to the Maritimes to work on-line from home, newcomers from other parts of Canada in 2022 were a small minority of the influx. Those arriving from outside of Canada were split between immigrants and non-permanent resident workers and refugees from the war in Ukraine. Lately the media has been reporting on the impact of population growth on schools, the housing market, and the labour force. The arrival of children and younger adults has lowered the average age of the province’s population, but, despite optimistic reports on unprecedented population growth, deaths in New Brunswick still outnumber births.[2]  

Monopoles Straddling the Saint John River below Reversing Falls. Image: Greg Marquis

The urban growth balance sheet is decidedly mixed. Businesses, employers, landlords and real estate agents have benefited from more customers, potential employees, tenants and home buyers. But population growth can put pressure on health and social services, the public schools and the housing market, problems that Covid-19 and mounting inflation have made worse. The city of Saint John has been associated with poor-quality housing for decades, but at least that housing was cheap. In 2010, Forbes listed the most affordable housing market in Canada as “anywhere in New Brunswick.”[3] At present the city’s vacancy rate is less than 2% and in 2023 there was much media coverage of homelessness. Even the provincial Minister of Housing, who controversially decided to lift a temporary cap on rent increases, has admitted that the province is experiencing a housing crisis. New Brunswick crime rates are also increasing, affecting the ability of over-burdened Crown prosecutors to take cases to trial. In other words, the jury is still out on the claim of Premier Blaine Higgs that population growth will build an “even better New Brunswick.”[4] Recently, his government issued its third budget in a row with a surplus and his Finance Minister has spoken of the challenge of managing growth. In February 2023, the unemployment rate in Saint John was under 7.0%, which seems positive relative to recent decades, but the Census Metropolitan Area has lost 3,600 full-time jobs since 2017. [5]   

In my previous blog I argued that because of outmigration and slow growth, Saint John business and political elites, supported by the media, organized labour and other interests, have operated growth coalitions that limit grassroots input, sideline or silence critics and transcend party lines. This reflects an old-fashioned political environment where cutting ribbons and delivering provincial or federal government dollars to the riding are still paramount. When interviewed on local CBC radio to announce that he would not be running in the next federal election, the local Liberal MP mentioned spending/infrastructure projects as career highlights.[6] In Canadian growth coalition environments social spending is not absent (in 2022 the federal and provincial governments provided $16 million for a 47-unit apartment building in the uptown core, owned by Saint John Non-Profit Housing). But in classic Saint John style the coalition pursues and celebrates public funding of private or semi-public infrastructure. This loose and self-perpetuating network of individuals can include former or future candidates for municipal, provincial and federal office, campaign managers, fundraisers and other political operatives.

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Greg Marquis is a Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick Saint John. He is the author of John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool (Lorimer 2020).

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Sources:

[1] Communication, Marc Belliveau, NB Power, to author, March 24, 2023. See also: Robert Jones, “Saint John wind farm electricity not allowed on N.B. Power wires,” CBC News New Brunswick, March 22, 2022.

[2] “Here we grow: Saint John’s population on the rise,” Envision Saint John, Jan. 25, 2023: https://saintjohn.ca/en/news-and-notices/here-we-grow-saint-johns-population-rise.

[3] “The cheapest Canadian cities to buy a house,” Forbes, May 10, 2010.

[4] Office of the Premier, “New Brunswick population reaches 800,000,” March 25, 2022.

[5] Saint John Real Estate Board, Saint John Employment Trends, Canadian Real Estate, Canadian Real Estate Association:  https://creastats.crea.ca/board/sjnb-employment-trends

[6] Information Morning, CBC Saint John, “MP Wayne Long not reoffering in the next federal election,” March 15, 2023.

A legacy of imperialism and slavery: reflections on the coronation of King Charles III, Queen Victoria, and royal celebrations in 19th-century Saint John, New Brunswick

By Bonnie Huskins

On 6 May 2023, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla will be crowned in Westminster Abbey. According to recent polls, 41% of Atlantic Canadians “don’t care at all” about the coronation. Part of this seems to be an indifference to Charles as king.[1] Others view the British royal family as irrelevant to modern life. There are fourteen Commonwealth countries, including Canada, who still have the British sovereign as head of state, but a recent survey suggests that 52% of Canadians and 66% of Quebecers do not want Canada to remain as a constitutional monarchy.^[2] Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, the Barbados became a republic in 2021, and Jamaica is on the way to terminating its connection to the crown.[3] Thus, according to Justin Vovk, “[t]he coronation is an important moment for King Charles to show the Commonwealth and the world that his reign will be modern, more efficient, and more sensitive to the legacy of imperialism.”[4] Charles has intimated that he will be a more accountable king, willing to recognize the monarchy’s historical connection to imperialism and slavery. He is supporting a research project into the monarchy’s linkages to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which undoubtedly contributed to the prestige and wealth of the current royal family. He has also made public expressions of sorrow and regret for this history, suggesting that there must be ways to “acknowledge our past.” Critics are skeptical, arguing that funding a single research project that will not be completed until 2026, is not enough: Charles needs to acknowledge the monarchy’s connection to the slave trade now, commit more resources, and appoint a special commission.[5]

King Charles and Camilla. Public Domain.

It is fitting at this time to reflect on the British monarchy’s colonial and racist legacy by examining previous celebrations of royal anniversaries in our own backyard – Saint John – which regularly celebrated milestones during the reign of Queen Victoria. Like Charles, Victoria and her royal family battled poor approval ratings for many reasons: favoritism shown toward her first prime minister Lord Melbourne, Prince Albert’s “Germanic intensity,” the Prince of Wales’ propensity for womanizing, and her withdrawal from society after her husband’s death. Victoria’s modest appearance also underwhelmed London society. Rather than wearing the robes of state for ceremonials, she sported a simple black satin dress. One commentator noted that she looked like a “`little old lady coming to church.’”[6] By the time of the golden jubilee in 1887, commemorating fifty years of her reign, Victoria’s handlers, as well as celebration organizers and advertisers, had transformed her from a melancholy widow into a morally upright mother figure. As Thomas Richards notes, “all the pomp and circumstance in the Empire could do nothing to conceal the fact that Victoria was a domesticated monarch, whose public image resided not in the trappings of the upper class, but in the middle-class ethos of frugality, self-denial, hard work, and civic responsibility.”[7] During children’s services in Saint John held by Methodist and Anglican Sunday Schools to mark the golden jubilee, Queen Victoria was revered as a Christian example worthy of emulation. At the Methodist service, the Reverend W. Wadman told the children that they should “imitate Jesus and the Queen by being good and seeking opportunities to be a blessing to others.” The Reverend Canon Brigstocke delivered a similar message to the Anglican Sunday Schools: “We are taught by her to remember others and show our remembrance, ministering to their wants.”[8]

“this seems to be a case where the recommendation of mercy…may appropriately be considered”: The Commutation of Lina Thibodeau’s Death Sentence, New Brunswick, 1955

By Michael Boudreau

On 23 April 1955, following an eleven-day trial, twenty-six-year-old Lina Thibodeau was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband, Joseph Claude Thibodeau, in Madawaska County, New Brunswick.  In announcing its guilty verdict, the jury also added a recommendation of mercy. The presiding judge then informed Thibodeau that her execution, by hanging, was scheduled for 28 June 1955.  According to the Telegraph Journal, Lina Thibodeau, an “attractive blond”, was the first “member of her sex to face the death penalty in this province in modern times.” Lina Thibodeau was fifteen when she married Joseph Thibodeau (who was twenty-five) and they had five children.  Lina claimed that her husband had verbally and physically abused her for years and that she could no longer take this abuse. Thibodeau appealed her murder conviction, but the New Brunswick Supreme Court dismissed her appeal.  Her fate was then in the hands of the federal Department of Justice (and the Cabinet) which reviewed all capital murder convictions to determine if a death sentence should be carried out or commuted.  Between 1869 and 1957, twenty-six New Brunswick residents were executed for the capital crime of murder, none of whom were women.  While it is tempting to conclude that this case underscores the mounting opposition in New Brunswick to capital punishment, given the fact that a national debate about the future of capital punishment had just taken place which had endorsed the death penalty, the commutation of Lina Thibodeau’s death sentence is instead an example of the criminal justice system treating some women with a measure of leniency (if not “mercy”) based on the gender stereotype of most women being incapable of committing a heinous crime.

Lina Thibodeau sentenced to death. From Telegraph Journal, 25 April 1955.

The death of Joseph Thibodeau was years in the making.  Judge J. E. Michaud, who presided over Lina Thibodeau’s trial, explained to the federal Minister of Justice in May of 1955 that Thibodeau’s marriage’s “was not a happy one, and there was considerable bickering between the spouses from the very beginning to the very last.”¹ Lina Thibodeau’s statement to the RCMP collaborated Michaud’s observation.  “My husband started to quarrel with me the day after our marriage”, she declared.  This bickering often took the form of insults from Joseph.  According to Lina, Joseph constantly called her a “cow” and told her that she could not cook and that she wasted the food that he had worked hard to provide for his family.² Eventually Joseph’s insults were accompanied by physical abuse.  Lina told the RCMP that on numerous occasions Joseph would become violent during their heated arguments.  One time he threw a bucket of water in her face, grabbed Lina by the hair and threw her to the floor.  In another instance, Joseph hurled a frying pan at Lina, striking her in the leg.  “It has been this way ever since we have been married”, Lina stated, “he even threw his plate in my face.”³

On the night of Joseph Thibodeau’s death, Lina had decided to attend mass.  But Joseph did not want Lina to leave the house, calling her a “Damn Christly whore.”  Lina responded by insisting that there was nothing wrong with going to church.  Joseph told Lina that if she left she could spend the night with the neighbours as he was going to lock her out of their house; “A damn slave like you”, Joseph yelled, “I don’t need [you] with me.”⁴ Upon returning from church Lina spent some time with her neighbours, the Desjarardins, with whom she had attended mass, and then she went home.  To her surprise, the back door was unlocked.  She entered and discovered that Joseph was asleep upstairs.  Shortly thereafter Lina decided to shoot her husband: “At about the time I started to put wood in the stove I thought of shooting Joseph with the shotgun.”  Lina retrieved the shotgun from the closet and loaded it in the kitchen.  She then climbed the stairs to their bedroom, entered, and then “I pointed the gun at Joseph’s back…the gun went off.  I hit Joseph in the left shoulder.”  Lina then gathered her children and fled to the Desjarardins’ house.  She initially claimed that Joseph had shot himself, but after a brief investigation the RCMP determined that it would have been impossible for Joseph to have committed suicide.  When confronted by the police, Lina confessed, but asserted that she had never thought about killing her husband prior to that fateful night.⁵

“To ship her to the West Indies, and there dispose of her as a Slave”: Connections of Enslaved People between the Loyalist Maritimes and West Indies

SARAH ELIZABETH CHUTE

Des témoignages historiques d’esclaves et de Loyalistes noirs attestent de la façon dont les colonies des Maritimes et des Antilles furent liées par l’esclavage. Ces sources fournissent parfois des preuves des émotions, des attitudes et des actions de personnes noires qui furent confrontées à une violence extrême. Les Noirs affranchis et les esclaves noirs étaient aux prises avec leur propre non-liberté et faisaient face à la même oppression que leurs pairs antillais. Les variations qu’on observe dans leurs vies soulignent toute la gamme des conséquences subies et des luttes menées par les Noirs dans les réseaux esclavagistes transatlantiques, mais témoignent également des occasions qu’ils saisirent pour devenir autonomes et des espoirs et des valeurs qu’ils portaient.

Historical evidence of enslaved people and Black Loyalists testifies to how slavery linked the Maritime and Caribbean colonies. These sources sometimes offer evidence about the emotions, attitudes, and actions of Black people who faced and confronted extreme violence. Free and enslaved Black people grappled with their own unfreedom as well as the oppression of their West Indian counterparts. The variations among their lives underscore the swath of outcomes and struggles that Black people endured within the transatlantic networks of slavery, but they also testify to the opportunities they seized for autonomy and the hopes and values they carried with them.

IN 1791, MERTILLA DIXON, A FREE BLACK WOMAN, had been working as a domestic servant for New York Loyalist Thomas Barclay’s family in Nova Scotia, after relocating there with them from Charleston, South Carolina.^[1] After enduring repeated threats from Barclay’s wife “to ship her to the West Indies and there dispose of her as a Slave” and “being fully persuaded that she was to be put on board a vessel, then ready for Sea,” Dixon fled the Barclay’s household to her father’s home in Birchtown.^[2] Susan Barclay was notoriously vicious to enslaved people and servants alike. Even the “refuge” of family among the largest free Black community in the Maritimes offered only minimal protection, as suggested by a complaint Dixon submitted to Shelburne County’s Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace. She anxiously petitioned for “Your Honor’s Protection, until Major Barclay, can prove his claim.”^[3] Threats to send Black servants to the West Indies as slaves conjured great anxiety and fear among people whose legal status as “free” remained precarious. Mertilla Dixon took Barclay’s threat seriously and implored the court to intercede precisely because there were sufficient connections between the Maritimes and the West Indies to substantiate her fears.

Though unique, the life of Mertilla Dixon is not exceptional. Her story is an entry point for thinking about a vast and powerful institution that connected the Maritimes and the British West Indies: slavery. The bonds between 18th-century British North America and the tropical Atlantic were rooted in overlapping cycles of enslavement, migration, and trade. Following the American Revolution, at least 30,000 white and Black Loyalists and roughly 1,500 enslaved people from the new United States migrated to the Maritimes – the British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.[4] Those enslaved people forcibly relocated to the Maritimes included people who had lived in North America as well as the Caribbean. Other Loyalists migrated to the Caribbean with their slaves. In the Maritimes, the threat of sale to the West Indies was a powerful notion that could discourage or provoke action among unfree Black people. Discourse and dispersion of enslaved and free people thus linked the West Indies and the Maritimes through biographical connections that were pivotal to the course of individual lives as well as to the histories of communities in the region.

“To hell with the people in Preston”: The Inequalities of Integration at Graham Creighton High School, Cherry Brook, Nova Scotia, 1964-1979

STEFANIE R. SLAUNWHITE

L’école secondaire Graham Creighton, située dans la région relativement isolée d’Eastern Shore, dans le comté d’Halifax, a fait l’objet d’un projet pilote en faveur de l’intégration en Nouvelle-Écosse. Situé à Cherry Brook, l’établissement a ouvert en tant qu’école intégrée en 1964 et a servi d’endroit où l’on rassemblait les élèves des communautés noires environnantes et ceux des communautés blanches adjacentes pour se conformer à la politique d’intégration du conseil scolaire local. Cependant, si elle était une politique du conseil scolaire, l’intégration n’était pas souvent mise en pratique.

Graham Creighton High School served as a pilot project for integration in the relatively isolated Eastern Shore area of the County of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The school, located in Cherry Brook, opened as an integrated institution in 1964 and served as the space where students from the surrounding Black and adjacent white communities were brought together to adhere to the local school board’s policy of integration. But while integration was the board’s policy, it was often not implemented in practice.

ON 20 MAY 1969 COUNCILLOR ARNOLD D. JOHNSON[1] of North Preston questioned the intent of his fellow Halifax county council members, asking them whether they intended to do something about the problem of education in his area “or just say ‘To hell with the people in Preston’.”[2] According to Johnson, a fierce advocate for his community, the situation in North Preston was particularly dire. He urged the council to consider that the “welfare problems in the isolated North Preston area” would worsen unless the children were given “equal opportunities of education.”[3] Graham Creighton High School, established five years before Johnson’s address, served as the integrating space where students from the surrounding Black and adjacent white communities were brought together to adhere to “a policy of school integration” established by the municipal school board, working closely with the county council.[4] While integration was implemented in policy, the school fell short of offering equal opportunities and continued to perpetuate segregationist practices.

In using Graham Creighton as a case study, this article argues that segregationist practices kept the people of Preston on the periphery – in political priority, geographic space, and educational equality. The research in this paper is based in part on the author’s master’s thesis,  “The Intricacies of Integration: The Case of Graham Creighton High School.”[5] While writing the final draft, I realized that while I was writing about policies of integration, I was also uncovering a plethora of segregation practices. The title of this article, therefore, reflects the unequal nature of integration and education at Graham Creighton High School. My extensive work with both the records of the Halifax county council and the Halifax municipal school board, combined with my oral history interviews, inform this article and offer the first detailed examination of efforts to desegregate schools in 1960s Nova Scotia. Graham Creighton High School, a pilot project for integration in the area, offers a stark illustration of how policies of integration often masked practices of segregation.[6]

My work is reminiscent of other scholars’ attempts to understand how integration policies were ignored through segregationist practices. For example, Carl E. James observes how social geographic segregation impacts education in his book chapter “Negotiating School: Marginalized Students’ Participation.” Using critical education theory, James writes “that schools are sites of power, contradiction, and contestation,” and that “social and cultural capital gets produced and reproduced in schools in relation to the racial, ethnic, class, gender, and immigrant identities of students.”[7] The communities whose children attended the school in the Preston area were historically segregated, not only from each other but also from the larger urban area of Dartmouth. The spatial separation of students was further replicated within the school itself through socially enforced segregation. Ultimately, while policies did not explicitly allow segregation among the communities attending Graham Creighton High School it was continually reinforced in practice.

Cy McLean and the Trailblazers of Black Jazz in Prewar Central and Eastern Canada

By Wade Pfaff

THE STUDY OF JAZZ IN CANADA’S BLACK COMMUNITIES must begin with the fascinating stories of the lives of the first generation of big band leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, who overcame grave personal and professional obstacles due to their skin color in a turbulent time. Although these African Canadian musicians struggled to make lives for themselves as professionals, the fast-paced changes taking place in the music industry after the Second World War and the Canadian media’s lack of attention combined to make them invisible to all but a few historians. This research note examines the career and family history of Cyril (Cy) McLean and compares his accomplishments with those of two other important band leaders who gained large audiences in Canada during the interwar period (1918-1939) – Ollie Wagner and Myron (Mynie) Sutton – in order to discuss the fact that there were racialized barriers in Canadian entertainment. Each of these men left their homes in small Black communities across the country and went on to create some of the first all-Black Canadian swing bands in Canada. The “Great Migration” of southern American Black people to the industrial urban cities of the northern United States during the first half of the 20th century occurred in an east-west fashion in Canada, with Black Canadians gravitating towards the centre of the country for community, opportunity, and a more equitable business climate.

Figure 1 – Cy McLean, Toronto Star, 24 June 1969 (photographer Doug Griffin). Source: Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Object Number TSPA_0067429F.

Where Would Robert Burns Stand Today in Labor Problems? (1908)

By J.B. McLachlan

Scotsmen everywhere will, on the 25th, be celebrating the hundred and forty-ninth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. He is more of a patron saint to Scotsmen than St. Andrew, his name and life being better known and his anniversary more generally kept. Not more than one Scotsman in a hundred, if asked when is St. Andrew’s Day, could answer correctly straightaway, while ninety-nine out of every hundred of them could do so in regard to Burns Day.

Robert Burns

Why the memory of Burns should thus be enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen seems the more strange when it is remembered that Scotland more than all nations was and is Calvinist in her thinking and Presbyterian in her church government, both of which Burns satirized unmercifully. See his burlesque lamentations on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists in his poem “The Holy Tulzie.” “The Ordination” was a bold satire in ridicule of Calvinism and in commendation if not Socinianism, something near thereto. “The Kirk’s Alarm” was really written in defense of Dr. McGill, one of the parish ministers of the town of Ayr, who had published a work impregnated with Socinian doctrine, and for which he was brought before the church courts.

Not only did Burns defend Socinian writers when in the clutches of the church, but even free-thinkers had his sympathy when the church attacked them. John Goudie, a tradesman in Kilmarnock, a free-thinker and a well-read man, published a volume of “Essays on Various Subjects, Moral and Divine” that became so popular that the book was termed “Goudie’s Bible.” In a letter addressed to that worthy on the mischief done by his book, and on the way the church would restore matters, Burns says:

But, win the Lord’s ain falk get leave

A toom  [empty] tar-barrel

And twa red peats wad send relief

An’ end the quarrel.

Not only what Burns has written against Calvinism, and in defense of Socinians and free-thinkers, but his profound silence on the awful struggle the Church of Scotland passed through from the coronation of Charles II till James VII retreated from the Boyne, makes one wonder why Presbyterians now make so much ado about him on the “25th.”

Chantal Richard and Nicole Boudreau win award for research note published in Acadiensis

Everyone at Acadiensis would like to congratulate Chantal Richard and Nicole Boudreau for winning an Author Recognition Award by the York Sunbury Historical Society for their research note “Applying a Gender Lens to Vocabularies of Identity in French- and English-Language Newspapers in New Brunswick and Acadie, 1880–1900.” You can read the award winning note here: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/Acadiensis/article/view/31559

Nicole Boudreau and Chantal Richard receive their Author Recognition Award, presented by the York Sunbury Historical Society at a ceremony hosted by the lieutenant-governor (Her Honour Brenda Murphy) which took place on December 6^th at Government House.