Black Nova Scotians (also known as African Nova Scotians, Afro-Nova Scotians, and Africadians) are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities.Confederation's Casualties: The "Maritimer" as a Problem in 1960s Toronto, Acadiensis. Retrieved February 4, 2014.Black history in Toronto , City of Toronto. Retrieved February 4, 2014. The first recorded free African person in Nova Scotia, Mathieu da Costa, a Mikmaq interpreter, was recorded among the founders of Port Royal in 1604. West Africans escaped slavery by coming to Nova Scotia in early British and French colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many came as enslaved people, primarily from the French West Indies to Nova Scotia during the founding of Louisbourg. The second major migration of people to Nova Scotia happened following the American Revolution, when the British evacuated thousands of slaves who had fled to their lines during the war. They were given freedom by the Crown if they joined British lines, and some 3,000 African Americans were resettled in Nova Scotia after the war, where they were known as Black Loyalists. There was also the forced migration of the Jamaican Maroons in 1796, although the British supported the desire of a third of the Loyalists and nearly all of the Maroons to establish Freetown in Sierra Leone four years later, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity. https://www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1991_num_31_121_2116 Journal of Sierra Leone Studies, Vol. 3; Edition 1, 2014 https://www.academia.edu/40720522/A_Precis_of_Sources_relating_to_genealogical_research_on_the_Sierra_Leone_Krio_people, originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).Mavis Campbell, Back to Africa: George Ross and the Maroons (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1993), p. 48.Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), p. 17.
In this period, British missionaries began to develop educational opportunities for Black Nova Scotians through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Bray Schools). The decline of slavery in Nova Scotia happened in large part by local judicial decisions in keeping with those by the British courts of the late 18th century.
The next major migration happened during the War of 1812, with the Black refugees—African Americans from the Chesapeake escaping slavery in the United States. Many came after having gained passage and freedom on British ships. A 1948 documentary study prepared for the Public Archives of Nova Scotia stated that the Black refugees brought into the province during and immediately after the War of 1812 were destined to become the progenitors of the majority of Black people in Nova Scotia. The British issued a proclamation in the South promising freedom and land to those who wanted to join them. Nova Scotia Archives notes that Africville was settled in about the 1840s by people from the Black refugee communities of Hammonds Plains and Preston, and that William Brown Sr. and William Arnold purchased the land in 1848; later provincial correspondence (1962) stated that officials did not find William Brown to be a grantee and did not know of any records of land being granted in Africville. This has been cited as an example of early Black landownership and community formation in the Halifax area through purchase rather than government land grants. Founded in 1848, Africville has been described as the first and only community in Nova Scotia formed by Black land purchase.
Creation of institutions such as the Royal Acadian School and the African Baptist Church in Halifax, founded in 1832, opened opportunities for Black Canadians. During the years before the American Civil War, an estimated ten to thirty thousand African Americans migrated to Canada, mostly as individual or small family groups; many settled in Ontario. A number of Black Nova Scotians also have some Indigenous heritage, due to historical intermarriage between Black and First Nations communities.Sheri Borden Colley, "Black artists with N.S. roots want their Métis ancestry recognized". CBC News Nova Scotia, February 16, 2018.
In the 20th century, Black Nova Scotians organized for civil rights, establishing such groups as the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, the Black United Front, and the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia. In the 21st century, the government and grassroots groups have initiated actions in Nova Scotia to address past harm done to Black Nova Scotians, such as the Africville Apology, the Viola Desmond Pardon, the restorative justice initiative for the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, and most recently the official apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion.
Demographics
According to the 2021 Census, 59.1% of African Nova Scotians are Christian, especially Baptist, and 38.1% are irreligious. 86.4% of African Nova Scotians are born to Canadian-born parents and 12% of them are born to at-least one immigrant parent.
Settlements
Black Nova Scotians were initially established in rural settings, which usually functioned independently until the 1960s. Black Nova Scotians in urban areas today still trace their roots to these rural settlements. Some of the settlements include: Gibson Woods, Greenville, Weymouth Falls, Birchtown, East Preston, Cherry Brook, Lincolnville, Upper Big Tracadie, Five Mile Plains, North Preston, Tracadie, Shelburne, Lucasville, Beechville, and Hammonds Plains among others. Some have roots in other Black settlements located in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island including Elm Hill, New Brunswick, Willow Grove (Saint John, NB) and The Bog (Charlottetown, PEI).
Prominent Black neighbourhoods exist in most towns and cities in Nova Scotia including Halifax, Truro, New Glasgow, Sydney, Digby, Shelburne and Yarmouth. Black neighbourhoods in Halifax include Uniacke Square and Mulgrave Park. The ethnically diverse Whitney Pier neighbourhood of Sydney has a significant Black population, first drawn there by the opening of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company steel mill in the early 20th century.
List of areas with Black populations higher than provincial average
History
Black Nova Scotians by share of overall Black Canadian population: Year Number of Black Canadians Number of Black Nova Scotians Percent of all Black Canadians living in Nova Scotia 1881 21,394 7,062 33% 1951 18,020 8,141 45% 2016 1,198,545 21,910 2%
17th century Port Royal The first recorded Black person in Canada was Mathieu da Costa. He arrived in Nova Scotia sometime between 1605 and 1608 as a translator for the French explorer Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts. The first known Black person to live in Canada was an enslaved person from Madagascar named Olivier Le Jeune (who may have been of partial Malay ancestry).
18th century
Louisbourg
Of the 10,000 French living at Louisbourg (1713–1760) and on the rest of Ile Royale, 216 were African-descended slaves.Kenneth Donovan, "Slaves and Their Owners in Ile Royale, 1713–1760", Acadiensis, XXV, 1 (Autumn 1995), pp. 3–32."Slavery Tour opens at Fortress of Louisbourg: Interpreters of African descent lead tourists through historic site". CBC News Posted: July 30, 2009.Kenneth Donovan, "A Nominal List of Slaves and Their Owners in Ile Royale, 1713–1760", Nova Scotia Historical Review, 16, 1 (June 1996), pp. 151–62.By the late 1750s Ile Royale's population, including soldiers, approached 10,000 people. See A. J. B. Johnston, "The Population of Eighteenth-Century Louisbourg", Nova Scotia Historical Review, 11,2 (December 1991), pp. 75–86. According to historian Kenneth Donovan, slaves on Ile Royal worked as "servants, gardeners, bakers, tavern keepers, stone masons, musicians, laundry workers, soldiers, sailors, fishermen, hospital workers, ferry men, executioners and nursemaids."Kenneth Donovan, "Slaves and Their Owners in Ile Royale, 1713–1760", Acadiensis, XXV, 1 (Autumn 1995), p. 4.Ken Donovan. Slavery and Freedom in Atlantic Canada's African Diaspora: Introduction. Volume XLIII, Number 1 Winter/Spring - Hiver/Printemps (2014). More than 90 per cent of the enslaved people were from the French West Indies, which included Saint-Domingue, the chief sugar colony, and Guadeloupe.Donovan, p. 5.
Halifax Among the founders recorded for Halifax, were 17 free Black people. By 1767, there were 54 Black people living in Halifax.The census of 1767 indicates that there were 13,374 people in what is now the Maritimes, 104 of them were black (Census dated January 1, 1767, as cited by John N. Grant. "Black Nova Scotians". Nova Scotia Department of Education. 1980. p. 7); Also see Bruce Furguson. Public Archives of Nova Scotia, RG 1, Volume 443, No. 1.See Archives. When Halifax, Nova Scotia, was established (1749), some British people brought slaves to the city. For example, shipowner and trader Joshua Mauger sold enslaved people at auction there. A few newspaper advertisements were published for runaway slaves.Of the 3000 inhabitants of the city in 1750, 400 were labelled "servants", some of whom were slaves. The Archives of Nova Scotia asserts that these 400 servants were slaves. Given that most of the immigrants to Halifax came directly from England and were primarily poor, the possibility of them having as many as 400 slaves is remote. Further, the assertion that the 400 servants were black in 1749 is highly improbable given only 54 Black people were in Halifax in 1767.
The first Black community in Halifax was on Albemarle Street, which later became the site of the first school for Black students in Nova Scotia (1786).Albemaarle St. is named after George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle. The school for Black students was the only charitable school in Halifax for the next 26 years. Whites were not allowed to attend.See Griffith.Jack C. Whytock. "The Huntingdonian Missionaries to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, c. 1785-1792", Haddington House.Jack C. Whytock. Historical Papers 2003: Canadian Society of Church History. Edited by Bruce L. Guenther, p. 154 (pdf on line).The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and ... By James W. St. G. Walker.
Prior to 1799, 29 recorded Black people were buried in the Old Burying Ground; 12 of them were listed with both first and last names, seven of the graves are from the New England Planter migration (1763–1775), and 22 graves are from immediately following the arrival of the Black Loyalists in 1776.St. Paul's Cemetery/ Old Burial Ground records (as transcribed in the Death, Burials & Probate of Nova Scotians.C. B. Fergusson, "A Documentary Study of the Establishment of the Negroes in Nova Scotia Between the War of 1812 and the Winning of Responsible Government", Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Publication no. 8, 1948, p. 1. Rev. John Breynton reported that in 1783, he baptized 40 Black people and buried many because of disease.Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World by Travis Glasson.