Blacks. Rev. ed.

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This is the second edition of a work that first appeared in 1987. As
such, it incorporates some new material and tries to bring the story of
the African-Canadian community in the Maritime provinces up to date. In
format and focus, there is no departure over the previous edition. The
first two chapters provide an overview of the African experiences in the
Maritime region of Canada, from the early 17th century to the 20th. The
remaining three chapters expand on the 19th and 20th centuries, largely
by identifying and briefly describing the contributions of significant
members of the African-Canadian community. We also learn about racial
discrimination and the way in which this left African-Canadian
Maritimers economically and socially disadvantaged, largely through the
experiences of individuals who challenged the odds—often succeeding
despite the obstacles that such discrimination posed.

As an introduction to its subject, particularly for younger readers or
African-Canadians wishing to learn more about the contributions of their
people to the Canadian cultural mosaic, this book will serve a useful
purpose. It is, however, a superficial treatment, nonanalytical for the
most part and frustrating in its inability to place the experience of
African-Canadians into the general historical context of Maritime
society. Thus, we learn a little about William Hall, the first African
and Canadian sailor to win the Victoria Cross, but we learn nothing
about the way in which the sea provided a living for countless anonymous
African-Canadians. Educational and religious developments within the
African-Canadian community are not related to educational and religious
developments within the larger Maritime society in which they occurred.
Until this is done, a significant study of the experience of
African-Canadian people in the Maritime provinces remains to be written.