The Spirit of Africville

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Africville was a squatters’ camp that grew up on the edge of Halifax
as black settlers moved into Nova Scotia in the late 1800s. By the turn
of the century, the area had achieved enough community cohesiveness to
have a church and a school, and residents who valued it as a place where
they could maintain their independence. A few frame houses rose above
the shacks, although municipal services such as sewers, water,
electricity, policing, and garbage pickup continued to be nonexistent.
However humble its material circumstances, Africville boasted a strong
sense of community. Then, in the 1960s, the City of Halifax razed
Africville and relocated the residents to subsidized housing in the
inner city. A few residents received $500 for their homes; most received
nothing.

This book is a lament for Africville as it was in the 1900–1950 era,
and a plea to have relocation reversed for the descendants of those
forced from their homes in the 1960s. That anything could be worse than
Africville was inconceivable to the politicians of the 1960s: they were
wrong. Life in a rent-free shack by the sea, albeit without municipal
services, was far superior to life in a crime-infested apartment
complex, with the City as rent-collecting landlord and the drug lords
and pimps controlling the environment.

This is a professionally written and well-illustrated documentation of
a horrendous piece of Canadian social history that should not be allowed
to slip from our conscience.