Share and Care: The Story of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island.

This book relates the chequered history of the Nova Scotia Home for
Colored Children from its inception as a segregated institution for
black orphans and neglected children to its present-day wider use as a
care-giving institution for troubled youth, black and white alike. It
faithfully recaptures the solidarity, the self-reliance, and the
dedicated leadership of a small, wretchedly poor black minority group in
the face of the prejudices of a prevailing white culture (though Nova
Scotia has a better record than most for innovation in black education).


The book is copiously illustrated with some striking black-and-white
portraits. Each chapter is prefaced with a specially commissioned poem
by George Elliott Clarke, an outstanding Nova Scotian poet (“Our
blackness is Beauty most visible” is but one of many memorable lines).
A brief afterword by Clary Croft details various indigenous songs and
games rescued from oblivion by the archival diligence of Helen
Creighton. The narrator maintains an easy-to-read, if detached and
impersonal, style throughout.