Black Nova Scotians

Black Nova Scotians

Flag, designed by Wendie Wilson, first unveiled in February 2021[1]
The earliest known image of a Black Nova Scotian, in British Canada, in 1788. He was a wood cutter in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.[2]
Total population
28,220 3% of Nova Scotia population (2021)[3]
Languages
African Nova Scotian English, Canadian English, Canadian French
Religion
Christianity (Baptist), Irreligion and others
Related ethnic groups
African Americans, Black Canadians, Merikins, Sierra Leone Creoles

Black Nova Scotians (also known as African Nova Scotians and Afro-Nova Scotians) are an ethnic group consisting of 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.^[4] As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia,^[3] most in Halifax.^[5] Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities.^[6][7] 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.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]}

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).^[15][16][17] 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, again with African Americans escaping slavery in the United States. Many came after having gained passage and freedom on British ships. The British issued a proclamation in the South promising freedom and land to those who wanted to join them. 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.^[18]

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.