Black Canadians, also known as Afro-Canadians, are Canadians of African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The majority of Black Canadians are of Afro-Caribbean and African origin, though the Black Canadian population also consists of African Americans in Canada and their descendants.
Africville was a small community of predominantly African Nova Scotians located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It developed on the southern shore of Bedford Basin and existed from the early 1800s to the 1960s. From 1970 to the present, a protest has occupied space on the grounds. The government has recognized it as a commemorative site and established a museum here. The community has become an important symbol of Black Canadian identity, as an example of the "urban renewal" trend of the 1960s that razed similarly racialized neighbourhoods across Canada, and the struggle against racism.
Yvonne Atwell is a Canadian community activist, former provincial politician and former hospital administrator. She is known for being the first Black woman elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL) was an all-black ice hockey league founded in Nova Scotia in 1895, which featured teams from across Canada's Maritime Provinces. The league operated for several decades lasting until 1930.
Black 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. 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. 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.
Richard Preston,, was a religious leader and abolitionist. He escaped slavery in Virginia to become an important leader for the African Nova Scotian community and in the international struggle against slavery. He established the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, the African Abolition Society and the African Baptist Association.
David George was an African-American Baptist preacher and a Black Loyalist from the American South who escaped to British lines in Savannah, Georgia; later he accepted transport to Nova Scotia and land there. He eventually resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone where he would eventually die. With other enslaved people, George founded the Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1775, the first black congregation in the present-day United States. He was later affiliated with the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia. After migration, he founded Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. George wrote an account of his life, an important early slave narratives.
Lieutenant-General John Wimburn Laurie, was a soldier and political figure in Nova Scotia, Canada for thirty years and then returned to England.
The Union United Church of Montreal is Montreal, Quebec, Canada's oldest black congregation. It was founded in 1907 by several members of Montreal's black community who experienced racial conflict and were banned from entering all-white churches. Union was started with a treasury of just $1.83. The church has gone on to have a long and rich history, and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2007. It is just one of the many churches that are part of the United Church of Canada. It is believed to be the only church affiliated with the United Church of Canada, however, that worships in the historically black tradition and has a predominantly black congregation.
James Robinson Johnston was a Canadian lawyer and community leader.
Lieutenant Harold Lothrop Borden was from Canning, Nova Scotia and the only son of Canada's Minister of Defence and Militia, Frederick William Borden and related to future Prime Minister Robert Laird Borden. Serving in the Royal Canadian Dragoons, he became the most famous Canadian casualty of the Second Boer War. Queen Victoria asked F. W. Borden for a photograph of his son, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier praised his services, tributes arrived from across Canada, and in his home town a monument was erected to his memory.
Hamilton Thomas Carlton Plantagenet MacCarthy was one of the earliest masters of monumental bronze sculpture in Canada. He is known for his historical sculptures, in particular his Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (1904) as well as Samuel de Champlain overlooking Parliament Hill on Nepean Point, Ottawa (1915), next to the National Gallery of Canada. His monument to the Ottawa volunteers who died in the South African War (1902) was moved to Confederation Park in 1969 after several moves. Other works include that of Ottawa mayor, Samuel Bingham, in Notre-Dame Cemetery in Vanier.
The South African War Memorial is a memorial located in the courtyard of Province House in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
John Burton (1760–1838) was a Baptist minister in Nova Scotia and was one of the first to integrate black and white Nova Scotians into the same congregation. David George was the first Baptist minister. In 1811, Burton's church had 33 members, the majority of whom were free blacks from Halifax and the neighbouring settlements of Preston and Hammonds Plains.
William Pearly Oliver worked at the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church for twenty-five years (1937–1962) and was instrumental in developing the four leading organizations to support Black Nova Scotians in the 20th century: Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1945), the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (1967), the Black United Front (1969) and the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia (1983). He was instrumental in supporting the case of Viola Desmond. Oliver was awarded the Order of Canada in 1984.
Black Canadians, numbering 198,610, make up 11.3% of Montreal's population, as of 2021, and are the largest visible minority group in the city. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and of continental African origin, though the population also includes African American immigrants and their descendants
The Congress of Black Women of Canada (CBWC) /Congrès des femmes noires du Canada, which began in 1973, is a national non-profit organization that "is dedicated to improving the lives of all Black women and their families in their local and national communities." It arose to organize Canadian Black women and focus on their specific issues and concerns, separate from the general women's movement and Black nationalist organizations, which did not always represent the interests of Black women around issues of race, gender, and class oppression. The organizing and advocacy work of the CBWC has focused on "such issues as health, housing, racism, education, immigration, criminal law, police-community relations and child development."
Lieutenant Charles Carroll Wood was the first Canadian Officer to die in the Second Boer War. As a member of a family that had distinguished itself in America, his great grandfather being Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States, he was buried with full military honours.
Anne Greenup was the first president of The Coloured Women's Club of Montreal.
Pearleen Oliver (1917–2008), sometimes Pearleen Borden Oliver, was a Black Canadian church leader, an anti Black-racism activist, writer, historian and educator.
