Her Honour the Honourable Mayann Elizabeth Francis, O.N.S., DHumL, is the first African Nova Scotian and only the second woman to have held the position of Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia in its 400-year history. Francis was born and raised in the Whitney Pier district … Read MoreMayann Elizabeth Francis (1946- )
Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge, actor and comedian, was born in New York City in 1933. His father Alexander Cambridge and his mother Sarah Cambridge were born in British Guiana. They moved to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada and then Harlem, New York. Before emigrating, his father worked … Read MoreGodfrey Cambridge (1933-1976)
In the account below Nova Scotian historian Sharon Robart-Johnson describes the research and writing that culminated in her book, African’s Children: A History of Blacks in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Her book, the first history of Afro-Canadians in Nova Scotia, focuses on her community of Greenville, … Read MoreSlavery and Freedom on a Canadian Shore: Africa’s Children in Nova Scotia, 1750-2009
Boston King, one of the pioneer settlers of Sierra Leone, was born enslaved on the Richard Waring plantation near Charleston, South Carolina around 1760. Through the age of 16, King was trained as a house servant before being sent to apprentice as a carpenter in … Read MoreBoston King (c. 1760-1802)
Born in Africa and enslaved in America, Thomas Peters is best known for his influence in settling Canadian blacks in the African colony of Sierra Leone. The earliest documentation of Peters’ life is as a 38-year-old slave in North Carolina. When the Revolutionary War began … Read MoreThomas Peters (1738-1792)
David George, a slave and later a Baptist minister, was born in 1742 on a plantation in Virginia. His parents had been brought from Africa as slaves, and the cruel treatment they suffered prompted George to run away to South Carolina where he hid for … Read MoreDavid George (1742-1810)
Nova Scotia is considered the place of origin of modern ice hockey. The quantity of natural ponds ideal for skating, combined with the British gaming tradition helped facilitate the geographic and social conditions necessary for the development and creation of the game now known as … Read MoreThe Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes (1890s-1920s)
Recaptives, or Liberated Africans, were slaves freed by the British Royal Navy, which intercepted illegal slaving ships leaving Africa after the 1808 Act of Parliament ended the British slave trade. Although the slave trade had officially ended, the enterprise was so profitable that many individuals … Read MoreRecaptives
The Black Loyalists were the approximately 3,000 African American supporters of the British during the American Revolution who were repatriated to British Canada at the end of the conflict. Most settled in Nova Scotia and established what would be for decades, the largest concentration of … Read MoreBlack Loyalists Exodus to Nova Scotia (1783)
Sierra Leone’s founding dates back to 1787 when several waves of freed black settlers originating from England, Nova Scotia, and Jamaica all arrived in the area. Utilizing some English government funding, The Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, an abolitionist group which included … Read MoreFounding of Sierra Leone, 1787
