Educating the community about Canadian Black history and eliminating racism are the main aims of the Halton Black History Awareness Society (HBHAS), which is closing out an active year and planning for 2023.
Many will have come across the group's annual Halton Freedom Festival, which takes place in the summer at Burlington's Spencer Smith Park. This year's event drew 5,000 attendees.
HBHAS has been active in the region since 2015 and grew out of the Burlington Black History Awareness Committee.
The group's chair, Dennis Scott, said rooting out the history of Black families in the region can be challenging, but there is a hunger for it in the community.
Source material can be hard to find, but he said he is constantly receiving requests for information and feedback.
The first Black families began settling in Halton in the 18th century.
"First, people settled around Oakville because Oakville was a port at that time whereas Burlington wasn't," Scott said.
His own family has been in Canada for eight generations and can be traced back to slaves from Kansas and South Carolina.
"I am multicultural," said Scott. "I am of nine different cultures including African, French, English, Canadian, American, Mohawk. Ojibwe, Jamaican and Costa Rican."
Originally from the Owen Sound area, Scott worked on the Emancipation Celebration Festival there, and in 2011 received a provincial heritage award for doing so, before bringing his efforts to Halton.
Joseph Brant's mixed legacy
"One of our first projects was going to the Joseph Brant Day celebration, which was put on by the Museums of Burlington," said Scott.
"A lot of my Black peers were against it because Brant owned slaves. But when you do your research and history in that regard, he welcomed Blacks into Canada. He helped them. He treated Blacks as family. So, as a positive gesture rather than a negative gesture, we decided to participate."
The group runs an annual art exhibition and makes presentations through speakers on Black history.
"We included Indigenous history this year," Scott said. "We included Vietnamese history this year. Halton Black History Awareness Society is applicable to any marginalized individual and/or community. We are working on an inclusive basis. I would not be here except for the emancipation process, which started in the Niagara area.
"It was not only Blacks that were able to get me here or our family here to Canada. It was many cultures, including the Quakers of course.
"Some organizations think the struggle continues, in regards to living those slave days and all those kinds of stuff. I take it a step forward in regards to celebrating our freedom, our emancipation and inviting everyone, multi cultures in helping us get there."
Scott said the region is improving. He points to the naming of a Halton Hills park after Henry Thomas Shepherd, Georgetown's first Black fire chief, as an example.
"Things are evolving on a positive basis," Scott said. "Here in Ontario, in 2021 it was designated that teachers have to take one teacher's day to study or be involved in Black history presentations.
"So we are moving forward. As an organization, we are members of the Halton Regional Police Service multi-cultural round table and there are about 30 different cultures represented and 10 to 15 police. I joined in 2015; I was in awe that it had been going for at least 15 years.
"It gives you an appreciation that Halton, generally, is behind multi-culturalism, and behind equality. I am really pleased to be associated with the organization."
Essay contest
Last year HBHAS ran an essay contest for all regional students with the theme of reflecting on "The Black Experience in Halton."
"We were looking for the students to do research and narratives on Black history in Halton, because it is pretty limited," Scott said.
"I have had historians from Mississauga, Brampton and Halton say Black history is lax, almost none; it has to be resurrected in terms of acknowledging where we come from."
A jury evaluated the essays and selected the winners, with a top prize of $500. HBHAS plans to run the contest again in 2023, although a topic has yet to be chosen.
A co-winner for first prize was Bishop Reding Catholic Secondary student Tobi Oyedele. His essay detailed the contributions of many of the early Black settlers and the tremendous resilience they showed in meeting the obstacles of their age.
"At a glance, Black history in Halton is very similar to Black history in other places in Ontario and around Canada, but what I discovered was that the uniqueness of Halton’s Black history was not necessarily due to the details of each story; rather it was simply because it was my Black history – history unique only to residents in the Halton region," Oyedele wrote. "In the end, all of these stories are part of us, intricately woven into our societies, shaping the communities in which we live."
