With clear skies and beautiful weather the entire Black Cultural Centre staff and Black Cultural Society board of Directors, hit the highway for the fourth community outreach visit. This visit would include Whitney Pier in Sydney Cape Breton and Tracadie, in Guysbrough County.
The first visit took place at the Menelik Hall Community Center. We were welcomed by the local community and discovered the remarkable history of the community of Whitney Pier and the contributions that were made to the steel industry by African Nova Scotians. Communities in this area of Nova Scotia were settled as early as the 1920's through migrations from the Caribbean and Alabama.
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| Menelik Hall, Whitney Pier |
The community is the noted home of several African Nova Scotian trailblazers, such as Clotilda Yakimchuk who in 1954, became the first Black graduate of the Nova Scotia Hospital School of Nursing. She also received a post graduate midwifery diploma from Colony Hospital, Grenada, West Indies, a post graduate psychiatric nursing certificate from the Nova Scotia Hospital and a diploma in adult education from St.FX University. Ms. Yakimchuk spent 50 years in the nursing profession. She began her career as Head Nurse of the Admission/Discharge Unit of the Nova Scotia Hospital. From there she moved to Grenada, West Indies, where she was the Director of Nursing at the Psychiatric Hospital. Ms. Yakimchuk moved back to Canada in 1967, where she took a position as Staff Nurse at the Sydney City Hospital. She later became Nursing Supervisor and later Director of Staff Development at the Cape Breton Hospital. She then served as Director of Education Services at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital until her retirement from nursing in 1994. We were fortunate to have her present at the event.
Also from Whitney Pier was the late Carl “Campy” Crawford, a long time resident of Whitney Pier, who had also made history. “Campy” joined the Sydney Police Service in 1964, becoming the first black municipal police officer in Nova Scotia and east of Montreal.
Whitney Pier is also the home of former Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, Mayann E. Francis, who was the first woman ombudsman of Nova Scotia and when she became lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia in September 2006, she became the first Black Nova Scotian and the second Black Canadian (after Lincoln Alexander of Hamilton, Ontario) to hold this position.
The African Nova Scotian Community of Whitney Pier is steeped in history and we were grateful for the history that was provided by Reverend Mother Phyllis Marsh-Jarvis, who shared details about the culture and history of the area as well as her life growing up in the community. Music was also provided by the talented Eddie Paris.
The weekend road trip continued on with the Black Cultural Society holding a board meeting in Sydney on the next morning as well as a visit to the UNIA Hall Museum (see separate blog post about this visit). We were truly blessed by the warm welcome we received and the history we discovered.
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| Black Cultural Society, Board Meeting in Sydney |
Eddie Paris "Green Grass of Home"
- R. Grosse
