A small but dedicated team has spent the past three years working to make Black New Brunswick history a fixture in the North American narrative through a project called Still Here.
“This Still Here initiative was a project that started in my soul when I was looking for identity,” said poet and project lead Thandiwe McCarthy.
Growing up as a Black New Brunswicker, he said, he felt that people saw him as “rare” — and that they didn’t know “Black families have thrived here for over seven generations.”
“I walked along the path alone, trying to find how to dig deeper into this story and realize that I couldn’t do it alone … I needed a village.”
The families
At the heart of the Still Here project are 15 Black New Brunswick families who go back generations, tracked down by Thandiwe’s mother, historian Mary McCarthy, and visited by him and photographer Gary Weekes.
Over the course of these provincewide visits, Weekes took group photos and 174 individual portraits and also captured candid moments. Thandiwe wrote poems based on each family’s story.
“We’ve caught lightning — 15 lightning bolts … with every single one of these families.”
WATCH | Black families have thrived in N.B. for more than 7 generations, Thandiwe McCarthy says:
Still Here project celebrates generations of Black New Brunswick history
Thandiwe McCarthy and his Still Here team are bringing the stories and legacy of 15 Black families in the province to light through photography, poetry and historical records.
The project has grown to include speaking engagements across Canada, an exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton and a book featuring historical documents, Weekes’s photos and Thandiwe’s poetry.
There’s also a four-day Emancipation Celebration, which will take place over the upcoming Aug. 1 weekend in Fredericton. The date marks the anniversary of the 1834 abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act freed about 800,000 enslaved people in most British colonies, including Canada.
CBC News met with four of the 15 families who participated in the Still Here project.
The Dymond family
For decades, an old yellow house in Springhill, on the outskirts of Fredericton, has been the site of large, busy Dymond family gatherings. The home is owned by Lenisha Dymond’s uncle, who bought it from her grandparents.
“We have tons of old photographs and even as little kids, all of us cousins used to love going through those to see what our family would be like, what they did way back when,” she said.
Just a two-minute walk from the family home sits St. Peter’s, a small Anglican church that’s special to the Dymonds and important in the province’s history.
“The actual church was built in the 1800s, and it’s very significant because it was built with Black individuals as well as white individuals, and they came together to build a place of worship,” Dymond said.
Lenisha Dymond says her family remains closely connected to St. Peter’s Anglican Church on the outskirts of Fredericton, built by both Black and white New Brunswickers. (Aniekan Etuhube/CBC)
“There was even within the church a really beautiful stained-glass image of the Black families building the church together with the white people.”
Dymond said the church’s cemetery is also historic.
“It is the only graveyard in New Brunswick that throughout the years, even way back in the 1800s when it was first built … there was no segregation of graves. So the Black families were buried in amongst the white families.”
Dymond said having her family’s history documented in the Still Here project is an important and “timeless treasure.”
“A lot of people don’t think that New Brunswick Black history is as deep-rooted as it really is,” she said.
“Black history is large in New Brunswick. It’s not something that just happened. It’s been happening for years.”
The MacPherson/Edison family
Joel MacPherson lives with his wife and their children on the Kingston Peninsula.
MacPherson was adopted and raised by white parents in rural New Brunswick — an experience he said he shares with many other Maritimers.
LISTEN | Thandiwe McCarthy, Gary Weekes and Mary McCarthy speak about a Black history exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery:
Information Morning – Fredericton31:23Still Here : Preserving Our Legacy
Colleen Kitts-Goguen spoke to the creators of an exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery about Black history in New Brunswick. Thandiwe McCarthy, Gary Weekes and Mary McCarthy worked on the project for several years.
He said growing up he didn’t know his birth parents, and although he has since met his birth mother, he’s never met his birth father.
“So I am the Black of the East who knows no connection past myself. I am the first seed going forward,” he said.
MacPherson said being part of the Still Here experience has helped him and his wife explore and expand their family trees.
Joel MacPherson, who was adopted and raised by white parents in rural New Brunswick, said being part of the Still Here experience has helped him and his wife explore and expand their family trees. (Aniekan Etuhube/CBC)
“This project is connecting and preserving family … without that connection to family, to see that there’s still branches that are connected and still roots that are connecting,” he said.
“So this project gave an opportunity to put together the family trees better to have actual, factual, visible, pass-onable to, generation-able family history in a way that’s cool.”
MacPherson plans to celebrate the Still Here project and festival with his family and other Black New Brunswick families.
“Those of us looking for a home, your home is still here. So this project is coming home.”
The Howe/Lawrence family
Carol Howe of Fredericton said her family’s history in New Brunswick dates back to the early 1700s. Her research includes albums full of historical photos and documents.
Growing up with a military dad, Howe lived all over Canada. The family eventually moved to Nova Scotia, where Black history was recognized in school, and she felt proud of her heritage, she said.
Prior to that, it was a different story.
“I was told I wore a spear and I was naked and I ran, my people ran, through the jungle, and we were ignorant,” Howe said. “And I actually had teachers say that.
“So that’s not something you want to be proud of.”
History always repeats itself … if you don’t tell your story, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen– Carol Howe
Howe lives with her 100-year-old mother, Grace Lawrence, who grew up in Fredericton.
‘I skated on the St. John River and I swam in the St. John River. It was fun growing up,” Lawrence said.
But Lawrence also experienced racial discrimination.
“We couldn’t sit in a theatre,” she said. “We had to sit in the back seat … or we sat right in the front. But most of the time they told us to get up and go sit in the back.
“So that wasn’t very nice.”
Carol Howe of Fredericton says it’s about time Black New Brunswickers celebrated their history. ‘It’s something to be very proud about, it’s something that is not whispered.’ (Aniekan Etuhube/CBC)
Howe said she remembers trying to ask her grandparents about their past lives, but they wouldn’t want to discuss it. She wishes they had.
“It’s something to be very proud about, it’s something that is not whispered,” she said.
“History always repeats itself. And if you don’t tell your story, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. We can tell that from what’s going on in the States.” she said.
Howe plans to bring her mother to the Still Here Emancipation Celebration and hopes there’s a much larger turnout than previous years.
“We’re here, we have our freedom, we have things that our grandparents and parents fought for, and we didn’t celebrate one of the most important things in Canada. With the Still Here project, I’d like to see when we have our picnics and other Black celebrations that we come up as one.
‘It’s about time. … Our history is something to be celebrated.”
The McCarty family
Katherin (Rosebud) McCarty said she grew up in a white neighbourhood and didn’t learn much about her family’s Black history until she did her own research as an adult and now, as part of the Still Here project.
“I could have been a forgotten name … this way at least the name gets discovered … all my different relatives around me would be discovered as well,” McCarty said.
“I mean, you can’t hide us no more.”
We’re still thankful and blessed and Black– Katherin (Rosebud) McCarty
After retiring from the military, McCarty moved to Settler Lake, just east of Saint John. It’s near the historic Black settlement of Willow Grove, founded in 1817 by Black refugees escaping slavery in the U.S.
She said her property was granted to a Black woman in 1783.
“It was Hannah Flood who was a slave who was on this lot … which means somewhere along the way, the generations are still hanging on to us,” she said.
“I can feel the life, the happiness of being here and knowing that, as I traced the roots, my grandfather probably lived in this area as well.
Katherin (Rosebud) McCarty says her Settler Lake property was originally granted to a Black woman, Hannah Flood, who had been a slave. (Aniekan Etuhube/CBC)
“It’s remarkable how history repeats itself … I feel like I’ve come full circle.”
McCarty said the property is her family’s gathering place.
“Birthdays, celebrations — someone farts — and we’re gonna party it,” she said with a laugh.
“We’re happy people … you can’t take the love away from us,” McCarty said. “It’s always gonna be there, regardless of what takes place between today and tomorrow and the next day.
“We’re still thankful and blessed and Black.”
