PRIDE OF PLACE

Southern Ontario played an important, though little-known, role in the lives of Canada’s Black citizens. HEATHER GREENWOOD DAVIS travels to the small-town museums, churches, and monuments paying tribute to those who came before.

- HEATHER GREENWOOD DAVIS

OKAY, CAMERON, CLIMB into the box,” says our tour guide.

My 15-year-old son, tall, Black, and curious, leaves my side and climbs into a six-by-two-by-twofoot suspended wooden bunk. I momentarily look away.

We’re three hours south of Toronto in the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum, staring at a display that re-creates the cargo space of the ships that transported Africans into slavery. Our host , curator Shannon Prince, is a sixth-generation Canadian and the descendant of American slaves who fled Virginia and Tennessee to live as free people on this plot of land where we stand. She is asking Cameron to help her make a point. He and his 18-year-old brother can barely fit in the space, but it would have housed as many as six men and women, naked, sick, and hungry, on a 35-to-60-day voyage to generational bondage.

Watching Cameron climb into this box is more painful than I anticipated. But for my boys, touching the yokes and chains of slavery and hearing the stories of resilience marks a turning point. What we discover on this mini road trip from our home in Toronto—stopping at churches, museums, and monuments dedicated to Black stories— is a history of Black Canada that most Canadians don’t know. “I had heard about it, but this time I felt it,” Cameron said.