Voices of Freedom Park opens in NOTL
Despite a lifetime spent promoting the history of Canada’s black community, Wilma Morrison never thought she’d see the day when there would be a park, such as the Voices of Freedom Park, erected in Niagara.
“I cannot tell you what a wonderful day this is,” she said during the Regent Street park’s official opening ceremony Friday.
“All through my life, from early childhood, I talked about the history of the community and there was no one there to listen. Certainly, we are interested in the history of Canada, and could you ask for more. I never thought in my lifetime our community would be honoured in this manner.”
Morrison was honorary chair of the committee tasked with the park’s creation.
While the concept came from the town’s urban design specialist, Raymond Tung, the art installation was created by Tom Ridout. It was designed to engage, educate and enrich local citizens and visitors by improving their understanding of how black history impacted the community and shaped Canada.
“It’s a recognition of our people,” said Donna Ford from the Central Ontario Network for Black History.
Freedom seekers arrived in Niagara-on-the-Lake sometime after the Revolutionary War in the United States, she said.
Ford told the story of her greatgrandfather, Adam Nicholson, an escaped slave from Virginia who arrived in Niagara in 1854. He found work in local farms, saved money and bought 0.8 hectares of property, eventually building a house and marrying Mary Amos, another escaped slave. The couple had four children and raised them in the little house they built in 1868.
“This little romance that started, they lived across the street from one another and they were able to meet, fall in love and marry,” Ford said. “There are many stories like that, of hundreds of freedom seekers that came to Canada who were able to find jobs, work and build lives.”
This new park shows some of those stories and tells the stories of freedom seekers who came to the area.
“It’s so wonderful that Niagaraon-the-Lake gave us this park so people can see and know that they didn’t just ‘come here,’ they came here and became a part of this country and this town,” Ford said.
For Natasha Henry from the Ontario Black History Society, the park is an opportunity to remember area ancestors.
Such as Chloe Cooley, who was the voice of the voiceless, those held in bondage and deemed property not people in Niagaraon-the-Lake.
“An estimated 500 to 700 African American men, women and children were enslaved in Ontario by French and British settlers and some Indigenous people between the 1770s and 1834,” Henry said.
It was Cooley’s screams, carried across the river, that served as a catalyst for Lt.-Gov. John Graves Simcoe and Attorney General John White to introduce legislation to gradually abolish slavery, Henry said, explaining the woman had been sold, forcefully tied up and brought across the river to New York to be sold again.
Among other notables from history: Richard Pierpont, whose idea it was to form the Colour Corps, which saw 50 black men help to defend Niagara during the War of 1812; The Waters family, father and son, who had land in the Coloured Village, owned businesses and held political office; and the fugitive slave Solomon Moseby, who was ordered back to the United States, but saw a community rally together in support of him and against enslavement and injustice — there were letters, petitions, and physical resistance to prevent his extradition.
The federal government, through its Arts and Heritage Legacy Fund administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage, provided $338,000 toward the project. Other funding came in the form of grants from the Province of Ontario, Niagara Region and the Town of Niagara-on-theLake. Private donations from Niagara-on-the-Lake businesses and residents also helped to make the park a reality.
While the park at 244 Regent St. is now open to the public, a planned app and educational program which will allow for a mobile walking tour of all the black history sites within Niagara-on-the-Lake won’t debut until February 2019 — Black History Month.