Preserving Salem Chapel, promoting a rarely told past
At the corner of Geneva and North Sts. in St. Catharines, Salem Chapel stands on the land it has occupied since 1855, marking a home for formerly enslaved Africans fleeing the United States.
Yet a long history is no guarantee of a continued future. The congregation at Salem Chapel is raising money through GoFundMe to pay for the building’s upkeep. A buttercream coloured building, whose windows are trimmed in burgundy and white, it’s clear someone loves this place. A lush and vibrant garden lines the outer wall while a memorial garden, a veritable oasis, invites you to sit a spell.
Up the red stone path, you will find a bust commemorating the church’s most famous congregant and her Canadian life. At the height of her work freeing slaves, Harriet Tubman lived in St. Catharines and worshipped at Salem Chapel.
“What is remarkable is the fact that her life is a Canadian as well as an American story, and although she is barely mentioned in most Canadian history texts, she deserves a place of prominence in the mainstream of Canadian history,” wrote Graham Reynolds in Viola Desmond’s Canada.
For so long, Black people’s history in Canada has been under-taught. At a party in Toronto, a young white woman told me that until she went to university, she hadn’t known Canada once had slavery.
Other histories too are untold. Despite being the “Promised Land” for formerly enslaved people, southern Ontario was not a paradise for Black people.
A series of newspaper pieces posted at the St. Catharines City Museum tell the story of Aaron Young, a barber who wanted his wife to be able to go to the local bathhouse. Aaron and his wife were both denied entry. Although the bathhouse employed Black people, they were not allowed to use its facilities. Undaunted, he wrote an ad and had it published in the St. Catharine’s Journal.
The editorial board of the paper responded: “So long as the colored man behaves himself in this country he will be respected, but when he presumes to dine at a public house, or to wash in the same bath as a white man, he is going too far, and public opinion will frown him down.”
This incident happened in 1867, the year of Canada’s founding. On reading the response to Aaron Young’s story this week, my sister said, “That’s not much different from today.”
If the past few years have been in instructive, issues of equity and justice do not have quick fixes because their hold is historical. The tendrils of white supremacy extend into today. Our 150th year has been a fraught celebration. Curiously, it has also been short on actual history.
Today’s southern Ontario is not a mecca for Black people because racism and discrimination made many lives here untenable. But it is a home for a Black history that connects all of us, no matter where we live in Canada.
Preserving the Salem Chapel is a unique challenge, but an urgent one. Salem Chapel was not the only Black church. Zion Baptist Church was built in 1841, but it fell on hard times. In 1958, the building was demolished.
Salem Chapel’s connection with Harriet Tubman has saved it from a similar fate; previous fundraising efforts succeeded because of it but also because of the passion of the congregation. These days, it’s a small, older group still working.
“Some of the obstacles that we face in general when it comes to preserving Black history is that some of the people who have been doing the work are getting older,” says Natasha Henry, historian and president of the Ontario Black History Society. “Not a lot of young people are taking up that mantle.”
Uncovering the truth of what this country is and has been requires preserving the places that evoke our history. We cannot learn what we allow to be forgotten.
We cannot change until we look at a building and see a history.
I will give to the house where Harriet found a home because for so many, she gave a future and a life. Vicky Mochama is a co-host of the podcast, Safe Space. Her column appears every second Thursday. She also writes a triweekly column for Metro News that mixes politics, news and humour.