When Rhonda Mcewen received his Official Real Appointment letter as the Honorary Captain of the Canadian Navy in Halifax on June 21, he scored the last chapter in his remarkable family history.
In 1820, his ancestors boarded a schooner in the port of Halifax, fleeing treatment and discrimination for an uncertain future in Trinidad.
“You are surprised,” said Mcewen, reflecting on how his naval honor connects to the journey of his ancestors.
The captains of the Honorary Navy are distinguished Canadian leaders who serve as ambassadors of the Royal Canadian Navy.
Mcewen is no stranger to achievements.
In 2022, she was appointed President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Victoria at the University of Toronto, making her the first black woman to direct a university in Canada.
The history of New Scotland of his family begins during the War of 1812.
With the War of the War, Sir Alexander Cochrane, then by the British Navy, issued a proclamation in 1814 promising freedom and resettlement of enslaved Africans who reached the areas under British military control or protection.
This promise of freedom came from a man that he possessed enslaved people in his good planting of hope in Trinidad.
The proclamation said they would be established in British territories in North America or the Caribbean.
Isaac Saney, a professor and historian associated at the University of Dalhousie, says it was a strategy that had previously worked for the British during the War of Independence and led to the arrival of black loyal in maritime.
While 800 mostly British colonial marines went directly to Trinidad, others settled in Nueva Scotia with dreams of building new lives.
Trinidad, the most southern island of the Caribbean, was scarcely populated at that time.
They were granted 6.5 hectares of land each in the south of the island, did not develop in six “villages of the company.”
This made them the first large -scale black landowners in the colony.
Around 2,000 other refugees went to Nueva Scotia, where the economy was booming at that time and it was necessary for Laborists to build infrastructure.
Refugees received occupation licenses, not owned, for lots of four hectares.
The lots were frequently located on a rocky and infertile soil, which made refugees almost impossible to grow crops to sustain themselves.
The conditions deteriorated even more when the economic boom of New Scotland collapsed in the recession.
By 1815, attitudes had changed dramatically. The New Scotland Legislature, compared to the growing costs provided by newcomers, approved a resolution that indicates that the number of Africans in the province was causing problems.
He said they considered themselves inappropriate for the local climate.
This feeling was resonated by Lord Dalhouse, then governor, in a letter from December 1816 to Lord Bathurst, his superior in London.
“Slaves for habit and education, who no longer work under the fear of eyelashes, their idea of freedom is idleness and, therefore, are quite unable to industry,” Dalhouse wrote.
He proposed to return to the newly released Africans to their former owners in the United States.
This proposal was rejected by refugees, who, as expected, were not willing to be returned to slavery.
The officials resorted to Trinidad relocation as an alternative.
Trinidad had only become a British colony in 1802 and its governor, Ralph Woodford, was eager to reinforce the population to use large extensions of underdeveloped land.
New Scotland officials offered refugees the opportunity to move to Trinidad as color -free people.
Only about five percent accepted the offer, most of them from Hammonds Plains and Beechville.
“There are only 95 or so … many of them, we believe, tried to meet with family members who had gone directly to Trinidad,” Saney explained.
He said that the fact that the vast majority of refugees decided not to go to Trinidad speaks of the formation of a sense of community, which would lead to the creation of historical black communities in Nueva Scotia.
At the end of 1820, refugees approached the schooner William for a one -month trip to Puerto España.
They did it despite uncertainty. Trinidad remained a slave colony, and there were no guarantees that the British honor their promises.
Mcewen said that his ancestors initially expected to return to Africa, specifically to the west coast, but in their place they had the Trinity option.
The settlers joined the American refugees known as Merikins, who arrived before them and became prosperous farmers inside Trinidad.
According to the website of the National Authority of the Library System and Information of Trinidad and Tobago, the settlers cultivated corn, potatoes, bananas, cassava and rice, which they sold in the nearby communities.
The website quotes figures that suggest in 1825, Merikin’s settlers were producing 2,000 corn barrels and more than 400 barrels of rice.
“They celebrate their singularity,” Saney said. “They do not celebrate emancipation. They say, no, emancipation came before that … we emancipated to escape the plantations.”
Mcewen’s personal connection with this story emerged unexpectedly through his brother’s work in the Trinity’s oil industry.
When an old man in Moruga examined his brother’s face and insisted on “his people is from here,” a discovery trip began.
“Behold, the old man was right,” said Mcewen. His research revealed ancestors among migrants in 1821, solving long -standing family mysteries.
Mcewen said that the discovery explains why two of his cousins also serve in the naval forces, one in the Royal Navy, another in the American marines, without previously knowing that his ancestors had been the British colonial marines.
Assuming her honorary captaincy, she said, makes her reflect on the 200 years of refugee to recognition.
Knowing that she is in Canada and descends from black refugees and a completely black colonial unit is special for her, McEwen said.
“Somewhere there began to form a way,” Mcewen said about his family’s trip, “and leads here. And who knows what will happen 200 more years from now on.”
To obtain more stories about the experiences of black Canadians, from anti-negral racism to success stories within the black community, visit Be black in CanadaA CBC project that black Canadians can be proud. You can read more stories here.
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