and non-black, left their families for military duties. So when a group of white women gave the “coloured ladies of St. Catharines” some highly rationed sugar and tea, it was not just enough for them to say thank you, but it became an item for the newspapers! Even though the assistance was sporadic, and not really enough to have kept black people from starving if they were impoverished, there was a certain expected type of behaviour that sympathetic whites wished to see. Blacks were to be overly grateful for every courtesy extended to them, even by people who considered themselves to be abolitionists — the supposed progressive, liberal, activist element of society. Mary Ann Shadd, a black investigative reporter and editor, felt that anti-slavery advocates were more inclined to expect this degrading behaviour than the regular population who might be less supportive of the black community. Said of this ad hoc charity by Shadd, “[The charity of white abolitionists displays] this disgusting, repulsive surveillance, this despotic, dictatorial, snobbish air of superiority of white people over the fugitives.”
In June 1852, a group of black military men were parading and, without provocation, were attacked by a group of white young people who also damaged or destroyed homes within the African-Canadian community. The sight of black men in military uniform invoked angry feelings since it was seen by the white youth as demeaning to the uniform. And, because blacks had a role in peacekeeping with the canal workers and in halting the illegal importation of goods from the United States, they were further resented as officers and as African Canadians. The town of St. Catharines voted in 1853 to pay for the damages to the black settlement caused by this riot.
At St. Thomas Church, a black churchgoer, Augustus Halliday, felt that he had to take Communion last so that he would not offend other white churchgoers who would not want to use the Communion cup after him — this even by the 1900s and even though he was a property owner on Wellington Street. His concern was very real and appropriate for the recent historical and social experience of being a person of African descent in St. Catharines. A stained glass window depicting St. Thomas was dedicated on September 10, 1905, in the honour of Mr. Halliday who left money to the church in his will.
In 1867, a young black woman who was employed at the Stephenson House, another of the city’s spas, attempted to buy a ticket for the mineral baths, which were supposed to have therapeutic properties, and was refused admission. In an editorial in the St. Catharines Journal, some attitudes about African Canadians using public facilities are reflected:
… the managers would be extremely foolish to allow any such person to bathe with the guests of the house … for there are few who are willing to meet him [the black person] on terms of equality … So long as the coloured 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 a little too far, and public opinion will frown him down.
As long as the growing black population applied themselves to their work and made themselves as unseen as possible, there would be no problem. And with the 1840s arrival of European immigrants who were also eager to work, the interest in tolerating or supporting people of African descent was waning. After all, by the time of the 1863 abolition of slavery in the United States and the 1865 end of the Civil War, many people may have felt that the blacks could now go home, back where they came from, or, at the very least, someplace else. It was a time of white encouragement for blacks to resettle in the Caribbean Islands, Africa, or remote outposts as if their usefulness had been outlived, as if they were not rooted to the soil they had tilled, as if they were not entitled to live in the country that they had chosen or were born into. Black people were now discouraged from remaining in Canada, but the choice to remain was as challenging as the choice to return to the United States. Freedom in Canada did not also mean full and meaningful employment, full and regularized living arrangements, equal and appropriate education and training for the young, or the possibility of living as if they were the same as anyone else. Though coloured people envisioned their broad entitlement of the same full freedoms granted to others, their race and history did not make this a reality.
The Common Schools Act of 1850 allowed for the creation of separate schools for blacks and Catholics. While blacks wanted to send their children to the best equipped or the nearest schools, white residents protested the integration of schools, so the act was used to create separate institutions. Advertisements in the St. Catharines Standard required teachers with a third-class standing qualification teach at the coloured school, while white students would be taught by teachers with no less than second- or first-class standing. Black parents used the power of the vote to defeat an unhelpful school trustee who was felt to be supportive of segregated schools. Protests continued until 1873, at which time the St. Catharines Committee on School Management reported that “mixing coloured and white children in the same classes would prove destructive to the efficiency of the school.”
Schools in St. Catharines were later integrated despite the concerns of a few about the effects of social contact between the races. It is important to note that the population of St. Catharines included some families of Native Canadians who lived among the descendants of Africa or Europe. These families were sometimes families of mixed heritage, so the schools that these children attended may have reflected the perceptions of the time regarding racial classification. Clearly, larger settlements of Native peoples existed in other areas of southern Ontario, especially near Brantford.
7
Life in St. Catharines
The central location of St. Catharines, protected in the lee of the Niagara Escarpment, had made it the most populated Native Canadian area in Canada early in history. Its picturesque site was attractive to the first settlers who arrived during the American War of Independence as Loyalists. However, there was a need for water power to help with the running of mills. This led to the initiative by William Hamilton Merritt to follow through on the 1793 proposal of Robert Hamilton to create a canal from the Welland River, near Lake Erie, up to Lake Ontario. On October 24, 1829, the first Welland Canal was operational, although work continued on it until 1931 to reduce the number of locks and to enlarge its depth in order to facilitate the quick movement of larger ships through the canal. A writer of the time commented on the appeal of the area:
No work in Europe or America will bear comparison with its usefulness. In touching upon the mighty results which must soon follow its completion, the truth will assume the appearance of the most extravagant exaggeration, to those who do not make themselves acquainted with the singular geographical position of North America. The great inland seas above the Falls of Niagara, containing more than half the fresh water upon this planet — bounded by upwards of 400,000 square miles of as fertile land as can be found on the globe, and exceeding in length of coast, five thousand miles. These seas, affording the most beautiful and commodious means of internal communication ever beheld, on a scale which science and human labour or the treasures of a world cannot rival — can be approached by ships, only through the Welland Canal, with which in point of usefulness, no other work of the kind in Europe or Asia, ancient or modern will bear any comparison.
By 1835 St. Catharines was known as one of the terminals of the Underground Railroad. Canadian slavery had been abolished since August 1, 1834, and Upper Canada in the 1850s was still part of the British Empire. One of the symbols of the British monarchy is a lion, so when Harriet would speak of being under the “lion’s paw” it meant to be under the protection of British authority. It was understood that Queen Victoria, her government, and her armies would protect the freedom of self-emancipated people. While few records exist, it is likely that Harriet Tubman supported herself in much the same way she did in Philadelphia or Cape May. She likely worked as a housekeeper, cook, or laundress while in St. Catharines, which is in keeping with the types of jobs that other black women would have had. Service positions were occupations that many blacks and lower class whites were relegated to; only a few were able to break into businesses of their own. But these were people seeking to survive, and any respectable means of earning
