When Curtis Whiley’s great-great-great–grandfather, a cooper from Virginia, took refuge in Nova Scotia in 1815, this community was nothing but pine forest.
Settled far from amenities, he and the many freed slaves from the Chesapeake area opened up lumber mills and barrel shops and turned Upper Hammonds Plains into one of Nova Scotia’s 52 historic Black communities, and Nova Scotia into the birthplace of Canadian Black culture. This town produced Canada’s first all-Black volunteer fire station.
Today, as Mr. Whiley drives around his childhood neighborhood, the construction of multiunit condos rumbles on. Hundreds of new residents have moved in – amid gentrification, rising rents in nearby Halifax, and record low-vacancy rates across the Maritime Province – and the descendants of the original settlers own just 38% of the land.