On a calm weekday afternoon, James Russell knelt in a grassy field and planted a small Canadian flag. When he stood up and looked around, 27 other small flags fluttered in the wind.
The site – in Niagara-on-the-Lake, on the edge of the border with Ontario, New York – is a relatively unsightly plot of land between a subway restaurant and a white bungalow with a board.
But nearly two centuries ago, it was the site of a Baptist church and the center of one of Canada’s earliest black communities.
Canadian flags on the site. Photo: James Russell.
At least two dozen black people are buried here: those fleeing the United States by subway, enslaved people brought in by loyalists during the American Revolution, black soldiers who joined the loyalists in the battle against the United States, and some free colored people who fled an increasingly hostile American nation.
But their graves are not marked and their names are unknown.
Russell argues that it is right to give these people a dignified burial, and their descendants a place to lay flowers. That is why he himself financed the use of penetrating radar to locate the graves and tombstones of those buried in the cemetery.
“I’ve always been worried that it just looks like a football field,” said Russell, a director who has spent the past 37 years visiting Niagara on the Lake from his Toronto home.
“Finally, last November, I said, ‘You know, nobody’s gonna fix this unless I fix it myself.’
So far, the radar has detected 28 potential objects. Nearly 20 more were found by a local who used flooding to find graves.
The ground penetration radar screen used to locate graves. Photo: James Russell
“Each of these people has a family, grandchildren or great-grandchildren who would like to know where their ancestors are buried,” he said.
“I think it’s my responsibility as a black man in Canada who understands how important it is not only to respect the living, but also to respect the dead.
Norm Arseno, a city councilor in Niagara on the Lake, said he supported Russell’s work. “I’m glad to see that someone is doing this because, frankly, it’s just a cemetery that has been ignored for, I don’t know, 150 years.” Probably longer, “he said.
Across Canada, local communities are using groundbreaking radars and other tools to uncover the last resting places of thousands of children who have attended boarding schools, institutions designed to rip children out of their families and assimilate them, often through violence.
In 2021, the former site of the Indian housing school Kamloops became international news after the potential graves of more than 200 people were discovered.
Hundreds of graves have been identified on the site of former residential schools since then.
However, the discovery of former residents of historical black communities in Canada has not yet received the same urgency.
For generations, Canada has not adequately honored its historic black communities, said Dr. Afua Cooper, a historian, author and professor at Dalhousie University. She pointed out the lack of meaningful recognition of the place in Priceville, Ont., Where black pioneers lived in the 1800s, and in Fort Erie just south of Niagara-on-the-Lake, home to 18th and 19th- th century black settlements.
“For me, this speaks to the bigger question of how invisible the black history is in this country. “Visible but invisible at the same time,” Cooper said.
“The story is literally hidden. So, whether it’s that cemetery in Niagara-on-the-Lake or Africaville [in Nova Scotia] or this is Amber Valley in Alberta, what you have is this marginalization of black history, “she said.
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Local historian Ron Dale said Niagara-on-the-Lake Cemetery was probably abandoned when blacks in the area moved away in search of work.
He also warned that there was no guarantee that the buried tombstones would be legible once excavated. He gave Russell some of the names of black Baptists he found in census records from the mid-1800s, hoping he could use them to help identify some of the names.
Leslie Harper, a Niagara Unbound tour guide with ancestors buried in Fort Erie, hopes that what Russell is doing to help uncover black history in Canada will be captured.
“We can find amazing information about the people who were buried there,” Harper said. “Everyone says, ‘Oh, you can’t find the information.’ Yes, you can – it’s just different and time consuming. But there is all kinds of information about black people who have been here before. It’s just a matter of digging it up. “
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