"Plaque Build-up" Commemorating the Buxton Settlement, 1950 - 2000"
Embedded in the landscape are several commemorative plaques. In South Buxton, immediately in front of St. Andrew’s Church, there stands a short cairn with a small bronze plaque that reads, “1949, In memory of Rev. Wm. King who founded Buxton Settlement, 1849, and built St. Andrew’s Church, 1859.” A few steps away from this cairn, stands a blue plaque that also commemorates the Buxton settlement. It was placed there in 1965. In North Buxton, there is a museum and a set of three plaques that designate the Buxton Settlement as a national historic site. Why are there so many commemorations to a single place and a single moment in history?
Opposition to the Founding of the Elgin Settlement
N 1829 t,,he Ohio Black Code,,,inoperative for many ears, was revived. If the act is enforced, commented a Cincinnati Negro, "we, the poor sons of Aethiopia, must take shelter where we can find it .... If we cannot find it in America, where we were born and spent all our days, we must beg it elsewhere. "• The plight of the northern free Negro was thus epitomized; and, particularly after 1850, no Negro felt free, no freedman safe, until he had escaped the reach of the Fugitive Slave Law. Just how many American Negroes fled their masters in the South or their oppressors in the North is not known, but between twenty and forty thousand of them turned their faces toward Canada, the symbol and reality of a long sought release from bondage and discrimination. Upper Canada, or Canada West, to which nearly all of these refugees went, was indeed a place of freedom. Unlike the Negro in the northern United States, the Negro in Canada knew that the law rigorously protected him in that freedom, and the very founding of the Elgin and similar settlements testified to the fact that, by and large, the Negro's faith in the province was not misplaced. The problem, however, involved more than simple legalisms and settlements; for even some Canadians responded to the presence of the Negro much as did residents of the Northern United States. The stream of Negro immigration, especially to western areas of upper Canada, created inevitable opposition. Commenting on a group of Cincinnati refugees of 1830, the African Repository-with perhaps some small axe to grind for African colonization-observed that "they are already viewed as unwelcome intruders, and neither the Government, the people, nor the climate of Canada, are favourable to their wishes? And the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, though remarking that it wished to help the fugitive, observed that "yet, the sudden introduction of a mass of Black Population, likely to continue without limitation, is a matter so dangerous to the peace and comfort of the inhabitants, that it now becomes necessary to prevent or check, by some prudent restrictions, this threatened
Canadian Centennial Cerebrations
A few months ago Canadian Dimension, a nationalist and socialist magazine which has been following a predictable pattern by gradually becoming more nationalist than socialist, published "An Open Letter to Canadian Nationalists."! The letter called for a union sacr6e of nationalists of all parties, principles and policies. The authors didn't seem to care much about what kind of country they wanted to save; they just wanted to save the country. It was heady stuff for a Centennial year. But, as the French say, plus ga change .... Back in 1874 William Foster and his exuberant young friends published a similar call to all likeminded Canadians to put "Canada First." The main difference between the two manifestoes is that Foster and his friends thought it useful to provide a somewhat detailed programme maybe that was Canada First's mistake. Dimension's nationalists eschewed programme except for two revealing particulars. First they called for a vast increase in government (i.e. tax-payer) supported "cultural production" everything Canadian that can be "published, performed or broadcast." And secondly, "a research institute" for the permanent study of Canada-United States relations. Our academic nationalists of the 1960s are thus asking for a "national policy" for university professors and other "culture producers" complete, no doubt, with a Red Parlour. Who says Canadian nationalism is difficult to define? Jobs! What is especially striking in these proposals is not the obvious quest for jobs, but the unreality of the proposal. Nobody especially in this annus mirabilis when the golden coffers of the Centennial Council have been added to the Canada Council's horn of plenty to assure that all the culture that's fit to "publish, perform or broadcast" (and some that isn't) shall have a subsidycan claim that Canadian culture withers for want of financial support. Doubtless there are deserving individuals who have been neglected or even discriminated against; doubtless, too, there are areas of the arts that need ever-increasing assistance. But to anyone who is still in the age of Guttenberg the feeling must certainly be that it is not lack of money that explains the low quality of so much of Canadian intellectual life. Where are the great books that can't be written because of lack of fellowships? Where are the first-rate manuscripts that are gathering dust for want of a grant in aid of publication? Of course, the ideological orientation of much that is published may not