Pearleen Oliver
Pearleen Oliver (1917–2008), sometimes Pearleen Borden Oliver, was a Black Canadian church leader, an anti Black-racism activist, writer, historian and educator. She founded the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and co-led the Cornwallis Street African Baptist Church. She advocated against the exclusion of Black students from learning nursing, and against racial segregation in education. She received an honorary doctorate degree from Saint Mary's University (Halifax) in 1990. Oliver died in 2008 before being the focus of Ronald Caplan's book Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights. Early life and education Oliver was born into a Church of England-following family as Althea "Pearleen" Borden at Cook's Cove near Chedabucto Bay in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia in 1917. Her great-grandfather was an African slave, her great-grandmother was Dutch and her family was the only Black family in her community. Their daughter, Oliver's grandmother, was Catherine Jewell, who married a man from Newfoundland. Oliver lived in Cook's Cove with her nine brothers and sisters and her mother for her first two years, before moving to New Glasgow to live with her father Joseph Borden (sometimes written Bowden), who worked as a miner in Allen Mines. Her father was