Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

I am one of the oldest Black women of the West Indian families living in Whitney Pier. There are only a few West Indian families left in Whitney Pier of the original three hundred or so families who lived there at one time. I have been a Black person first, and then I was from the Pier. I was born the second of nine children and we grew up on Tupper Street in the “coke ovens,” they used to call it, but it is Whitney Pier.

Coming from Barbados

Coming from Barbados to Sydney was a big change. A lot who came couldn’t stand the weather and a lot of them died of tuberculosis, pneumonia, and pleurisy. Quite a few went back to Barbados.

My father came from Barbados in 1906, and my mother came later in 1917. They weren’t married when my father first came. He went back to Barbados three times and on the third time, she finally made up her mind to come here with him. In order for women to come into Canada, they had to have a letter saying they were going to get married as soon as they arrived.

At the time they had sent some men from Sydney Steel to Barbados to look for men to come over here to work, and my father heard about it. But he didn’t come over with the first lot of men who came. The other men had to pay back their passage to the steel plant, but my father came on his own – the steel company didn’t pay his way. He had money before he left Barbados.

When my father first came here, he worked at the coke ovens. The wages were very low. At first he was making twelve cents an hour, and after two years he was getting fourteen cents an hour. That’s a big difference from the pay they’re getting today. Another difference was, in Barbados, the class system was very well defined; here everyone mixed together. In the Pier, it seemed like everyone was so closely knit and we had so many different nationalities between Tupper, Laurier, Hankard, Lingan Road and Curry’s Land. There were Italians, there were Negroes, there were Hungarians, there were Polish, Ukrainians, French, Indians, and Jews. And they all seemed to get along very well. Most of the West Indians were from Barbados, but some came from Guyana, Trinidad, and Grenada. We knew where they came from by their accents. The Black people in the Pier were always called “coloured,” but in the 1960s, with the happenings in the United States, they began to be called “Black.”

Blending the old & the new

My father really came here as a shoemaker. He worked for the steel plant for so long and then he went into business on his own. He bought a big building on Tupper Street with five bedrooms. Then he opened a shoemaker shop. Then we had a grocery store on Tupper Street in the same building and then we had another store across the street which was a confectionary. And then we had another building with four apartments. He always said if anything happened to him, at least we’d have an income coming in.

The people from Barbados and the other West Indian areas used to play an awful lot of cricket. That’s an English game. And they had two bands, a West Indian Band and a U.N.I.A. Band, that is, Universal Negro Improvement Association. The bands played marching music, some West Indian Music and lots of church music.

For the West Indians, their food would be “chicken and rice,” and they made hot sauce. There was a dish called “coo coo” made out of corn meal with gravy on it. The Italians have the same thing, only they call it “polenta.” They made West Indian bread and West Indian turnovers and West Indian fruitcake. Most of the West Indians at the time, the Hungarians and the Polish and the Ukrainians all had their special food. But the young people today don’t bother too much with ethnic foods.

My mother would get her supplies for making West Indian food by mail from relatives in Barbados. There were different kinds of rice, sweet potatoes, yams, and pigeon peas. But then the Canadian government put a ban on mailing these foods. So then Simon David’s grocery store used to bring them in from Montreal. Now if we can’t get exactly the right thing, there are things we can substitute, but we can get almost everything from Halifax these days.

The Black Cross Nurses

When we had the West Indian Band and the U.N.I.A. in the early thirties, we had a group of women called the “Black Cross Nurses.” It was like a private club. They used to wear uniforms. They had black on their hats and a white cross on their capes. They would go to homes where anybody had babies or small children. They’d help different mothers with the children. They’d go shopping for them and teach the mothers to do different things. Sort of help them to get used to the idea of living in Cape Breton. A lot of the mothers came from Barbados young and they didn’t understand about dressings and things like that. They really looked after each other. They did that for years. The Black Cross Nurses were mainly married, but there might have been some single women. Most of the women came married, but some might have come as domestics.

I was mostly a Homemaker

I met my husband at a dance at the Menelik Hall. He came from Donkin. He used to come in every weekend and we’d go to the show or things like that. There were about six Black families living in Donkin at the time. His father had been killed working as a coal miner. We got engaged at Christmas and then in January, he went overseas and I didn’t see him for five years. We got married when he came back. That was forty-seven years ago.

I was mostly a homemaker, but I worked outside the home too. In the forties, before I was married, I worked at the Co-op Store. They had a coloured Co-Op store on the corner of William and Tupper Street. It was owned and operated by Black people. But the pay wasn’t that good, so I decided to look to greener pastures in Toronto. My sister was living there. But I just stayed for a year. I didn’t like it. I thought they were very “cold” people up there. Also, I couldn’t take the cold weather.

Once when my husband was laid off, I took a job at Woolworth’s. I was the only Black person working there. I never had any trouble with anybody – well, just one lady, but I wouldn’t repeat what she said. But I told her off, so that was the end of that. I was at Woolworth’s for twenty-three years.

Living is very good in the Pier

One time, when we lived on Tupper Street, everybody had cows and chickens in the backyard. But then there was a City Ordinance that this was within city limits, so you had to get ride of all the cows and chickens and pigs.

So that was how they cleared out those old shacks and houses and big buildings that were down there. On Tupper and Laurier and Hankard Streets, they’re all new buildings. The new Co-Op buildings are built on Tupper Street, that’s where I used to live. It gives the place a different atmosphere, much cleaner, much nicer. Living conditions today are very good.

But a lot of the West Indian people have died or moved away. There are a lot of new people living there now. They’re from all over the place. There were quite a few who moved to Toronto and they moved back to Sydney. I don’t know too many of the young people around today.

We had a big reunion here in 1985, and they had three cars – a train came down with three cars and they were just packed with all of the former Sydney people – our boys and girls. They all came home for the reunion which lasted for almost two weeks.

Every year, there is a West Indian Festival in the church yard. It’s a good chance for everyone to get together. And people outside the community come because they like the West Indian food.

I don’t think Whitney Pier’s changed for the worse. Down here, it’s a very safe place to walk. I’ve seen me leaving at twelve o’clock in the night, walk from here right down to the Pier Legion and back. Nobody bothers you on the streets. You can go out and leave your doors open, front doors, back doors. Nobody bothers you down here.

People say, in Toronto or Montreal, you could be living next to some person for years, and they’ll come out every morning and they’ll pass you and don’t speak. But down here, they will speak to you. My family is very close knit: my son lives up the street from me, my other son lives over there on Tupper Street. My sister lives up the other end of Laurier Street, and my other sister lives next door to her. My brother lives over on Hankard Street. It’s very important to stay close.

And a lot of the young people are very good. Like if they know there are any senior citizens around, they will go and shovel their paths for them. We have a senior citizens’ place on the corner of William and Laurier Street, and the young boys and girls, if they see an old person going up the road, they’ll come and take them by the arm. They take them to where they have to go. Quite a few times when I’m out shopping, I’ll see young people, and I’ll pick them up and bring them home or take them wherever they want to go.

I started writing a history

I started writing a history of the community. I thought it would be nice if our younger generation would be able to find out about their ancestors and their families that came from the West Indies and what they did. I have a good memory. I can remember from the time I was five years old, even the first day I went to school. I can go down Tupper Street and tell you every store on Tupper, Laurier, William and Hankard, just where they were, who owned them, and what they did. One time, we had dry cleaners, we had tailors, we had jewelers, and we had bakery shops and restaurants, clothing stores, food stores. Anything you wanted, you could buy in this area without going to “overtown.” That’s changed. Right now we don’t have anything like that, and the young boys and girls have to go away to find jobs.

If the boys want to find jobs, it has to be at the steel plant. Living so close to the coke ovens, with all the pollution, well, in those days, nobody thought about getting sick or cancer or anything like that. But there’s nothing over there now. Everything is torn down. In a way, I was glad to see it close; in another way, I didn’t want to see it closed because that put an awful lot of people out of work and work is scarce. Those men would either have to go on pension or look for a job somewhere else.

I like being one of the oldest Black women in Whitney Pier – I don’t mind that. But it feels good that I’m this active and I can get around. Just last month I had a great granddaughter. I thank the Lord that I lived this long to be able to help other people. We always helped one another at the Pier.

From an Interview by Diane Chisholm, Beaton Institute

This essay originally appeared in From the Pier, Dear! Images of a Multicultural Community written by Elizabeth Beaton and Mary Keating, published in 1993 by the Whitney Pier Historical Society.

© 1993 Whitney Pier Historical Society