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Black Harbour: New book explores history of slavery in Newfoundland


CBC
Sat, December 30, 2023 

Heather Barrett and Xaiver Michael Campbell collaborated to write Black Harbour. (Mike Rossiter, CBC - image credit)

The history of Black slaves in Newfoundland and Labrador is not something that has been taught, and is rarely talked about, say two writers of a new book about exactly that.

Black Harbour: Slavery and the Forgotten Histories of Black People in Newfoundland and Labrador, reveals the history of Black slavery in the province, and the role merchant families played in promoting it.

The book came to be after authors Heather Barrett and Xaiver Michael Campbell's independent research started overlapping.



We're taught in school that we were settled by the English and Irish, that was all who ever lived here ... but that's not true. - Heather Barrett

Campbell, a writer originally from Jamaica, came to the province as a university student in 2008.

He quickly saw the parallels between Newfoundland culture and his own.

"That curiosity of, how did my culture and things that are part of my history make their way into the Newfoundland consciousness? And how is it that there is no direct mention to my culture and how it came to be?" he said.

Barrett, a CBC producer and host of Weekend AM, stumbled upon stories of the existence of Black people in the province from hundreds of years ago.

"Growing up, when we're taught in school that we were settled by the English and Irish, that was all who ever lived here, all who really ever came here for any reason. But that's not true," she said.

"There were people from many, many different places in the world that lived here, came through here, had something to do with the fishery here. Not all of them were doing it of their own volition."

Forgotten stories

The book explores some of the connections between Newfoundland and the Caribbean that Campbell noticed soon after arriving in Newfoundland.

"There's a lot of salt cod in this book," he said. "I grew up with it. It's part of our national dish in Jamaica, but I never thought about where it came from. I know we've been eating it for hundreds of years, but I didn't know there was that other connection between the two islands."

It's been assumed that Black people are only recently settlers in Newfoundland and Labrador. Black Harbour dives into their forgotten history in the province.

Black Harbour dives into the forgotten history of Newfoundland and Labrador. (Boulder Books)

That connection being that salt cod was what Newfoundland had to trade.

"Lower grades of salt cod went to the Caribbean, because it was cheap fuel for enslaved people," Barrett said.

The authors say the book is an introduction to new pieces of uncomfortable history being discovered.

"We're storytellers," Barrett said. "What we're doing is telling a lay person's introduction to this, and we're hoping that it starts a conversation."