TOURISM NOVA SCOTIA / ACORN ART PHOTOGRAPHY
The glass floor and room at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, near Shelburne. Inset: the original Book of Negroes.
The missing chapter A visit to the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre DARCY RHYNO
BY DARCY RHYNO
I
’m looking at what first appears to be logs neatly stacked in the shape of an “A”. The gaps between the logs are tightly packed with moss. In the front, a doorway gapes. It’s a beautiful autumn day, the sunlight shining through the remaining leaves to dapple the ground and granite boulders with warm light. This peaceful current scene belies a troubling history. “This is a replica of a pit house,” says my guide. “With limited time, supplies and provisions, they had to come up with some way to get through Nova Scotia’s winter.” Jason Farmer is the Senior Interpretive Guide at Birchtown’s Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, and a ninth-generation Black Loyalist descendent. “With influence from the Mi’kmaq and skills learned during
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the American Revolution, they would come up with this type of subterranean shelter. Working with what little they had—trees, leaves, rocks and moss—they would start by digging a hole, then place a makeshift roof over the top. The door would be a piece of canvas or animal fur.” I climb in through the doorway. The air
is dank, earthy. Chinks of light through the cracks between the logs offer enough light to make out the few features inside. The logs are a roof over a shallow impression in the ground dug to create benches that must have served as beds. A pile of stones suggests a crude fireplace. Various mushrooms grow from the ceiling festooned with spider webs. “Many Black Loyalist families lived in a pit house like this for the first few years.” Some, adds my guide, lived in such shelters from 1783 to 1791. “Eight years is a long time to be living in a hole in the ground. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be able to survive one night in one of these things.” Black Loyalists had no choice but to build such structures. After the end of the American Revolution, many Africans and
