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From beautiful countryside to cosmopolitan culture: find it in Canada

By SHERYL NANCE-NASH

Special to the AmNews

Now that the border between the United States and Canada is again open, you’re toying with the idea of going north. The beauty that is Canada awaits. The big decision is where to go. Take your pick, there’s likely no wrong choice.

Start here to create your list of possibilities.

Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge, Vancouver Island

After months and months of too much time indoors, blow your mind with the thought of fresh air, wildlife, nature, great food and outdoor fun. This spot is for you. This eco-safari is in lush coastal rainforest, surrounded by the UNESCO listed Clayoquot Sound Biosphere, and the Strathcona Provincial Park. The 600-acre property sits at the head of the Bedwell River. It’s an ideal basecamp of sorts for exploring the wilds of the island.

Forget crowds. This is remote. You can’t get there by car. Take a 45-minute seaplane flight from Vancouver, or 35minute boat ride from Tofino. Sounds heavenly. Wait till you see the luxuriously appointed white canvas tents in the style of turn-of-the-century prospectors. End-of-the-bed views and specially commissioned furnishings from local designers evoke a personal connection with the Vancouver Island landscape.

How shall you spend your time? There’s wildlife viewing tours, hiking through old-growth forests, horseback riding, canyoning, heli fly fishing, and more. Chef Asher Blackford’s local produce-driven sustainable dining, fine wines and one of the world’s most remote bars, The Ivanhoe, keep the good vibe going. Better still, unwind at the Lodge’s popular healing ground spa that showcases wellness ingredients from the natural environment of Clayoquot Sound.

Toronto

Maybe you’re in the mood for something cosmopolitan. Put Toronto on your list, especially if you’ve already done Montreal. Toronto is for foodies and those that can’t get enough of art, music, architecture—all things cultural.

Take a trip to the east end to the recently opened Toronto Beach Club. Think awesome Mediterranean food. Cocktail specialties during the day include Cantaloupe Island, with cantaloupe, martini fiero, prosecco and soda, and the Pampered Rose, Patrón Silver tequila, Martini & Rossi dry vermouth, rosewater, grapefruit oleo saccharum and soda. Come nightfall, go for a Toronto Riviera, Patrón Silver tequila, pineapple, coconut water syrup, fernet-branca, lime, Peychaud’s bitters, or a Sienna Sour, bulleit bourbon, honey agrodolce, lemon, sumac and thyme.

For more eats there’s Bar Le Germain

Patio in Hotel Le Germain Toronto Maple Leaf Square. Check out Chef Johnson Wu’s new Wusian Fusian and must-try Sammiches (elevated chicken sandwiches where the chicken wing is stuffed with fried rice).

Walk off all those calories at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which until late October has an exhibit that is a career retrospective of Andy Warhol, and opening early October is Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, which includes more than 100 art works from Picasso’s formative years and spans 15 countries.

Stay at the brand new 1 Hotel Toronto downtown. It’s in the heart of the city’s entertainment district. Choose among their four food and beverage outlets that includes a rooftop bar where you can swim and take in skyline views.

Edmonton

Then too, maybe you want a little bit city and a little bit country. Edmonton is an urban center in the midst of the wilderness. It is the largest northernmost metropolis, and the capital of Alberta, Canada. Any time of year is a good time to go. In summer enjoy 18 hours of sunlight a day or time your visit to see how snow transforms the river valley in winter.

Get your art fix at the Royal Alberta Museum or the Art Gallery of Alberta. Take in the sight to behold,the Northern Lights from the dark sky preserves. Edmonton has the second largest Indigenous population in Canada, full of talented performers, artisans, musicians and entrepreneurs. Immerse yourself in culture at Métis Crossing, take an Indigenous-led tour, discover the stories that have shaped Treaty 6 Territory at the Royal Alberta Museum, or taste the inventive meals created by trailblazing Indigenous chefs. Take in the newly opened Indigenous Peoples Experience at Fort Edmonton Park, Canada’s largest living history museum. The Park includes the 1846 Hudson’s Bay Fort and then takes you through to 1885, 1905 and 1920, depicting the evolution of Edmonton’s early history.

Elk Island National Park has Geo Domes for glamping. They come with everything you need including a queen size bed, bedding, mini-fridge, Nespresso coffee maker, BBQ, water, firewood and more. You have the option to add a charcuterie board and wine and they will deliver it to your dome. There is also a UNESCO designated dark sky preserve in the park, free from light pollution, great for stargazing and viewing the northern lights. Hike or rent a canoe.

Jasper

If you want a mountain town experience, look no further. Jasper is the largest of all the Canadian Rockies national parks and home to Mount Columbia, Alberta’s tallest mountain; Maligne Lake, the second-largest glacial-fed lake in the world; and diverse wildlife including grizzly and black bears, mountain goats, wolverines, elk and bighorn sheep. Talk about the great outdoors, it’s a place where you can bike, climb, camp, fish or hike in summer and in winter ski, snowboard and more in winter.

Jasper is the world’s second-largest Dark Sky Preserve, with some 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Eat up. Jasper Food Tours have restarted. You can venture on a downtown guided walk and visit four restaurants with handpicked dishes and drinks. Consider too a Peak Nic, a hiking tour up a peak, followed by a hands-on backcountry cooking lesson, where you’ll learn to prepare a gourmet meal in the outdoors using environmentally friendly outdoors cooking methods. A bonus, you eat that great meal you make.

Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge on Vancouver Island

(Photos courtesy of Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge)

Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge

Mary Eliza Walker Crump, an original member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers

By HERB BOYD

Special to the AmNews

Rarely are there articles that focus on the individual members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, when there is one even on the group. In future columns we will place each one in the spotlight beginning this week with Mary Eliza Walker Crump.

“My mother belonged to Wesley Greenfield and my father to John W. Walker of Nashville,” Mary wrote in a publication in 1873. She was 16 at that time, having been born in slavery in 1857 in Tennessee. “There were eight children,—two boys and six girls,” she further noted and chronicled in Gustavus D. Pike’s “The Jubilee Singers, and Their Campaign for Twenty Thousand Dollars,” “I was next to the youngest. My mistress held only two or three slaves besides our family. She finally set my mother free and gave her the three youngest children. After the war my father kept an icehouse and made enough money to buy us a little home; but there was some trouble about the lease, and we lost the house. In 1866 I commenced attending Fisk School [college], and continued there as much of the time as 1 was able till 1870.”

Three years before the article about her parents appeared, she became an original member of the eleven Fisk Jubilee Singers. The group was organized by George L. White, a white missionary and music professor. As promised, we will present profiles on two other original members—Maggie Porter and Ella Sheppard.

The Singers, formed to raise funds for the college, toured widely from 1871 to 1878, and this included ventures abroad in Europe where there was high praise for their renditions of the spiritual and folks songs of Stephen Foster. It wasn’t unusual to find such prominent personalities as Queen Victoria, Ulysses S. Grant, Mark Twain and the famed abolitionist Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.

By 1873, they were well on their way to raising enough money to build Jubilee Hall. Pike, the author who traveled with the Singers, cited this performance at a church in Cincinnati, which to him was typical of their genius. “A vast crowd filled the church to overflowing, and was entertained and benefited by music conducted by ten students from Fisk University, Nashville. The music was strictly devotional, and was preceded by a prayer from the pastor of the church, the Rev. E. Halley, and accompanied by explanatory remarks by him and Professor White. The opening piece was entitled, ‘Children, you’ll be called on to March in the field of battle.’ It was a deep, pathetic incentive to Christian exertion. Next came ‘Broken-hearted, weep no more.’ The hymn which followed was the masterpiece of the evening; rough in language, it was richly melodious, and showed that analogy between the feeling of the slaves at the South and that of the captive Israelites, upon which Mrs. Stowe has dwelt so much in her Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It began with ‘Go down, Moses.’”

When the Singers disbanded in 1878, Mary lived in Chicago and mainly dealt with managing her version of the Jubilee Singers. They were also popular on various musical circuits and invited to sing at civic celebrations from

city to city. In 1921, she was among three other original members invited to the fiftieth anniversary celebration. A year later she mourned the passing of her husband Thomas H. Crump. She died in 1928 in Chicago and Ambrose Caliver, the president of Fisk University, sent a letter to be read at her funeral, saying “Fisk University rejoices in the complete fruEarly photo of the Singers, though not sure which is Mary Crump but could be her at the far right as Eliza Walker. ition of a life so full of beauty and service. The gradual closing of the ranks of the first Jubilee Singers grieves us beyond measure, but we shall always cherish the memory of those who helped to make Fisk possible.” In 1978, fifty years after she died, Eliza Walker and the other original members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers were granted posthumous honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Fisk University.

ACTIVITIES

FIND OUT MORE

Mr. Pike, who we mention above, offers a short bio on Mary, but the value of his book is the extent to which he evokes the early history of the singers and Fisk University.

DISCUSSION

If things go as planned, we will gather more background material on Mary and also offer biographies of the other Jubilee Singers.

PLACE IN CONTEXT

From her birth in the midfifties of the 19th century to the second decade of the 20th, Mary traveled widely in the country and accumulated a wealth of personal history.

THIS WEEK IN BLACK HISTORY

Aug. 29, 1979: Sheridan Broadcasting Corp. becomes the first Black-owned radio network.

Aug. 30, 1901: Acclaimed civil rights leader Roy Wilkins is born in St. Louis, Mo.

Aug. 30, 1800: The rebellion plot of Gabriel Prosser is exposed in Virginia.