February. Black history month. The month when museums and archives can expect to receive calls from the media asking for stories regarding the history of Black people and the local community.
There is a limited number of stories within the community of Prince Albert and area, at least until our most recent history. I can recall some Black professionals from the sixties and seventies, but mostly they were just “passing through”. People like Vibert “Vic” Stewart, who worked as a Health Care Officer at Saskatchewan Penitentiary from 1973 to 1975, before heading back to the Caribbean and its warmer climes. Or Joe Matthew, an architect who worked on the design of a local area arena. He once told me he had never been in an ice arena before taking on that project. Joe left Prince Albert for a more cosmopolitan community where ice arenas would not be high on the list of architectural demands.
One of the reasons there are so few Black settlers in Canada stems from the racist attitudes of the early Caucasian settlers. They argued that Black immigrants would be poor farmers and bad citizens. They petitioned the government to restrict their immigration. Frank Oliver, the Liberal Minister of the Interior and Member of Parliament for the constituency widely affected by the signators of the petition, wrote Order in Council P. C. 1911-1324, which was approved by the Laurier cabinet on August 12, 1911, under the authority of the Immigration Act, 1906. It was intended to keep out black Americans escaping segregation in the American South by stating that “the Black (“Black” substituted for the original word used) race…is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.” The order was never called upon, as efforts by immigration officials had already reduced the number of Blacks immigrating to Canada. Cabinet cancelled the order on October 5, 1911, the day before Laurier’s government was replaced by the new Conservative government.
One family which managed approval to immigrate to Canada was that of Joseph Mayes who led a community of Black families and settled in the Eldon district, about thirteen kilometres north of Maidstone. One descendant of the family is Charlotte Mayes Williams, who became the province’s first female Black veterinarian. Another descendant is Rueben Mayes, noted as a member of the New Orleans Saints professional football team. This community is also known as the builders of the historic Shilo Baptist Church.
An earlier Black settler in our region was a man named Alfred Schmitz Shadd. Born in 1870 in Kent County, Ontario, Shadd moved from Chatham, Ontario to Kinistino, where he taught school. He returned to the University of Toronto in 1898 to complete his medical degree, after which he practised in Kinistino before moving his practice to Melfort. He opened a drug store, farmed and bred stock. He also bought a share in the Carrot River Journal, which he helped edit, and served on the town’s council. In 1905, he ran as a candidate for the Equal Rights Party, and in the province’s first election, falling 52 votes short of becoming Saskatchewan’s first black member of the Legislative Assembly.
More locally, the City of Prince Albert claims track star Harry Jerome as its native son. Jerome was born here on September 30th, 1940 to Harry Vincent Jerome and Elsie Ellen Howard. Both his father and grandfather were railway men (both apparently porters), and his maternal grandfather had represented Canada in the 1912 Summer Olympics.
The length of Jerome’s stay in Prince Albert is somewhat questionable. His parents were married in Kildonan, Manitoba (Winnipeg) on August 21st, 1941. Records indicate that the family lived in Springfield, Manitoba (east of Winnipeg) in 1945, and in St. Boniface, Manitoba (Winnipeg) in 1949. In 1952, the family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Jerome became a noted track star, tying the world record for 100 metres in 1960 and the world record for the 100 yard dash. He won the bronze medal in the 100 metres at the 1964 Summer Olympics, and gold in the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1966.
Regardless of the length of time Jerome lived in Prince Albert, the track at Prime Ministers’ Park has been named after him, and a statue of him graces the entry to the park off 28th Street East.
Another local family, the Millers, have been in the Prince Albert area since 1910. Robert James Miller, a native of Kentucky, and his wife Luvina, a native of Ohio, brought their three young children with them and homesteaded in the Whitfield district thirteen kilometres north of Prince Albert.
Although their daughter Olivette lived with them for a period of time, she later returned to the United States. Their two sons, Robert and Jeff stayed in the area; Robert farming near his father’s homestead and Jeff moving with his wife from the Whitfield district to Red Wing.
Robert and Luvina settled easily into their new community and, as the years passed, became known affectionately as Grandpa and Grandma Miller to those living nearby. When interviewed many years later as to why the Millers had chosen the Prince Albert area in which to settle, their grandson Jim claimed that Robert’s brother, a porter on the railway, had always liked Prince Albert when his work had brought him to the community. As a result, he convinced Robert to settle in the area.
The Millers farmed until the early 1950s, turning the homestead over to their elder son. They then moved into Prince Albert, buying a house in the 400 block of 7th Street East. They resided in their new home until the early 1970s (Robert in died in1971, and Luvina, who died in 1975, moved out shortly after his death).
Jim, in the interview previously mentioned, noted that although most settlers moved into communities with settlers of a similar ethnicity, the Whitfield district had been settled by a mixture of ethnicities, including Ukrainians, French, English, and Germans. Right from the beginning, he stated, the Whitfield district was integrated, including the black Miller family.
Jim Miller’s father, Robert Thomas Miller, married Helena Mayes, the grand-daughter of Joseph and Mattie Mayes, who had settled nearly 300 kilometres away in the Maidstone district. Jim’s brother, Robin, who moved to Edmonton, had met his wife there. She was a descendant of the Lafayette family, another Black family who had settled in western Canada (one near Rosetown, Saskatchewan and the other near Athabasca, Alberta).
The Miller family is unique in that they settled, not in a community with other Black families, but also in that they remained in the area where they had originally settled. Although the Prince Albert area has benefitted from the presence of all the Black people who have passed through, it has benefitted most of all by the staying power of the Miller family.
