"For the past number of years, the spokesperson for the black
people in Canada has been West Indian and/or African and the
Canadian black has been, to a large extent, silent. With the
development of the Obadiah Place heritage site we will recognize
the many Canadian black people who immigrated here [90 years ago],
what they accomplished, what the heritage was that they gave us—we speak for ourselves, we don't need others to speak for
us."
Shirley Bowen, a member of the Friends of Obadiah Place Society,
speaks passionately for her group and their cause.
Most Canadians know a little of the connections between black
Canadians living in the east and the politics of the United States
before their Civil War began in 1861. Not many know about the
migration that occurred after 1907, the year Oklahoma became a
state and Obadiah Bowen was born. Earlier hopes for a primarily
black state were dashed; after statehood thousands of African
Americans faced a series of repressive laws designed to restrict
their freedoms and deny them the vote. For some, the solution was
to come to Canada.
Obadiah Place is located in Amber Valley. Originally named Pine
Creek, Amber Valley is about 100 miles north of Edmonton, 15 miles
from Athabasca on today's modern roads. In 1910, however, when 160
black settlers filled rented boxcars with household goods, farm
implements, and livestock and left Oklahoma to homestead in north
central Alberta, the road from the railhead in Edmonton was not as
straight. The trail from Athabasca Landing, through muskeg and
dense bush, was 20 miles of slow travelling. That year, Willis
Bowen, Obadiah's father, organized a group of five families who
immigrated from Oklahoma to Vancouver.
In 1913, the Bowens joined their friends in Alberta and filed on a
homestead. Obadiah Bowen grew up there and lived on the site until
1996, when he moved into a nursing home in Athabasca. In 1938 he
replaced the original log structure with a two-storey house. The
Friends of Obadiah Place Society, with help from the Alberta
Historical Resources Foundation, is restoring the house as a
museum, a place to preserve items from many former residents of
Amber Valley.
As the Society sees the house as part of the whole farm setting,
they will also restore the chicken coop and smoke house and
reconstruct the barn. Settlers had to wrest their homesteads from
dense bush, mixed forest of spruce, poplar, willow, and muskeg.
Clearing the land was slow, back-breaking work involving axe, hoe,
and horses or
oxen when available. "It was discouraging for some of the
black families, because they weren't used to the climate or the
changes in the weather. Some stayed as little as a year or two and
went back because they couldn't handle it," says Shirley
Bowen. Despite the challenges, 75 of the original 95 black
homesteaders in the Amber Valley area cleared enough land and
stayed on it long enough to receive their homesteads. Hardship
fostered cooperation. Neighbours used neighbours' teams of oxen
and horses; later, tractors and combines made the rounds.
Large gardens provided food for families, grain and hay fields for
livestock. They kept chickens and cattle for food. With rifles and
shotguns, they hunted "rabbits, bear, and moose, prairie
chicken, Hungarian partridge," says Norma Jean Bowen. Norma
Jean and Shirley, two of Obadiah's four surveying children, and
their cousin Ruby Bowen, recall berry-picking expeditions from
their childhood.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
