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Fixing Obadiah Place—page 3

The restored church will be available for baptisms and marriages. Obadiah Bowen was a farmer during the week and a preacher in the nondenominational church on Sunday. His daughters recall that deceased members of the community, awaiting services and burial, were left in their coffins the Bowen garage.

Mrs. Murphy's store had the first telephone for the community. When old age forced her to move closer to her daughter, the community phone was moved into Obadiah Bowen's front hall. Later, offering the luxury of privacy, a public phone booth was put outside, where it remains, waiting to become functional again.

The Society will commemorate as many of the families as they can by assigning their names to the buildings and facilities, the pathways, roads, even parking lots. The teacherage will be named for Nim Toles, whose name was given to the first school.

The teacherage will serve as a library devoted to the history of black people in Alberta and in Canada. "We are working on an interpretive plan that we hope will cover the history of the entire movement from south to north, and then link it with other black settlements in the province," says Dave Capelazo, Preservation Advisor, Historic Sites Service, Alberta Community Development.

In addition to Amber Valley, other settlements that were primarily black were Junkins (now Wildwood), near Chip Lake; Keystone (now Breton), southwest of Edmonton; Campsie, near Barrhead; and Eldon, near Maidstone in Saskatchewan. Black settlers moved to Edmonton or Calgary, as well. The Alberta government advertised, in Oklahoma and other rural US states, homesteads available for $10 to hardworking individuals, and many black families responded. In 1911, white businessmen and social leaders in Edmonton and elsewhere lobbied to prevent further black immigrant from entering Canada. The Liberal government in Ottawa, relying on the support of black voters in eastern Canada, insisted that the law remain open, giving the appearance of fairness. However, stringent physical and economic standards were applied at the border; still very few black immigrants failed to meet them. A black doctor from Chicago, hired by the federal government, spoke in churches in Oklahoma, painting a discouraging picture of the climate, the land, and the quality of life they could expect. By 1912, large-scale black immigration to Canada had ended. The population of Amber Valley was about 300, of Alberta about 1,000.

Regardless of the initial furor caused by their arrival, the Amber Valley community, predominantly black until the 1960s, lived amicably with their non-black neighbours. Amber Valley families have long been involved in political and community organizations in the region.
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Reprinted with the permission of Mikell Montague and Legacy (Summer 2000): 23-25.
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