I’m acquainted with the history of the Black Loyalists in Shelburne in 1783 and after. Have researched, written and read. But, Chasing Freedom has moved me in a way that reflects more than historical interest. It is a story close to home. Full of warmth and humanity amid the worst in human depravity, it make me accept that my United Empire Loyalist forebearers may have participated in those terrible events.

Chasing Freedom opens with grandmother, Lydia, only fifty but already aged and her sixteen year old granddaughter, Sarah. They are trudging from their hovel in Birchtown on their way to Roseway to trade a handful of meager goods for the meanest bit of food. Lydia carries on her back a rich white woman’s laundry. Sarah, wrapped in rags to keep warm, lugs the small harvest of vegetables from the rocky plot they have seeded. Ironically, it’s a beautiful fall morning–the one we Nova Scotians all look forward to: “all fall colours melted into a thick stew of forest greens.”

Lydia and Sarah were slaves, now “free” citizens of Roseway (Shelburne). Lydia is wise, cautious, aware that on all sides is danger from the hostile whites of Roseway. Sarah is aware of the dangers but she is as young in dreams and joys as any sixteen year old. As they trudge along, suddenly Lydia says, “Hush”, a sound of danger. They hide in the bushes none too soon. In a clearing a white man on horseback is dragging a black man by a rope attached to his saddle. Around the black man’s neck is another rope. The white man alights, pushes the black man up onto the saddle and ties the noose to a tree and slaps the horse.

The stuggling black man dies while the white man cackles his pleasure. He is a figure we become all too familiar with, Boll Weevil, out to capture blacks to sell back to slavery or to murder at will. 

Lydia and Sarah are interesting, lively, original people. Lydia was used as a “breeding” slave, her babies taken from her at birth and, if a proper colour, sold to white, childless slave masters. To Lydia they are still her children. The story follows her relentless search for her family. One daughter, her identity unknown, is a rich, respectable woman in Roseway. Lydia is a strong woman guided by faith and folk lore. She has learned survival the hard way and teaches, admonishes her young granddaughter. Sarah, although anticipating the joys of youth, has yet inherited much of her grandmother’s strengh and determination, pride in her race, in her colour. She will not give in. Such spirit infuriates the Boll Weevils of Roseway, and there are many, so that Sarah’s rebelliousness results in one of the most horrifying scenes in the book as she is severely punished for defying authority.

You will read this book without stopping. Painful as it is, it is compelling, and the “special thanks” to Finn Bower convinces us, sadly, that it is historically accurate.–Kathleen Tudor

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 Slaves Chase Freedom to Canada 

Birchtown the setting for young adult novel about Black Loyalists

SARAH Redmond was born a slave on a South Carolina plantation.

At the end of the American civil war, the Loyalist slaves were freed and Sarah and her grandmother, Lydia, were part of a large group of slaves sent to New York. They were promised land in Canada, and holding tight to their certificates of freedom, they sailed for Nova Scotia, toward a new land and a better life.

Their excited anticipation was quickly dashed. In Birchtown, there were no houses for them, and no work. Nothing but “a vast breastwork of slate and rocks and sand stretched along the ocean and inland to meet thick greenery.” The local settlers were hostile and winter was fast approaching. Unused to such cold and without adequate shelter, many did not survive that first bitter winter.

It took author Gloria Wesley over five years to research and write Chasing Freedom. Her own ancestors were Black Loyalists, an ancestry she can trace back to 1783.

”I joined the Black Loyalist Society of Shelburne and started investigating our history about 10 to 15 years ago,” she said at her home in Halifax. “There are lots of records at the Shelburne County Museum, so much history.”

So she began to write but not a history book. Her story, Chasing Freedom, is fiction, she said. “I created lists of names from the old records and from the Book of Negroes. Then I created their lives.”

Lydia had been a breeding slave and most of her children were taken from her, and sometimes sold to childless white couples. “I received my special gift today . . . a sweet baby girl of five months, so fair, no one would question her blood lines.” For the rest of her life, Lydia grieves and never stops searching for them.

Far from being a haven, Birchtown was a dangerous place for the freed slaves. Hostility and aggression from the local white settlers was the norm, and daily life was fraught with danger. Bounty hunters were disdainful of certificates of freedom and travelling outside the community was perilous.

Threads of mystery and romance weave through chapters set against familiar landscapes.

Wesley’s characters are real and earthy. There is Boll Weevil and Cecil, a despicable pair whose antics would be comic if hate was not their driving force.

When Lydia’s son Fortune becomes the first suspect in a killing, the Redmond family closes ranks to protect him.

”Port Roseway shivered. The news of (the) death engulfed the settlement in fear. Fuzzy details became solid fact as gossip spread . . . the murder of one of their own, a prominent business man, had them all steaming like a pot of boiling soup.”

Wesley is passionate about the history of black people in Nova Scotia. She wants young people to read about it, to be able to see and understand where they came from.

”Roseway (Publishing) felt that Chasing Freedom would appeal to young adults,” says Wesley, “and I believe this may be the first historical novel that is African Nova Scotia in content.”

She is hopeful that her book will also appeal to the Department of Education for use in black literature and black history courses. “I would love my book to go into the schools,” she said. “It’s a wonderful way to bring history out.”

Chasing Freedom is novel about a relatively undocumented part of Nova Scotia history. It is about slavery and about the indestructible nature of the human spirit. It is about people struggling to live and love in spite of the tragedy of circumstances. Its eclectic wealth of fictional characters in a setting that is historically accurate brings to life a history that is in turn horrifying, joyful and fascinating. It is hard to put down.

Gloria Ann Wesley has published three books of poetry and holds the distinction of being the first published black Nova Scotian poet. Born in Yarmouth, she taught in the school system for 34 years. She now lives in Halifax. Chasing Freedom is her first novel. – Judith Meyrick for the Chronicle Herald, 20 November 2011.

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 In Chasing Freedom, Nova Scotia poet Gloria Ann Wesley presents a tale of Loyalist slaves who came to Canada during the American Civil War. The slaves were given their freedom by the British, but that freedom turned out to be tenuous and, ultimately, provisional. 

Set in Birchtown, N.S., the fist black settlement in Canada, this is the story of Sarah, her father, and her grandmother, Lydia, and their lives in a new and inhospitable land. The plot is filled with suspenseful situations: will Sarah’s father, Fortune, find his way home? After being wrongfully accused of murder, will he find justice? Will Lydia, who was a “breeding slave,” find the courage to claim her grown children? Wesley holds a complicated plot together with deft storytelling and a distinctive voice.

Appalling things happen, but the book’s tone has a dignity and emotional restraint that matches the characters’ experiences. As Sarah says of her grandmother, “She had trained herself to hold emotions back because crying was a sign of weakness. A weak slave made good sport for an overseer.”

The innovative novel is a true ensemble piece. We get inside the heads of major and minor characters, including a despicable slave hunter known as Boll Weevil, sometimes just for a line or two, which creates a true community portrait. The writing is spare and earthy, and Wesley lets carefully chosen details speak for themselves. When Sarah receives her Certificate of Freedom, it is “the first piece of writing she had ever held.” Not read, not owned – held.

Chasing Freedom is a big story, fashioned from small, powerful moments, and a fine contribution to the literature of arrivals and encounters.

– reviewed by Sarah Ellis, a Vancouver writer and former librarian.

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When Sarah and her Grandmother, Lydia, find themselves being shipped away to a new life of freedom in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, they hardly dare to hope that things might truly be different for them there, better than the cruelty, hardship and neverending toil that defined their lives as slaves on a southern plantation. But when the Black Loyalist slaves arrives in Nova Scotia, they very quickly discover that there is no escape from the tyrrany of hatred, persecution and discrimination, even there. The land and provisions that they were promised never materialize, and Sarah and Lydia along with all their friends and neighbours must struggle to just to survive. Also, they must remain ever vigilant against the slave traders who make their living by abducting free Negroes and selling them back into slavery. Sarah and Lydia are among the lucky ones whose determination and will to survive enable them to get by. But Lydia’s wounds from the past run deep and when her long-hidden secrets finally come to light, Sarah and her father decide that the time has come to try to pull Lydia’s scattered family together at last.

This book provides an intriguing and revelatory glimpse into the early days of what is now Shelburne, and into the deplorable conditions that the newly freed slaves faced upon their arrival in Nova Scotia. Wesley depicts the stark reality of their situation: the living conditions were harsh, and while they were, in theory, free, they by no means enjoyed any sense of equality or fair treatment. Sarah and Lydia are both sympathetic characters despite the fact that the third person narration tends to emotionally distance the reader from the full impact of the events as they unfold. The secondary characters are less well-developed and remain essentially one-dimensional. Nevertheless, the story is fascinating and an important one, particularly for young readers who might be tempted to believe that black slaves who escaped to Canada found freedom and prosperity and lived happily ever after. Wesley’s book reveals how tightly people clung to their beliefs about their neighbours, how slow attitudes were to change and how challenging life was for the newly-freed former slaves.

—Lisa Doucet

Atlantic Books Today, Fall 2011

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