New historical tour of The Bog helps gives Black newcomers to P.E.I. 'a sense of welcome'
CBC
Tayo Agibaibi, a university student from Nigeria, says she felt "very new" when she came to Prince Edward Island two years ago.
"I heard that people in my colour, we are very new," she recalled.
So she was surprised to discover that P.E.I. has a Black history that dates back to the 1700s. Now Agibaibi is helping to tell that history through a new tour of The Bog, put on by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation from Beaconsfield Historic House.
"It's so very important to have the history all out in the open so everyone can feel a sense of welcoming here, and it's not like you're just coming in here for the first time and it's not like people of your colour haven't been here before," Agibaibi said in an interview with Island Morning.
"So it's very important to know or to tell people that you have been here a long time and you're always welcome here," Agibaibi said.
For most of the 19th century and into the 20th, The Bog, an historical neighbourhood in Charlottetown that had a large Black population, was located between Euston and Kent
Today, it is home to some parking lots and government buildings, though the tour does include a church and other buildings of historical significance.
Agibaibi said the tour is more about storytelling than visual evidence because there is really not much left to see.
"Mostly you're just learning about the history of the Black Islanders who have been years since about the 1700s. And that's what it is about — the stories and the things they went through and the things they had and didn't have."
Matthew McRae, executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation, says the tour is an extension of its Black Women's History Project. Part of that project was a Bog tour, which the foundation's education team has been delivering to classrooms in collaboration with the P.E.I.'s Department of Education.
But McRae said it's a history that hasn't been told as much as it should. He hopes to continue the tours into the fall and resume them next summer.
"A lot of people don't realize... that there has been a Black community on this Island for four centuries and counting now. And so we really felt it was our duty, being in a house right beside where that historical neighborhood once was. We needed to share that information."
The Bog tours are held every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
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