Saga of Black Refugees who left N.S. 200 years ago shaped a Canadian trailblazer

When Rhonda McEwen received her official royal letter of appointment as an honorary captain of the Canadian navy in Halifax on June 21, it marked the latest chapter in her remarkable family history.

In 1820, her ancestors boarded a schooner in Halifax harbour, fleeing ill treatment and discrimination for an uncertain future in Trinidad.

"It blows your mind," McEwen said, reflecting on how her naval honour connects to her ancestors' journey.

Honorary navy captains are distinguished Canadian leaders who serve as ambassadors for the Royal Canadian Navy.

McEwen is no stranger to achievements.

In 2022, she was made president and vice-chancellor of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, making her the first Black woman to lead a university in Canada.

Her family's Nova Scotia story begins during the War of 1812.

With the war raging, Sir Alexander Cochrane, then in charge of the British navy, issued a proclamation in 1814 promising freedom and resettlement to enslaved Africans who reached areas under British military control or protection.

This promise of liberty came from a man who himself owned enslaved people on his Good Hope plantation in Trinidad.

The proclamation said they would be settled in British territories in North America or the Caribbean.

Isaac Saney, an associate professor and historian at Dalhousie University, says it was a strategy that had previously worked for the British during the War of Independence and led to the arrival of the Black Loyalists in the Maritimes.

While 800 mostly British colonial marines went directly to Trinidad, others settled in Nova Scotia with dreams of building new lives.

Trinidad, the most southerly island in the Caribbean, was sparsely populated at the time.

They were granted 6.5 hectares of land each in the undeveloped but fertile south of the island where they settled in six "company villages."