Retreat for BIPOC community planned for Birchtown

In Shelburne County, a few minutes from the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, sits three hectares of waterfront woodland set to become a retreat for Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC).

The area was once home to Nova Scotia's largest settlement of Black Loyalists, who fled north in the late 1700s with the promise of refuge, and instead faced racism and poor living conditions.

The organizers of an initiative called Buy Black Birchtown hope to create a place that honours that history.

"It is very empowering because we're taking over, I guess, where our ancestors have left off and we're creating the space for the next generation," Shekara Grant told CBC's Information Morning this week.

She's the co-founder of the Change is Brewing Collective, which is raising money to offer people memberships in the retreat who can't afford it. The idea is that members will be able to host workshops, events and other gatherings that will be designed for, and by, people of colour.

These kinds of spaces are hard to find right now, Grant said.

"I think the concept of safe space may be difficult for, you know, white people to understand because we live in a world that kind of works for them. but when we go out, it doesn't always feel the same for us," she said.

Opening planned for June

The property, which includes multiple buildings, is set to open in June, with plans to develop a larger retreat facility in the future.

Jessika Hepburn recently bought the land and runs the Biscuit Eater Cafe and Books in Mahone Bay, N.S. She said the idea to create a place of rest and refuge specifically for the BIPOC community became especially urgent last summer.

"The death of George Floyd really sparked what many people think is a racial reckoning, but for our communities it was truly exhausting with countless requests for free labour and so much from our workplaces, from our communities," she said.

The retreat is needed in Nova Scotia, Hepburn said, given the racism people of colour can face in many public places, including a family who was threatened with a noose at a Chester Basin beach last summer.

There are also times when places that are supposed to be welcoming to diverse communities are targeted and attacked, Grant said.

Last month, a Black Lives Matter sign at a Baptist church in Bedford was vandalized. In 2006, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society's office was set on fire, destroying many documents and photographs.

Grant said the Birchtown retreat would not only be a safe place to gather, but an environment where people from many different backgrounds can learn from one another.

"I think it's really nice to recharge, but also to talk to people from other communities that have similar experiences that you might not know unless you go outside of your own community," she said.

Hepburn hopes the organizers of Buy Black Birchtown can work with the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre to host people who want to visit the centre and learn more about Black Nova Scotian history. 

"The idea would be to see the Black Diaspora coming to Birchtown, participating in the centre ... showing a very strong Black presence in Shelburne County," she said.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.