The black people in the Middle of Nowhere: The lost community of Amber Valley, AB

Good piece on the history of Amber Valley and its Black community:

Of course, 1909 Canada was no beacon of racial tolerance — as evidenced by the simple fact that Ottawa didn’t allow a second Amber Valley to take root.

In the era of the Chinese Head Tax and the Komogata Maru, it was clear that the government of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier made no bones about keeping out non-white immigrants. The only reason nobody had bothered to explicitly keep out blacks was because nobody in Ottawa could conceive of black people wanting to live in the Siberia-like climate of Alberta.

But it only took a surprise trainload of Oklahomans to spawn a nationwide flurry of petitions and letters demanding that the borders be closed to black immigration.

“This board of trade views with very serious concerns the influx of Negro settlers into Central Alberta,” read a 1911 petition by the Calgary Board of Trade.

If left unchecked, claimed the Calgarians, the tide of American blacks would have a “disastrous influence upon the welfare and development of this fair province.”

The basic objection was fear of a black Canada. The United States at the time had 10 million black citizens, and many in white America all too willing to see them disappear over the Canadian border. At the time, a Vancouver newspaper even published an interview with a Oklahoma immigration agent who was reportedly promising to “put a nigger and a team of horses on every quarter section of land I can get my hands on.”

Ottawa feared a black takeover of the plains that could overwhelm Canada’s existing 7 million population. By 1911, Canadian diplomats had effectively kiboshed any future Amber Valleys by warning would-be U.S. pioneers that “the American Negro may be barred on the ground that he could not become adapted to the rigorous northern climate.”

Tristin HopperThe children of Alberta’s black pioneers standing in front of the preserved Amber Valley cabin of Romeo Edwards, April 30, 2016. From left to right, Edith Edwards, brothers Elmer and Ken Edwards, Joyce Edwards and Gilbert Williams. With the exception of Edith, who grew up nearby, all four were born and raised in Amber Valley.

As with so many Western pioneer settlements, Amber Valley’s heyday was shortlived. Born-and-raised Amber Valleyans started striking out for the list of Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg by the 1940s, and as parents died the original homesteads were sold.

Source: The black people in the Middle of Nowhere: The lost community of Amber Valley, AB