When I set out to capture the enigmatic story of my grandfather, George Dixon, who served in the only segregated Black battalion in Canadian history during the first World War, I did not intend to have this personal account of his life published. As my father began failing in health, I became painfully aware of losing more than my relationship to him. I was losing the last thread of memory to our place in a collective history. My father had been one of thirteen children born from George Dixon, this silent figure of a patriarch, who everyone knew about, but none could say more than a little of who he was.
I was compelled to use the time I still had with my father, Blair, to learn as much as I could about the real story of the one we simply called, Papa. There was an unsettling mystery about where he really came from, before his orphaned life in Africville on the outskirts of Halifax, along with haunting question of what happened during the harrowing war that altered his soul. I was determined to do this for the sake of my children and the next generation, that they would benefit from rooting their identity in a deeper story than what defined my own sense of place in this world. Growing up in a society still deeply divided by racial identity, where blackness had been pushed to margins of American history, I struggled to gain a real sense that I deserved to belong here. It didn’t help that my father lived a transient life, which he admitted in his last days was a result of his own elusive search for acceptance as a pastor, a role first denied his hometown bishop in Saint John, New Brunswick, who took exception to a man of ‘colour’ leading a congregation.
I noticed people became deeply curious whenever I found myself sharing this journey of reclaiming identity. I began to appreciate that many of us wrestle with being disconnected from our histories. In a world fractured by the arbitrary violence of colonial boundaries and human exploitation, so many of us are trying to navigate places where we don’t feel a true sense of belonging. Our stories may be different, but we share the same struggle to find meaning for our stories on the margins of a history written for the benefit of others.
This narrative, A Footnote to Freedom, was initially written as a way for my family to appreciate that we are more than a footnote to history. For many of us, our life work is to reclaim the story of our ancestors who have gone before us. It’s not easy work, for sometimes broken relationships need to be reconciled, and shattered dreams redeemed. That is why, I now realize, the work of storytelling is meant to be shared. Whatever the motivation, our creative effort adds to the rich tapestry of our social narrative. Every story, we can confidently, matters.
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