Prominent members of Nova Scotia’s black community are backing a bid to protect the home and clinic of the late Clement Ligore, the province’s first black doctor and an unsung hero of the 1917 Halifax explosion.
Originally from Trinidad, Ligure graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., in 1916 with a medical degree, and later became editor of the Atlantic Advocate, Nova Scotia’s first black newspaper. He was also a co-founder of the No. 2 Construction Battalion, Canada’s only all-black unit during the First World War.
“He was a pioneer in many areas and had great courage,” said Peggy Cameron, director of the Friends of Halifax Common.
“He understood that he had a role to play as a leader in the black community. He was outstanding on many levels – personal, professional, local and national.
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The home security proposal was tabled last year and will be debated by the regional council on Tuesday, but Cameron says an agreement has not been reached. Members of the public will not be allowed to speak to the council as the application did not come from the current landlord, who happens to be a developer. Louis Loewen, head of Dexel Developments, could not be reached for comment.
“There is a lot of concern that the city is following the developers’ lead,” said Cameron, who has a master’s degree in environmental studies and is vice president of a renewable energy company.
“The public cannot speak, but they can write letters.”
Peggy Cameron, from the non-profit Friends of the Halifax Common, stands in front of a stately home that the group is seeking heritage designation to save it from demolition, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, in Halifax. The house was owned by Dr. Clement. Ligauré, the first black doctor in Nova Scotia—where Dr. Ligauré operated his clinic in the early 1900s—treated hundreds of people injured in the Halifax explosion on December 6, 1917.
The Canadian Press / Darren Calabrese
Cameron’s group has received letters of support from six prominent black leaders, including Sharon Brown Ross, a member of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
Brown Ross wrote in his letter, “Dr. Ligoure’s historical contributions are generally unknown by the public, including many Black African Nova Scotians,” noting that many of the doctor’s successes were rooted in deeply embedded systemic racism at the turn of the century. came in spite of
Two years after Ligure graduated from Queens, the university banned all black students. He was also barred from entering the army when he moved to Halifax.
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In his letter, Brown Ross states that Liguère was also denied hospital privileges upon his arrival in the port city, which is why he set up a private clinic in his home. The stately Queen Anne Revival style house, built in 1894, is located on North Street in the north end of downtown. It is now a rental property.
“Dr. Ligoure’s efforts in treating the wounded in the city during the Halifax explosion of 1917 are an example of Halifax’s lost history,” wrote Brown Ross.
On the morning of December 6, 1917, two wartime ships collided in the harbor, one of which was loaded with explosives, a massive explosion completely leveling the city. The blast killed around 2,000 people and injured another 9,000 – many of them blinded by flying glass.
On January 25, 1918, Ligure told the Halifax Disaster Record Office that his clinic was filled with wounded people shortly after the explosion. The file says, “Very serious cases, jaws are cut, noses are closed.” With only his housekeeper and a boarder to help him, Liguère “worked incessantly both night and day.”
He treated hundreds of people free of cost.
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Brown Ross said council members should remember the “stigma in Canadian history” that resulted from the city’s 1964 decision to bulldoze Afrikville, an African Nova Scotian community that was also in the city’s north end. .
The decision “was made to make way for urban renewal … coupled with the purposefully lucrative benefits of the well-connected and wealthy”, wrote Brown Ross. Don’t be forced to repeat another historical omission.”
The city issued a formal apology to former residents of Afriqueville in 2010, but no compensation was awarded.
Cameron says Ligoure’s house remains at risk of collapse as the city plans to widen nearby Robey Street. Since 2020, the regional municipality has issued 440 demolition permits, reflecting the fact that Halifax is now one of Canada’s fastest growing cities.
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George Eliot Clarke, a former Parliamentary Poet Laureate, also wrote a letter in support of Cameron, stating that a heritage designation would help preserve a little-known but important part of Halifax’s history.
“To late we have been slow to recognize the civic charity of Nova Scotia’s first black doctor – just as we have been slow to salute the heroism and self-sacrifice of Nova Scotia-Mustard No. 2 Construction Battalion that he helped to discover,” wrote Clarke, who grew up in Halifax and is now a professor at the University of Toronto.
“It would be a terrible irony that the survivors of the (Halifax explosion) … found their residence and clinic destroyed a century later by ‘evolution’, a process often ignorant of the past and seeking to exploit the present ‘opportunity’ is eager for, without a care for posterity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on January 23, 2023.
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