This year’s four-part Black History Month blog series is all about community. In previous blogs we have often focused on the stories of Freedom Seekers and their descendants in St. Catharines. We have heard about the incredible journeys these people made to this city, how their lives changed, and how a local faith community was forged. But what is the story of the Black St. Catharines community outside of grand historical moments and formal institutions like work, school, and church? It is often what happens in between all this that really makes a community hum – the joy and laughter, the sadness, the togetherness and fun, the leisure, the weekends, and the warm home-cooked meals. In the hopes of sharing a small glimpse of all this vibrance, this year’s blog series will explore three community cornerstones: sports, music, and food!  

Part 4 of 4

Whether it be a holiday, a birthday, a wedding, or any other celebration, food is always a part of the program. But food can also be the reason to gather. From Sunday family dinners to picnics to harvest festivals and county bake-offs, a spread of delicious comfort food can entice even the most aloof to join in. And food has played an important part in the story in St. Catharines’ Black community since its earliest days. 

Emancipation Day, marking the August 1, 1834 abolition of slavery across the British Empire, has been celebrated annually in St. Catharines since the law took effect. The St. Catharines Black community marked the first anniversary in 1835 with a huge banquet. Community members saved up money and meat reserves for the event, bringing out sheep, quarters of beef, fowls, vegetables, and all kinds of pastries. Good port wine was also served. The food was all cooked “open air”, or barbecue style. Similarly, the 1891 “Grand Celebration” marking Emancipation Day at the St. Catharines Fairground specifically advertised a “barbecue” dinner. The early presence of this cooking style, as well as the term itself, are notable because they were essentially unknown in broader Canada at this time. The word “barbecue” is likely derived from a Caribbean Indigenous term which then evolved into the Spanish “barbacoa”. The cooking tradition is very much engrained in Southern culture and several photos and artistic renditions exist of 19^th-century Southern Blacks preparing food in this way. Barbecue did not carve out a place in mainstream Canadian culture until the 1950s, as part of a broader push toward gendered domains in the postwar era. To see the term and practice on full display in St. Catharines some 60 years earlier highlights a cultural and culinary tradition that is distinct from the later trend, and perhaps unique to the Black communities in St. Catharines and other places on the Underground Railroad. 

In 1925, 91-year-old Charlotte Oille recalled that during her childhood in St. Catharines Emancipation Day would include a big community dinner at a spot called Gardner’s Grove featuring stuffed pigs, chicken pies, hoe cake, and Maryland beaten biscuit. Each of the dishes Charlotte mentions are notable in the history of Freedom Seekers and Black culture more generally. Pork was the primary meat given to enslaved people in the South because it was cheap and easy to raise. As a result, numerous culinary and cultural traditions emerged surrounding this meat, including the annual hog-killing, a communal affair involving slaughtering and preserving. Pies of all kinds were a well-established Southern culinary tradition, where for many years enslaved women did all the cooking. “Hoe cake” is a simple form of flat cornbread that was traditionally cooked over the fire on the flat end of a farmer’s hoe. It was a popular midday treat for enslaved people working under the hot southern sun. Finally, “Maryland beaten biscuit” refers to a colonial-era simple unleavened bread or hardtack that required rigorous beating to prepare – a task usually performed by enslaved people.  

Emancipation Day celebrations in St. Catharines hit a second heyday between the 1920s and 1950s. Starting in 1924, an annual event marking the day was held at Port Dalhousie’s Lakeside Park. The event was originally organized as an outing by the Toronto-based United Negro Improvement Association, who rented out the whole park and booked passage by steamships. It quickly grew to include thousands of visitors from places like Buffalo and Rochester, as well as St. Catharines’ own Black community. This iteration of Emancipation Day celebrations became generally referred to as “The Big Picnic,” so you can bet food played an important role! The usual carnival fare like ice cream, popcorn, and cotton candy could be found, but so too could barbecue. Impromptu grills were set up, including on Lock Street, to prepare spareribs and other mouth-watering dishes, still decades before the cooking style became mainstream.  

Throughout the 20^th century, food was also a common feature at community events and fundraisers at the BME Church, which had been founded by Freedom Seekers and hosted an entirely Black congregation. In 1945, the church marked its anniversary with a chicken dinner and concert by the “Happy Am I” singers out of Niagara Falls, New York. The dinner was prepared by Archie Bell, a Black chef who worked and lived alongside white people at Welland’s Dexter Hotel, which still stands. In 1956, the church celebrated 100 years with a “grand centennial banquet”. 130 years were marked with a fundraiser dinner attended by Ontario’s first Black Lieutenant Governor, Lincoln Alexander. 

Like with music, St. Catharines’ Black culinary scene has been heavily influenced by Caribbean immigration since the 1960s. The Trinidad and Tobago Cultural Association of St. Catharines was founded in 1975 and hosted events at the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival several times in that decade. In addition to folk arts and music, these events featured “gourmet food and Trinidad rum punch”. The unique island flavours brought to the region at this time were a big hit, and the city now hosts four Caribbean restaurants. The Caribbean Eatery, which has been going strong on Lake Street for some 20 years, was founded by Jamaican immigrant Michael Andrade. Andrade originally came to the area as a migrant farm worker for the 1986 peach harvest. He decided to stay and eventually started a family and a business – and the two have always been intertwined! Michael and several of his children can still be seen working the kitchen at the Caribbean Eatery most days, and now his grandchildren are frequent sights as well. 

Food brings people together, and it has certainly done so for the Black community in St. Catharines for more than 150 years. But to experience the true power and meaning of culinary traditions, it is not enough to read and write about it. You have to grab a plate and dig in! 

Be sure to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this blog series to explore more about cultural and leisure activities of the St. Catharines Black community across its incredible history.

Sean Dineley is a Public Programmer at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.