4 The tale of Graham Creighton High School is part of the larger history of the Civil Rights Movement in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s. While the history of civil rights has been extensively covered in the United States, the Canadian historiography has noticeable gaps.⁸ As Harvey Amani Whitfield notes in his 2008 article “Reviewing Blackness in Atlantic Canada and the African Canadian Diaspora,” the literature in the Atlantic region is mostly concerned with Africville, Black Loyalists, Black Refugees, and Jamaican Maroons. Whitfield argues “It is time for historians to till new ground by focusing on . . . different time periods where we do not know enough – such as the contours of race relations in the decades before the confrontation and successes of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.”⁹ This article is centred on the period of the Civil Rights Movement, and begins to tell part of the larger story of the movement in Canada and its manifestations in Nova Scotia specifically.

5 The story of school integration in the United States usually begins with the monumental Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. This landmark decision was followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. With activists like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Eldridge Cleaver to name a few, the civil rights struggle gained real and tangible momentum in the United States.¹⁰ The effects of the Civil Rights Movement in Canada have not received as much scholarly attention as its counterpart south of the border, although scholars continually reference the presence of segregationist practices in the Canadian context. In Barrington Walker’s chapter in A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues, for example, he examines the presence of Jim Crow in Canada and explains that “a ‘liberal racial order’ developed here in Canada based largely in the ideologies of the British Empire,” which resulted in “a noticeable absence of laws that racially codified white supremacy.”¹¹ Yet while Jim Crow-style policies may not have been as explicitly written in Canadian educational policies, they were embedded in individual practices. Walker argues that “the constant presence and power of illiberal views of racial difference meant that the law in Canada did support racial discrimination – but passively so – upholding the individual’s right to discriminatory treatment against minorities.”¹² In Nova Scotia, Black people recognized their poor treatment and leadership emerged to address discrimination.

6 A short review of the Nova Scotian context reveals opposing sides within the Civil Rights Movement in the province, exemplified by two leaders at the time: William Pearly Oliver and Burnley “Rocky” Jones. The former spent his life engaged in community service, as a church minister and as a consultant for the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Oliver’s thinking represents a more conservative approach to civil rights. The latter represents a more militant approach to civil rights, and, as a young man at the time, Jones’s rhetoric was highly influenced by the larger movements happening globally. Oliver pressed for a united Black voice and was concerned with what he described as “outside agitators,” which included Jones.¹³ As Jones reflects in his autobiography, coauthored with James St. George Walker, he and his counterparts were seen as radical and although Jones was originally from Nova Scotia, he was coming from Toronto at the time and his ideas were perceived as outside agitations influenced by the movement in the United States.¹⁴

7 The case of Graham Creighton High School highlights the presence of Jim Crow ideology in Nova Scotia and illustrates the inequality (and inefficacy) of integration policies in education in the province. As Walker observes: “Social customs and court rulings that allowed individuals the freedom to act in a racially biased manner led many Black Canadians to identify Jim Crow as a continental rather than exclusively US phenomenon.”¹⁵ In the case of Graham Creighton High School, I echo Walker’s rationale of using Jim Crow as an analytical lens. While racism in Canada may not look the same as the blatantly prescribed Jim Crow policies in the United States, the subtler nuances of “the individual’s right to discriminatory practices” are examined in this article; this adds not only to the Canadian experience of racial discrimination but to the “continental Jim Crow” experience as well.¹⁶

8 Historians have indicated that integration in Nova Scotia began around 1954, although because segregation was never a legally enforced practice it is difficult to pin down sources that actively speak about integration. Robin Winks pointed out in his seminal work, The Blacks in Canada, that the 1918 Education Act ensured that segregated schools could continue to be established: “Between 1918 and 1954, when the racial reference was dropped from the statute, the Negro schools continued to fare badly, and the most blind of school inspectors could not have pretended that separate education was equal education.” Winks references the 1954 Education Act as the point at which the racial reference was dropped from the statute, as there is no direct reference to race in the 1954 Education Act.¹⁷

9 While educational policies were an important factor leading to integration, the practice of integrating students in Nova Scotia did not gain momentum as soon as the reference was dropped in 1954. The relative geographic isolation of many Black communities meant that the status quo of segregation could be maintained, and, without policy intervention, most schools remained segregated by default. This was nothing new; the Preston area had a long history of systemic racism and Black people were purposefully placed on the geographic margins. The 1784 Nova Scotia Land Survey shows that the area, originally called the Preston Township,¹⁸ was initially settled by predominantly Black Loyalists followed by Jamaican Maroons and Black Refugees.¹⁹ Historians have commonly agreed that Black immigrants to Nova Scotia were given the worst land available. As Whitfield observes, for instance, Black Loyalists were the last to receive land and their grants were smaller than those given to white settlers.²⁰ Not only were the land grants small, but they were often on non-arable land where farming was difficult if not impossible.²¹ These colonial practices pushed Black people to the outskirts of society, literally and figuratively, where they existed in relative isolation from the predominantly white communities that surrounded them. Formerly referred to as de facto and de jure styles of segregation (socially vs. legally enforced), historians are now looking at all forms of segregation as social constructs that continued to keep Black communities on the margins.²²

10 The communities that integrated at Graham Creighton High School were located to the east of the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth and along the shoreline, a place which is referred to as part of the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. In examining this section of the Eastern Shore region in its entirety, geographer Hugh Millward’s article “The Spread of Commuter Development in the Eastern Shore Zone of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1920-1988” offers incisive insights into the geographic intricacies each community experienced. As he notes: “The evolving pattern of development has been moulded by five sets of

variables: access, services, environment, sociocultural factors, and planning.” Millward gives a profile, beginning in the 1920s, of the landscape in question. As he writes: “Most settlement was situated around the Chezzetcook Harbour and in the Eastern Passage/Cow Bay area, with smaller concentrations at Lawrencetown, Preston, and Musquodoboit Harbour.” Millward then highlights both the similarities and differences between the communities of the Eastern Shore. The population distribution was concentrated in Chezzetcook and Eastern Passage, with larger farm areas and a smaller farm population in Cole Harbour. The resource-based landscape was also overpopulated in the small pockets of the Eastern Shore that were agriculturally viable. North and East Preston and Cherry Brook were exceptions. Most of the land in these communities was unsuitable for agriculture. Millward reiterates the point that historic geographic racism played into the placement of people in these communities. The “ten-acre hardscrabble lots” that were set aside for the settlement of Black Loyalists compounded the issues of social isolation in the area.²³ The clear geographic isolation of the people of Preston, particularly on unsuitable land, exemplifies the deeply ingrained racism that prevailed in all facets of life.

11 Not only were the people of Preston segregated spatially from the broader white communities, but the borders of what constitutes North Preston, East Preston, and Cherry Brook have always fluctuated. A council meeting held in February 1961 shows one example of the shift in borders and the issues that arose. The disputes over boundaries are convoluted at best and a touch difficult to follow, but one such boundary dispute in 1961 shows that residents were concerned about the boundaries and would petition regularly to have them shifted. As the record states:

Following that February meeting, a detailed description of each of the districts was produced for the May session. In summary, District #14 fell in the boundary of the Cole Harbour area, District #15 was North Preston, and District #16 was East Preston. Residents highlighted a few important issues. The first is that District #14 residents wished to remain part of that area and not District #16. The second is that residents of Westphal who were included in District #16 wished to be combined with District #14. It is clear that District #14 was the desirable district, with fewer historical ties to the surrounding Black communities. The council resolved to include Westphal, Lake Loon, and Cherry Brook in District #14, with the potential of being combined with District #15.²⁵

12 This was not the end of zoning contestation. A 1983 publication entitled From Africville to New Road: How Four Communities Planned their Development considers the planning process for development in the Preston communities. The authors note the intent of the publication:

The authors highlight the distinct cultural identity of the Preston area, as well as making the outcome of their community story different from that of Africville. The authors also note the territorial nature of the area: “When the boundaries for the area to be planned were set, they enclosed the ‘territory’ of the Blacks. Some minor adjustments were made later, but the area as originally defined was one that local people recognized and accepted. The boundaries were not drawn in an arbitrary manner.” With these considerations in mind, the planning process had to accommodate the distinct culture of the community while embodying the overall goal of making “the area a more attractive place to live.” Some of the major issues were identified:

The growth of neighbouring communities on the Eastern Shore, as well as the threat of Highway 107 potentially expanding, caused concern, especially as the area continued to grow. The entire Eastern Shore was shifting from its traditional resource-based economy to a commuter-based lifestyle. By the time of integration during the 1960s, population growth had exploded in the Eastern Shore Region and Millward describes the growth between 1960 and 1988 as a transition to a “commuter society.” The housing market outside of the city was much more affordable for the average individual, and the impetus of the Macdonald Bridge in 1955 meant that working outside of each respective community was possible.²⁷ The rapid population growth meant that services had to be provided, including schooling. While each community contained elementary schools, most students in the rural areas had to be sent to city schools to obtain a secondary education. With the influx of population, the Cole Harbour and Cherry Brook regions were selected as “central” locations to host secondary schools. The establishment of Graham Creighton High School and the later-established Sir Robert Borden Junior High School²⁸ are both examples of the consolidated secondary schooling system for the Eastern Shore Region.

13 Two further considerations of geography must be made before exploring integration at Graham Creighton High School itself. First, no discussion of race in 20th century Nova Scotia is complete without mention of Africville and its effects on the broader Black community. Secondly, a brief consideration of one of the white communities is important to understand. Eastern Passage is used as an example to demonstrate that integration at Graham Creighton High School was more than just an integration of two races; it was an integration of communities.

14 Nova Scotia’s capital, Halifax, also had a significant Black population, most of whom resided in a community called Africville.²⁹ Africville has received considerable scholarly attention³⁰ due to its demolition in the 1960s to facilitate the building of the MacKay Bridge, adding to the commuter development that started with the Macdonald Bridge. As part of a larger project of postwar urban renewal, the relocation of residents and the subsequent razing of Africville represents yet another way in which supposed integration policies held hidden segregationist practices in Nova Scotia. Throughout Africville’s existence, its residents faced systemic discrimination as obtaining building permits to improve living conditions, such as water and sewer access, were refused.³¹ During the 1950s, the city dump was moved directly to Africville land. When the city wanted to acquire the land for its own purposes, officials described Africville as “intolerable and unsanitary,” despite being responsible for the less-than-habitable conditions it had created. By the 1960s Halifax was invested in urban renewal, and because many residents could not prove legal title to their land, and also lacked political agency, “Africville was expropriated by the City of Halifax for the purposes of industrial development, as well as for the alleged benefits of ‘slum clearance’ and ‘relocation’ of the residents.”³²

15 Offering a uniquely geographic perspective on the demise of the community of Africville, Jennifer J. Nelson’s Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism examines Africville in terms of spatial management. She writes:

Nelson demonstrates that Africville is spatial history epitomized. The displacement of the people of Africville left a legacy of spatial management that threatened the existence of predominately Black spaces like the Preston area. The Africville relocation also came to hold strong symbolic importance to the broader Black community. A 1971 report conducted by Donald Clairmont and Dennis Magill uses post-relocation interviews to highlight the impact of the relocation process. The authors cite a young leader from North Preston discussing the impact of the Africville relocation on the people in the broader Black community; the leader was convinced that if a relocation like Africville were proposed in the Preston area that “these people would want to stand up and fight for their homes.”³⁴ The relocation was a critical moment of the Black experience in 1960s’ Nova Scotia and its impact was long-lasting and broad-sweeping.

16 From a policy perspective, Africville illuminates how the government fell short of making good on its integration promises. Historian Tina Loo demonstrates that while racism was a contributing factor to the difficulties experienced by Africvillers, the reality of their situation was much more complex. In her article “Africville and the Dynamics of Power in Postwar Canada,” Loo observes

The liberal welfare state left Africvillers, and by extension those in the Preston area, on the outskirts of society. The government’s attempts to assist Africvillers were paternalistic; by providing basic services to Africvillers, they were helping those they considered disenfranchised. The view that the lives of Africvillers required modernization is also indicative of liberal welfare thinking. Rather than addressing the root racial prejudice directly, the liberal welfare state used forced physical integration to provide “the good life.” Yet, as Loo emphasizes, “integration was not belonging,” and the state was ultimately unable to create full integration.

17 While the focus of this article is on the Preston area, the adjacent white communities were also part of the integration process. Scholars have acknowledged the role that whiteness plays in the racialization of minority communities. As scholar Ruth Frankenberg maintains: “In a social context where white people have too often viewed themselves as nonracial or racially neutral, it is crucial to look at the ‘racialness’ of white experience.”³⁶ While many white communities were bussed to the Black community of Cherry Brook to attend secondary schooling in an effort to integrate racialized communities, Eastern Passage stands out for two reasons: it too was geographically isolated, and the community was also at the centre of controversy in terms of integration.³⁷ The following section draws heavily on the context provided in my 2020 article “Reflections on Racism: An Oral Accounts of Integration at Graham Creighton High School, Cherry Brook, Nova Scotia,” and is necessary to understand the story of integration fully.³⁸

18 The original land grants for the Eastern Passage areas date back to 1752. Although residents did engage in some farming, by the latter half of the 19th-century fishing was the main industry. Eastern Passage also has a heavy association with construction, with many of its residents having built fortifications, airfields, factories, refineries, and housing developments. Most significantly, Eastern Passage played host to Imperial Oil – a company that shaped the local economy. There was also a longstanding military presence in the community, with the neighbouring community airbase of Shearwater and its strategic location near the Halifax Harbour, which meant that Eastern Passage was at the centre of many war-time operations.³⁹ During the Second World War, more military infrastructure was developed in the Shearwater and Eastern Passage area, such as the Hartlen Point battery and the Shearwater airport and military base. Extraction for sand began during the 1940s and accelerated during the late 1950s and early 1960s, eventually destroying Silver Sands Beach in Cow Bay in favour of modernity. The residents of the area felt the loss of the popular beach as not only a source of touristic income, but as a precious ecosystem. In the planning of the extraction, the consequences to residents of the community were an afterthought.⁴⁰

19 These developments in Eastern Passage and Cow Bay highlight several important points. First, most residents of Eastern Passage were long-standing or transient (i.e., refinery workers and military personnel). Established residents with familial ties to the area held a sense of community patriotism. Secondly, the residents of Eastern Passage historically experienced a flux in these two industries; with the boom and bust nature of the fishing and oil industries, Eastern Passage residents endured geographic poverty. Without wealth, the residents of the community had little political clout or power. In many respects, Eastern Passage was an afterthought in development, which is evident in the mere fact that the community did not, for many years, have a secondary educational institution.

20 A third point of consideration is the deep religious history in the community. The two main parishes, St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic and St. Peter’s Anglican, offer a classic Catholic-Anglican divide.⁴¹ Tight religious ties that affected day-to-day life in Eastern Passage were perpetuated into ideas concerning the “other” and created a historically ingrained “us versus them” mentality. Finally, Eastern Passage, like the Prestons and Cherry Brook, was geographically isolated and has long been referred to as “Land’s End.” It was different from Cole Harbour and Lawrencetown, traditionally farming communities, that had a longstanding relationship with the Preston Township, if only by the virtue that there was a road that connected the communities. Trade and interaction with the people of the Preston area were part of their daily lives. It is important to remember that Graham Creighton High School was not only an integration of race but an integration of communities, some of which were more historically connected than others.

21 By the time integration was implemented at Graham Creighton High School in 1964,⁴² the Black community in Nova Scotia was becoming increasingly aware of the social and political changes taking place across the globe. This also meant an increasing cognizance of their situation and efforts by many community members towards creating a more equal society. In terms of education, this meant integration. To understand the impact of integration, a brief examination of the history of education in the area helps illustrate the inequalities that Black people faced. Mohamed Abucar’s work Struggle for Development: The Black Communities of North and East Preston and Cherry Brook, Nova Scotia 1784-1987 remains the only academic monograph-length study dedicated solely to the area. He discusses education extensively in this publication and found that although Black people had settled in the Preston township during the late 18th century the communities had remained relatively underdeveloped in terms of services and institutions. The exception to this trend was the church. A participant in Abucar’s study summarizes the role of the church best, stating “The only organized society we had right from the beginning was the church. Schooling was provided in an unorganized structural sense; it was not part of a government institution . . . [and] there were no integrated schools.”⁴³ The church was at the centre of the community and provided basic education to the children in the area in the absence of a government-regulated school system. Abucar highlights the reasons for this perpetuated segregation, citing the following influences: “(a) religious and ethnic line, (b) geographic isolation, (c) economic disparity, and (d) racial line. In Preston Township during the 1800s, education segregation was contributed to by three factors: items (a), (b) and (c) above.”⁴⁴ Abucar argues that “the connection between the church and education laid the foundation of cultural identity of other communities.”⁴⁵ It is fair to say that (d) was also a major contributing factor on the overall historical level since the township was historically segregated from its very beginnings.

22 Not everyone was keen to integrate with other communities. Parents petitioned to have their children transferred to other schools in the county. Transfers were a common occurrence within Graham Creighton High School’s feeder schools, especially in relation to the East Preston and Porter’s Lake dividing line. For example, in 1960, Mr. Vesteeg, a white man of East Preston, appealed to the board to have his five-year-old son sent to the school at Porter’s Lake instead of the Partridge River School. The commissioners Hall and Redmond moved “that since [Mr. Vesteeg] resides in the Partridge River School Section, that his son must attend the school there.”⁴⁶ However, when Mrs. Borgal, a white woman, requested her daughter be transferred from the East Preston School, located in an historically Black community, to the Porter’s Lake School in 1962, the outcome was very different. After some investigation, and after consultation with the principal of the East Preston School, a Black man by the name of Mr. Gerald Tynes, the board decided to approve Mrs. Borgal’s request for reasons that were not listed in the official records.⁴⁷ The record does show that when the school board checked on the situation of children attending schools outside their district, they found that many children were attending the school in Porter’s Lake who should be going to school in East Preston and vice versa.

23 The Vesteeg and Borgal cases are not isolated. The case of students attending a school in a different district was not uncommon within the feeder schools surrounding Graham Creighton. For example, in 1966, the Trustees of William Ross School (in Westphal) appealed for the case of a white boy living on Lake Loon Road. The transfer was approved in this case, and the language of the minutes is a bit more blatant than the previous instances, with Lake Loon Road cited as “undesirable territory”:

The board approved this request because of “the reasons stated in the accompanying letter.” Another request was received at the same meeting from Mr. Ralph Sparks, a Black man, on Cherry Brook Road. He requested that his daughter, Florenda, be permitted to attend the William Ross School in Westphal. The board approved the transfer “given the circumstances,” although the reasoning is not specified.⁴⁸

24 The board appears ambivalent in its criteria for allowing transfers between school districts. This uncertainty becomes clear as the matter was discussed at length during a 1966 meeting; the meeting addressed the issues of censuses for ratepayers when not all students were attending the schools in their prescribed zone. The minutes note that the issue was a matter of race and although against regulations it occurred nonetheless. Children living in the Salmon River Bridge area in Westphal were going to the William Ross School, when in fact they should have been attending school in East Preston. The chairman at the meeting noted that “there could be difficulties encountered when the people are asked to send their children to East Preston.” Even though the segregation of Black and white children had “become sort of a tradition,” the board recognized that this action was against regulation. They also mentioned the same situation on Bell Road in East Preston. As the minutes state: “There were white children living in the East Preston School Section attending the school in Porter’s Lake and there were colored children living in the Porter’s Lake School Section attending the school in East Preston.”⁴⁹ The examples above illustrate the difficulties that the municipal school board faced in approving transfers to and from the East Preston School. It is worth noting that the board refers directly to a racial issue in this meeting, pointing out that white and Black children were attending schools in the Porter’s Lake and East Preston sections, respectively, and an unofficial white and Black precedent was already established. These examples highlight the struggle of trying to implement integrational policies.

25 All of the examples above deal with schools in the Graham Creighton area, many of which were feeder schools to the high school. There are fewer examples of transfers at the senior high level. Due to the large district that this high school served, it makes sense that students were not able to transfer out of the school as readily as high schools were scarce. Only two examples of transfers at the junior and high school levels are found in the records: one for Gordon Wiswell, white, to be transferred to Graham Creighton, and one for David Goldsworthy, white, to be transferred from Graham Creighton. The first case comes from the trustees at West Lawrencetown requesting a transfer for Wiswell, a Grade VII student, for unspecified behavioural problems. The board approved Wiswell’s transfer to Graham Creighton High School.⁵⁰ The second request was received from Mrs. Gladys Goldsworthy asking to have her son transferred from Graham Creighton to Eastern Shore District High School.⁵¹ In this instance, the board denied the request because “in their opinion, the reasons were not sufficient to warrant the transfer.”⁵² All of these cases help illustrate that contention existed on the borders of the Preston School District. While some cases are more explicitly racialized than others, an issue was present and for the most part, remained unresolved.

26 Halifax County Council minutes are equally as revealing as the records of the municipal school board on perceptions of space in the racialized context. The two bodies worked in tandem, and larger decisions about education would fall to the County Council. Councillor Johnson, cited at the beginning and in the title of this article, advocated strongly for educational improvements in his area. Johnson urged his colleagues to consider the implications of the poor quality of education in the Preston area, cautioning that the welfare problem would continue to worsen if nothing was done. He is directly quoted in the council minutes during a May 1969 meeting as stating his objective:

Councillor Johnson is distinct in the records; a reading of archival material shows that he possessed a strong sense of activism for his area. Johnson had to appeal to the council to make his point – that education in the Preston area was inadequate. His gusto was not always well received by other council members. In a rather patronizing response to Johnson’s heartfelt frustrations, Councillor P. Baker suggested “if any Councillor feels so frustrated that he should resign” and that he himself had been on the council for 11 years and had seen many improvements in the county through helping “the poor, the ill, and afflicted.”⁵⁴ Baker’s comment is dismissive, but it is likely reflective of the views of many white people at the time. Most of the council members in this period no doubt prescribed to the liberal-welfare model that Loo explores in her article; rather than dealing with racism directly, the council members deferred to their work as councillors as their contribution to bettering the situation.

27 It is no wonder that Councillor Johnson asked his colleagues whether they intended to do something about the problem of education in his area, “or just say ‘to hell with the people in Preston’.”⁵⁵ Johnson persisted with his advocacy for education in the area and brought another issue to council in July 1969. In this instance, statements had been made in the press concerning the poor quality of education in the North Preston area. This concerned Johnson greatly, as it put his community in a negative light while making some presumptuous and unfounded comments:

29 The meaning of segregated space explored in this article is two-fold. Not only does it engage with the broader spatial considerations of zoning laws, but it also speaks to the allocation of educational space. The school itself was a space that reproduced relations of power among faculty, students, and staff within the school itself; among the school and the communities it served; and among the school and the larger administrative bodies (including the municipal school board and the county council) that controlled and maintained both the facility itself and intellectual space it provided.⁵

30 The statistics above represent approximate school enrolment for the years 1967-1968. In the original source, 1967 is the first year that the schools that fed into Graham Creighton High School were grouped together, similarly to how they are grouped in the Table 1 reproduced for this article.⁵⁹ It is worth noting that while there are many students enrolled at the elementary level (3,248), far fewer students attended secondary schooling in the area (1,001). There is also a marked difference in the number of students attending junior high compared

Table 1 – Enrolment Statistics – Suburban Dartmouth Area Schools – 1967-1968

Source – Nova Scotia Directory of Schools: Historical Editions, “Directory of School Sections and Schools in Operation Listed by County and Municipality, 1967-87, Province of Nova Scotia” (Halifax: Department of Education, Halifax, 1967), 26 at https://www.ednet.ns.ca/directory-schools-historical.

to senior high, with the ratio being 800 to 221. Graham Creighton served the communities of Cherry Brook, North Preston, and East Preston as a junior high, totaling 415 students, the highest number of students enrolled at the junior high level in the area. The other junior high schools in the surrounding areas included Caldwell Road in Cole Harbour (82), Tallahassee in Eastern Passage (195), Hampton Gray Memorial in Shearwater (83), and Atlantic View Drive in Lawrencetown (25). However, Graham Creighton only had 221 senior high students.⁶⁰ Considering that Creighton was the only high school in the area, the low enrolment numbers are staggering.

31 While specific demographic information on the race of the students attending the senior high school is not available, the low enrolment suggests that not many students from any of the communities were attending schooling at the senior high level. A sampling of the undergraduates and graduates from the 1968 yearbook shows that of the 77 Grade XI and Grade XII students included in the yearbook, 67 were white and only 10 were black. As there were only 221 students enrolled at the senior high level (grades X-XII), this also means that over half of those 221 students enrolled in senior high were in Grade X.⁶¹ The Grade XII class only has photos of 30 graduates, one of whom was Black. This is not to say that there were not more graduates, or more Black students who graduated, but it shows that Black students were grossly underrepresented in the student population, especially at the senior high level. I mention in my article “Reflections on Racism” that Participant 2, a white female from the Westphal area, brought her yearbook to the interview. She states: “It was not the perception I had . . . I really thought it was a 50/50 split.”⁶² While the perception of white students might have been that there was an even split of Black and white students, the reality was that white students made up the overwhelming majority of those enrolled in senior high studies.

32 Even though there was a policy of integration in place, Graham Creighton High School exemplified systemically ingrained segregation in its daily operations. These segregationist practices were noted in interviews with former students; for example, Participant 2 noted that the smoking sections at the school were segregated. She comments that at the time this “seemed like a natural segregation.”⁶³ Participant 1, a white male from Colby Village, remembers the cafeteria being noticeably segregated.⁶⁴ The separation of students is also reiterated in the written record. A conversation between the Superintendent of Schools Mr. Perry and Councillor Tonks at a 18 February 1969 council meeting demonstrates the physical separation of students in the educational environment:

In the case of Graham Creighton High School the racialized “other” was consistently maintained in separate spaces, both within the physical school and at the administrative level.

33 Segregation not only occurred on the recreational level; it occurred in the classroom as well. The auxiliary program was an example of systemic social segregation. The auxiliary program was meant for students who required remedial training and who could not succeed at the regular academic level. The subject of remedial education has been explored by educators. Most notably, The Black Learner’s Advisory Committee published a report in 1994 entitled the BLAC Report: Redressing Inequity – Empowering Black Learners. The authors argue that the school board established the auxiliary program “instead of providing extra resources to assist these students with their education.”⁶⁶ The report brings forth the recollections of one Black student concerning the auxiliary program:

The auxiliary program was not a positive experience for most, and the topic is highlighted in the oral history and the written record. As far as the school board was concerned, they wanted to get students through high school as quickly as possible. They hired a school psychologist to assess the number of auxiliary programs that would be required; Dr. Istar Young surveyed the academic achievement in the Eastern Shore areas, concluding that more classes were required for both Black communities and the poor white community of Eastern Passage.⁶⁸

34 The auxiliary program was not exclusive to the high school level. Principal Reid Harrison of Graham Creighton appears on record advocating for an auxiliary class for Grade VII.⁶⁹ Due to the poor quality of education most students received in the area, the principal sought remedial education:

This motion was approved by the board, unsurprisingly, as the auxiliary program was the standard approach of the board when it came to the Black community. In recalling the auxiliary program in her interview, Participant 4, a Black female from Cherry Brook, reflects that both Black and white students were streamed into the auxiliary classes and this affected their performance and social behaviour in the school. She said “Once you’re labelled you’ll adapt to the label.”⁷¹ Most students at Graham Creighton High School, regardless of their race, had not acquired adequate education by the time they reached high school, and school board minutes show that that they were, by the determination of the board, “definitely not university material.”⁷² Segregation, in the case of Creighton, was not simply of race alone, but also a segregation of students from lower-income communities.

35 While Black students were labelled as the “other” in the schooling space, they still worked to assert themselves in the schooling space. James’s article “Negotiating School” asserts that “some marginalized students feel the need to claim space as they negotiate schooling.” To secure this space, “students would hang out in the hallways and wear hats (which were against school rules) in an attempt to challenge their socially constructed ‘bad guy’ image and to force others to think of them in new ways.” Their actions “became ways for students to assert themselves and to resist both surveillance and the ways they were being constructed by school authorities.” Participant 4 illuminates how Black students created their own space within the walls of Graham Creighton:

Participant 4’s comments show that Black students were continuously negotiating their education and challenging the status quo implemented and enforced by not only the school administration but by society itself. Participant 4’s parent’s valued education, which is likely the reason they wanted her to stay at home.⁷⁴

36 As demonstrated in this section, educational space was a highly contested concept in the case of Graham Creighton High School. Not only was school enrolment low at the senior high level, but the success of Black students was also stifled due to systemic segregation and streaming into the auxiliary program. Furthermore, students self-segregated at the school due to social and cultural constraints, and while integration policies were in place segregationist practices prevailed.

37 The whole Preston area was and continues to be shrouded in spatial dissonance. And from its beginnings, through the Civil Rights Movement and into the present day, the area continues to contest its geographic constraints.⁷⁵ It is no surprise that Councillor Johnson questioned his fellow councillors on whether they intended to say “To hell with the people in Preston” when it came to education. From an outside perspective, that is exactly what they did. The historical space in which the people of the Preston area exist today is a blatant perpetuation of colonial practices and systemic racism. Examining Graham Creighton High School is just one window into the larger issue of spatial management in this area and offers insight into the proliferation of racist attitudes through both physical and educational spaces. This article’s focus on both what happened at Graham Creighton and educational policy more generally in the Preston area should help to spark more conversation about the history of civil rights and integration in Nova Scotia and also about the continued struggle over spatial management in the Preston area.