The Reminiscences of Mr. Wardie Pankhurst

By Lisa Terech, Community Engagement

Throughout the pandemic, volunteers were assisting the Oshawa Museum with our Audio Transcription Project. They listened to hundreds of hours of audio interviews and recordings and created transcriptions of what is being said in the audios. This not only makes the audios easier for researchers to use, but, more importantly, it makes the audio collection accessible to the deaf community and to people with hearing loss.

Of the many different community interviews, one was conducted with a man named Ward Pankhurst, which likely took place at his family home on Cedar Street. His family has become a research focus for the museum, as his mother’s family were among the first Black settlers in the area, who arrived in the 1840s.

Ward Delayfayette Pankhurst was born in 1888, the second of three children born to Henry and Margaret (nee Dunbar). Ward lived his life in Oshawa, the Cedar Dale community specifically, however, it appears he lived for some time in the US, as he was drafted into the US army in 1917. 

Ward’s interview may not provide researchers with much information about his maternal family and their history, but it has given us glimses into Oshawa in the 20^th century. 

When remarked that he’s lived in Oshawa his whole life, Ward responded:

Oh! Yes, I have lived in this house, this will be, I’m going on 83^rd year I’ve lived in this house. My sister was born right up here where I -where I sleep now. I’ll be 84 this year.

‘Family Homestead’ on Cedar Street, in Oshawa. This house is still standing today.

Ward touched on his family briefly, saying:

Incidentally my father he’d come out from England in 19- 1872 just be 100 years this May when he came out here, now my mother and father -or my mother came out -well my mother was born here but here people came up from Lower Canada in 1840 I think it was. You know it was just Lower Canada and Upper Canada.

Q: And they settled here?

A: Oh settled right here. Yeah, yeah.

(Other voice): She lived in Lower Canada?

A: Not my mother, no no no her people.

(Other voice): she was born here in Cedar Dale?

A: Yup.

(Other voice): So a real Cedar Dale (multiple people talking at once)

A: Oh yes there, I’m the last f the -I’m the last -I got a brother down in California, he’s 87, but he’s not -he hasn’t been here -Oh he hadn’t been here to live since the first war. No no he left in early 20s, but I’ve been here.

About schooling around the turn of the century, Ward remembered:

Oh we paid to try the entrance. Oh yes for the entrance exam. And the reason they’d said about that, they said “well that paid for your foolscap you know and your -” I don’t know what else, the ink and the pen I suppose, but you paid a dollar anyways, you know. A dollar incidentally wasn’t so easy.

Of note, he attended Cedar Dale school, a 150+ year old building which still stands today.

Pupils of the Cedar Dale Public School, c. 1890, from the Oshawa Community Archives

A prominent family in this area were the Conants.  As told by Ward:

You see this here was just farmland the whole thing was just farmland, and it was owned by -I wish my sister could find that there picture. Lovely picture of Mr. Tom Conant. But you wouldn’t see a nicer picture, and he was a stately sight of a man. He used to write for the old Globe, and he travelled around the world about four times, and this was the last time he came back. Incidentally he didn’t live no length of time. I think he was only in his early 60s when he died.

Ward also remembered different hotels in the community:

Now we had six hotels in the town here. There was the Queen’s, the Oshawa House, the Central, there was the American House, and the Brook House, and Mallet’s Hotel. Well, Mallet’s was right back in the station over here. Every station, that’s the funny thing, but at every station on the Grand Trunk there always was a hotel.

Queen’s Hotel

Ward also shared stories about sports and teams associated with different local industries:

We had a ball team and they started in ’13 -we started the town league. There was the Piano Works, McLaughlins, – no. The Piano Works, the Fittings, the Town Team, and Cedar Dale, and the Steel Range, and we had a town league you know. Well that was interesting, really interesting.

Q: Where did you play?

A: Play? Right where Sam McLaughlin’s is. That was theProspect Park you know. That’s where we played, right at the back end of his place, that was beautiful. That was owned by Eli Edmondson and we had that there, and afterwards -well, we were only there two or three years and he bought that off of Eli I think in ’17 – ’16 or ’17. Well then they moved up to the Alexandra Park you see, but of course then they got into the big league they got into the central league.

Ward’s interview, in its entirety, is over 1 hour and 36 minutes long. We are grateful to the volunteers who assisted with this project, helping us open access to our collections.

You can listen to Ward, in his own words, by listening to our video podcast, available on our YouTube channel:

February is Black History Month

Every February is celebrated as Black History Month. In Canada, the first Black History Month was celebrated in 1988 in Nova Scotia. The Ontario Black History Society petitioned the Ontario government in 1993 to proclaim February as Black History Month.

In December 1995, after an idea by Rosemary Sadlier, president of the OBHS, the Canadian House of Commons recognized Black History Month in Canada, following a motion introduced by the Honourable Jean Augustine, the first Black Canadian woman elected to Parliament.

In 2008, a motion was introduced by Senator Donald Oliver, the first Black man appointed to the Senate, to “Recognize Contributions of Black Canadians and February as Black History Month,” receiving unanimous approval.

To learn more about Oshawa’s Black history, we invite you to visit our Black History Month Resource page. Here, we have rounded up blog posts written about Oshawa’s Black history and people of note, videos sharing these stories, as well as included links to other organizations and resources.

Visit

Black History Month

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Information about Black History Month in Canada from: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/black-history-month/about.html

“Step on the pin, the pin will bend”

By Kes Murray, Registrar

As we continue our journey into Black History Month, we here at the Oshawa Museum are celebrating the incredible legacy of many Black Canadians in our community. One such notable Black Canadian on our radar is Dr. George Blake.

Dr. Blake was born in 1922 on Green Island, Jamaica. At age 18, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in England and was stationed as a meteorologist in Northern Scotland. After the war, Dr. Blake worked as a government clerk in London, England. During this time, he read a book on Buddhism and decided to change his life’s path. He studied and became a samanera (novice monk) at the Sinhalese Centre in London. He received his full ordination as a Theravadan Buddhist Monk at the Wat Paknam Temple in Bangkok, Thailand in 1956.

From here, he attended the University of Edinburgh, graduating with a degree in psychology, and eventually becoming a clinical psychologist. Moving to Whitby in 1966, Dr. Blake worked at the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital (today’s Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences) and later founded the Pinewood Centre for Addiction.

Some of the cassettes that were digitized. They range from radio interviews to collections of stories.

Along with Dr. Blake’s work in psychology, he was also an incredible storyteller. Dr. Blake founded the Durham Folklore Society in September 1990. As well, he was an original founder of the Storytellers of Canada. I believe his love of storytelling came from his incredible life journey, originating in the Caribbean, to Thailand, to his clinical work.

Dr. Blake not only told stories, he collected them too. From the Caribbean, to West Africa, to India, to Germany, no story was outside his grasp.

Beginning in mid-January and ending some weeks ago, I digitized the incredible stories Dr. Blake told. Dr. Blake recorded himself telling stories over fifty-six cassette tapes. As I’m sure you are well aware of by now, the range of stories is immense, from stories of the mischievous Anancy, a character in Caribbean folklore, to Jataka tales, or stories of the Buddha. All these stories reflect the incredible life Dr. Blake lived and, foremost, his knowledge and passion for storytelling.

While Dr. Blake is no longer with us, his stories and his achievements continue to reflect the incredible person he was. As with many of his stories, I would like to end this post with a phrase Dr. Blake uses to end many of his stories.

“Step on a pin, the pin will bend, and that’s the way the story ends.”

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Information gathered from:

https://www.durhamstorytellers.com/history

Oshawa Museum Archival collection, accession number: A022.1.1-3

The Importance of a Little Wicker Doll Set

By Jennifer Weymark, Archivist

In 1981, a collection of wicker doll toys were donated to the Oshawa Museum. The donation of a tiny rocking chair, a toy washstand, and a set of doll furniture certainly fit the collecting mandate of the Museum given that the Pankhurst family had been long time residents of Oshawa.  These toys also had deep connection to an important part of Oshawa’s history as the donor, Greta Pankhurst, was the great-granddaughter of Wealthy Andrews, the matriarch of one of Oshawa’s earliest Black families.

Early collecting practices tended to focus on collecting items that had connections to prominent early white settlers. This donation has that connection as the donor forms indicate that the items had belonged to the Conant family before coming into the ownership of Greta. This connection would have made the donation very important under these early collecting practices. While it is unclear if Greta’s connection to Wealthy was known or understood when the items were added to the Museum collection, this donation is important because of its connection to Greta and her family.

Today we are grateful for the existence of this donation as it is one of the few artefacts that we have connected to early Black setters.  Museums use artefacts or objects to help us to understand the past and to tell the story of our community. There is very little artefact or object based evidence to help us tell the history of early Black settlers in our community, and this creates a challenge when it comes to exhibiting these stories.

We are fortunate to have documentary evidence. In fact, beyond resources like census records and land records, we are incredibly fortunate to have the original marriage certificate of Greta’s grandparents, Mary Andrews and George Dunbar. We also have family photographs and an audio recording of Greta’s brother, Ward, reminiscing about growing up in Cedar Dale. Research through documentary evidence has helped us to better understand the history of early Black settlers in the area and has helped us to share this important aspect of our history.

A013.4.519: Marriage licence between Mary Andrews and George Dunbar

While we work to fill in the gaps left by earlier collecting practices, we are also working to tell the histories that were lost in that gap.  Items like the little wicker doll set are a part of work.

Discussions about Difficult Histories

By Jennifer Weymark, Archivist

The Oshawa Historical Society’s summer 2020 newsletter is all about Henry House and the Henry family.  This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the home becoming a museum, and we wanted to celebrate this occasion with a Henry House themed newsletter.  For me, writing about the Henrys inevitably turns into writing about Ebenezer Elijah Henry aka E.E. Henry or Eben. He has been an interest of mine since I first accessioned a letter that he wrote to his father into the archival collection. My newsletter contribution was about this letter and how fascinating I found this glimpse into the more personal life of the youngest of Thomas and Betsey’s sons.

EE Henry (A017.20.1)

Initially the newsletter was to include an image of this first letter along with a transcription because the original handwritten letter can be challenging to read.  After a staff meeting on June 4, we changed our approach and decided to no longer include the letter in the newsletter. Why did we decide to switch this letter for a different one written by E.E.?  Simply put, staff decided that the language used, while appropriate at the time it was written, is not only inappropriate, but it is hurtful for those who he was commenting on.

As the world reacts to the protests against police brutality in the United States, Canada is also looking at our history of anti-Black racism, how that has been white washed from our history, and the role that museums have played in this. In the letter, Henry writes about a recent American election, the controversial 1876 election that saw Rutherford B. Hayes win the election due to a decision made by the Electoral College after losing the popular vote to Samuel Tilden.  Henry notes that this election, just a decade after the abolishment of slavery in the United States, had Black Americans terrified that slavery would be reinstated. There doesn’t seem to be any merit behind Henry’s observation, but it is interesting to see his perspective on the political atmosphere in his newly adopted country. The language used by Henry to describe Black Americans is not acceptable, and staff felt sharing that language does not add to the discussion.

Are we censoring history?  Are we continuing to white wash the prevalent racism of those we study in the past?  All valid questions and all ones we weighed against the potential pain we could be adding to a community already dealing with the pain of racism.

No, we are not censoring history.  The complete letter and transcription are in the archival collection and have been printed in full in our publication To Cast a Reflection. The content of the letter is still clear in my newsletter article without including the complete transcription with the hurtful language.

I have written and spoken at length about the challenges of overcoming gaps in our archival collection due to past collecting practices. Our collection is filled with information on the wealthy white elite of our community because that was who was doing the collecting. Currently we are working to fill in those gaps, but it is not easy because much has already been lost.  Research into early Black history in our community has been challenging and rewarding, and ensuring that this community is no longer omitted in our histories is a work in progress. We are very aware that archives and museums are not neutral and we must play a role in ensuring that the community as a whole is represented in what we collect and exhibit.

This post is another way that we are working to be transparent and accountable.  Our decision to not share, at this time, the transcript of a letter with hurtful language was made after much careful reflection and consideration for current events.