Not everyone can hear the ancestors calling. Sometimes it’s a lack of belief, sometimes you’re not listening, or sometimes you’re in denial. Sometimes you have weak service. If community spaces, family documentation, and cultural knowledge are a kind of cell tower connecting one caller to another, what happens to that connection when they are lost?

Africville was a Black community that existed in the North of Halifax for about 120 years on the South shore of Bedford Basin. The city of Halifax denied the residents amenities such as sewage, clean water, garbage disposal, street lights, public transportation, and paved roads and instead built developments that were unwanted elsewhere like an infectious disease hospital, a prison, an incinerator, railway tracks, an abattoir, and an open dump. In spite of this, Africville was a close-knit community with stores, a school, a post office, and a church.

In 1964, the Halifax city council voted to relocate Africville’s residents without effectively consulting them. The residents were told they were being relocated to improve their standard of living, but it soon became clear that the city wanted to use the area to develop industry and improve infrastructure for its white citizens instead. A common phrase being used at the time was, “Urban renewal means negro removal.” Anyone resisting relocation was taken to court and had their land seized by the government. The government also commonly used bribery and intimidation to force residents to relocate. The Seaview United Baptist Church, which was considered to be the heart of Africville, was bulldozed in the middle of the night on November 20, 1967. The church stored the community’s birth, marriage and death documents, which were lost in its destruction. The last remaining home in Africville was destroyed in January 1970.

This is not the only time a Black Canadian community has been destroyed in the name of urban development. Hogan’s Alley was a predominantly Black area of Vancouver’s East Side, in the neighbourhood of Strathcona. At its height during the 1930s-40s, the area had businesses, restaurants, and entertainment venues owned and operated by Black community members.

Vie’s Chicken and Steak House was an iconic part of Hogan’s Alley and was visited by celebrities such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Lou Rawis, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Jimi Hendrix (whose grandmother was a cook at Vie’s). In 1958, Vancouver City Council approved a redevelopment plan to demolish nearly all of Strathcona, including Hogan’s Alley. By 1967, the western section had been levelled for the construction of a new freeway and Vie’s closed in 1979.

I haven’t been to either of these places, but recently visited Central Park in New York City for the first time. York Hill was a Black community which was demolished to build a reservoir where the Great Lawn in Central Park is now. The residents relocated to Seneca Village, which was also destroyed in the continued development of Central Park. There are no surviving photos or drawings of Seneca Village and no traces above ground in present-day Central Park. Over one hundred Black communities in the US have been demolished and flooded, the physical pieces of their history disintegrating underwater.

Tuning in to ancestor frequencies has not been made easy. This disrupted connection to Black history and communities is intentional. It limits how we understand our collective history and how we imagine moving forward. (Yes, for any fellow non-Black people, I did say ‘we’, this has an impact on us too.) In spite of how many cell towers have been lost to water or lawns or freeways, we invite you to turn your ringer on. You may get anything from the slightest hint of static to startlingly clear face-to-face time in a dream tonight. Either way, if a call comes through, this is the right time to pick up.