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Re: African Canadian Heritage Trail
At the Buxton Settlement museum, I learned a bit about the African Canadians who served in the military. There was a whole battlion of Black soldiers. It was created becasue the Government refused to allow Black men to enlist. One of the residents of the settlement, Arthur Harding Alexander, wrote to complain and a battalion was created. Here is his son's story (his son, John Arthur Shreve Alexander, served in WWII).
His father was Black and one of the early settlers at Buxton. His Dad was a teacher and taught at a school on the native reservation and later at the school that I visited a few days ago. Apparently the quality of education was SO high that the White families in the areas started sending their children to the Black school too and eventually the public school closed down.
At the Buxton Settlement museum, I learned a bit about the African Canadians who served in the military. There was a whole battlion of Black soldiers. It was created becasue the Government refused to allow Black men to enlist. One of the residents of the settlement, Arthur Harding Alexander, wrote to complain and a battalion was created. Here is his son's story (his son, John Arthur Shreve Alexander, served in WWII).
His father was Black and one of the early settlers at Buxton. His Dad was a teacher and taught at a school on the native reservation and later at the school that I visited a few days ago. Apparently the quality of education was SO high that the White families in the areas started sending their children to the Black school too and eventually the public school closed down.
John Arthur Shreve Alexander was born on the Six Nations Indian Reservation near Brantford, Ontario on April 3, 1918. His father, Arthur Harding Alexander, was teaching school there at the time. His grandfather, John Henry Alexander, had taught school at the King Street School in Amherstburg, Ontario during the late 1800's and early 1900's. His great grandfather, Thomas Alexander, was a fugitive slave who escaped from a plantation in Kentucky and settled in Anderdon Township near Amherstburg, Ontario in the 1840's.
John Arthur Shreve Alexander was in A Company of The Queen's Own Rifles, on the first Canadian ship to hit the beach of Normandy on D-Day. It is possible he was the first Canadian soldier on the beach for his first task was to blow up the barbed wire entanglement along the beach. He fought through France, Holland, England, Italy, and Germany. He was wounded several times and returned a highly decorated war veteran. His acts of bravery are documented historical fact housed in the War Memorial Archives in Toronto, Ontario. The following is his war story which appeared in McLeans magazine June 6, 1994:
Nervously Waiting at Home
The hedgerows and hills of Normandy are far removed from the gently rolling southwestern Ontario countryside where John and Jean Alexander lived in their cozy ranch house just outside North Buxton. But the memories of the events 50 years earlier, when John Alexander was a young rifleman fighting on French soil, are still vivid. The couple were married in Jean's hometown of Chatham, Ont. on Dec. 30, 1942, just eight months before Cpl. John Alexander left for England. Once there, the 24-year-old former railway porter was assigned to The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, then stationed in Aldershot, southwest of London. But that posting would have been news to his 18-year-old bride. "I wrote letters to him all the time, but he rarely wrote to me," Jean Alexander, 70, says now with a chuckle. And it would be a long time after June 6, 1944, before she knew what part he played in the invasion of Normandy. "It wasn't like today, where you hear about things almost as soon as they happen," she says. "News about D-Day trickled in. We heard bits on the radio, saw some newsreel footage at the cinema."
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John Arthur Shreve Alexander was in A Company of The Queen's Own Rifles, on the first Canadian ship to hit the beach of Normandy on D-Day. It is possible he was the first Canadian soldier on the beach for his first task was to blow up the barbed wire entanglement along the beach. He fought through France, Holland, England, Italy, and Germany. He was wounded several times and returned a highly decorated war veteran. His acts of bravery are documented historical fact housed in the War Memorial Archives in Toronto, Ontario. The following is his war story which appeared in McLeans magazine June 6, 1994:
Nervously Waiting at Home
The hedgerows and hills of Normandy are far removed from the gently rolling southwestern Ontario countryside where John and Jean Alexander lived in their cozy ranch house just outside North Buxton. But the memories of the events 50 years earlier, when John Alexander was a young rifleman fighting on French soil, are still vivid. The couple were married in Jean's hometown of Chatham, Ont. on Dec. 30, 1942, just eight months before Cpl. John Alexander left for England. Once there, the 24-year-old former railway porter was assigned to The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, then stationed in Aldershot, southwest of London. But that posting would have been news to his 18-year-old bride. "I wrote letters to him all the time, but he rarely wrote to me," Jean Alexander, 70, says now with a chuckle. And it would be a long time after June 6, 1944, before she knew what part he played in the invasion of Normandy. "It wasn't like today, where you hear about things almost as soon as they happen," she says. "News about D-Day trickled in. We heard bits on the radio, saw some newsreel footage at the cinema."
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