During the American Revolution (1775–1783), the British government offered freedom to slaves who would desert their rebel masters as a way of ruining the American economy. Many Black men and women escaped to the British fleet patrolling the East Coast, or to the British armies invading the colonies from Maine to Georgia.

After the final surrender of the British to the Americans, New York City was evacuated by the British Army throughout the summer and fall of 1783. Carried away with them were a vast number of White Loyalists and their families, and over 3,000 Black Loyalists: free, indentured, apprenticed, or still enslaved. More than 2,700 Blacks came to Nova Scotia with the fleet from New York City.

Black Loyalists is an attempt to present hard data about the lives of Nova Scotia Black Loyalists before they escaped slavery in early South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and after they settled in Nova Scotia—to bring back into our awareness the context for some very brave and enterprising men and women who survived the chaos of the American Revolution, people who found a way to pass through the heart, ironically, of a War for Liberty, to liberty and human dignity.

Ruth Holmes Whitehead is a renowned Mi'kmaq historian and ethnologist. She has worked with the Nova Scotia Museum for over forty years, first as assistant curator in history, and now as a research associate. She is the author of several books, including Six Mi'kmaq Stories, and The Old Man Told Us. She lives in Halifax.

On June 6, 1813, a quiet Sunday morning in Halifax erupted into pandemonium as HMS Shannon arrived triumphantly with the captured USS Chesapeake after the bloodiest but most celebrated sea battle of the War of 1812.  

Join historian Dr. Keith Mercer for an illustrated talk exactly 200 years later about the cultural impact of this battle and how it became a landmark in Nova Scotian and early Canadian nationalism.

After the talk the audience will be invited to see the brand new diorama built by museum volunteer Mike Oddy showing the Halifax waterfront as it looked that day in 1813 when the two battle-scarred ships arrived.

Nick Newbery spent 30 years living and teaching in several small Inuit communities in Nunavut, with much of his work being with at-risk aboriginal youth. During that time he photographed as much of Inuit life as possible, travelling broadly in the territory. His published work includes poetry, media articles, posters, calendars, postcards, a film, many teacher resource manuals and three coffee table books. He was present at many historic northern events and was the government photographer at the Creation of Nunavut in 1999. He now teaches northern studies courses at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax and runs a Nunavut teacher practicum program which allows some of his students to do part of their teaching practice in a Nunavut school as an orientation prior to applying on a job North of 60. He is currently working on a plan to bequeath a set of his entire photo collection to the Government of Nunavut. He returns to the North on a regular basis.

His presentation at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic will serve as an introduction to Canada's newest territory in the Eastern Arctic. He will provide a brief geographic and historical overview, will tell stories, present a slide show and will make the session a fun, hands-on experience by introducing his audience to some unique northern artifacts, to Inuit games and music and will field questions.

It is hoped that his personalized account of living in the Arctic will provide visitors with a taste for the Canadian North and a sense of what its northern people are facing at a time of enormous rapid change.