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Virtual experience looks at history of Black community in Hamilton

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In a virtual event, the Hamilton Black History Council took viewers on ‘A Walk Through Time’ from the 1600’s to present-day Hamilton on Tuesday.

The presentation highlighted the rich and vibrant history of the Black community in Hamilton. It features the stories ingrained in the foundation of the city as it became one of the prime destinations for the Underground Railroad.

Tuesday marked the launch of the Black History Database with the website debuting on February 21st.

Evelyn Myrie from EMpower Strategy Group says the project will help educate the public. “There has been a long-standing myth that Black people are recent immigrants to Canada. So this particular body of work serves to really debunk that myth,” she said.

Terri Bedminster, Hamilton Black History Council board member, says the database will continue to evolve with the contributions of others.

“Folks will be able to submit their own, I would say like a suggestion for inclusion in the directory and that will be vetted by a team,” said Bedminster.

Aaron Parry, a 22-year old McMaster graduate was tasked with creating the website. He says finding content to include in the site wasn’t easy.

“A lot of different resources for Hamilton history but it’s usually not our stories. Like 90% of the time it’s narrative that’s not reflecting the stories of our black communities,” said Parry.

Parry did extensive research to source stories so they could be included in the database.

“A lot of the content that we had from Adrian Chad’s book “The Journey from Tollgate to Parkway” and essentially I would just take keywords, names, events, all of that, and search it hundreds of different times in different orders until I found resources list,” said Parry. “Then, I from there built the website and added all of the links and all the information on the keywords.”

Myrie says once the website is live she hopes it will expand people’s idea of Black people’s place in our country’s history.

“We sometimes believe everything begins with our generation and this really reminds us about the work, the struggle and the triumphs of our ancestors. And that we’re standing on the shoulders of those who came before us from the 1600s to present,” she added.