NANAIMO REGION
Spring saw an uptick in visitors to Nanaimo The city’s tourism industry showed positive results in April, despite a drop in hotel occupancy rates. A3
NATION & WORLD
All tied up
Harper urges leaders to ratify EU free trade
Cleveland Cavaliers take ke Game 2 of the NBA finals als in a 95-93 overtime win n
Canadian prime minister used Sunday’s G7 summit opening to push the comprehensive agreement. A7
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The newspaper of record for Nanaimo and region since 1874 || Monday, June 8, 2015
Black History Archives manager Christine Meutzner has been on a mission to learn more about African-Canadians who lived in the region a century ago
EDUCATION
Fewer students writing FSA tests ROBERT BARRON DAILY NEWS
FRIDAY, JUNE 5
Christine Meutzner, manager at Nanaimo Community Archives, searches for information. [AARON HINKS/DAILY NEWS]
Heritage studies fill in where documents lack
I
t has always bothered Nanaimo Community Archives manager Christine Meutzner that more is not known about the early black settlers in Nanaimo. Spurred on by the Wellington Action Committee’s latest push to get a sign up to commemorate the black community members who lived there in the early 1900s, Meutzner began to revisit the issue. Very little existed by way of solid fact or evidence, so Meutzner worked with the heritage planner on how they should approach the issue. “We decided to talk about Wellington as a community, not just about coal mining, because all the signs just sort of talk about the minutiae of coal mining. Talk about how many houses were there, what kind of services, what was the population like, how many children? Stuff
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like that. And from there we will publicly present the new decided we should really invesinformation she has uncovered tigate the black community, and at the Nanaimo Archives’ annual stop just saying ‘a few,’ general meeting. or ‘maybe,’ ‘alleged,’ we The search began should actually look at when Meutzner uncovit. So that’s where my ered a census registry motivation came from from 1901 that had been initially.” posted online, in which There wasn’t much there was an option to go on, other than a to choose race in the few well-known historsearch field. ical characters such as “So when they pubthe Stark family and lished the 1901 census baseball player Jimmy online, one of the catJulie Claxton. egories you could pick Chadwick However, “only having was ‘race,’ and they Reporting one person to spring had black, yellow or off of, (Louis Stark, in red,” said Meutzner. Extension), led me to “So I pushed ‘black’ believe there must have and I pushed ‘Vancouver been a larger community, even Island’ and when I did that I got if it was just a couple families, it a couple hundred black people. had to have been more than just When I went through it all, I the one,” said Meutzner. determined that over 50 of them This hunch proved to be corwere living in Extension. It’s not rect, and pn June 10, Meutzner half like I thought, but it is a sig-
nificant number, and it seems to be a community that was quite distinct from the first wave of black people who came here in the 1860s.” From there Meutzner took their names and began to track the families and their place of origin, which was primarily the Eastern U.S. Some stories proved to be intriguing, said Meutzner. For example though much has been said about the Jimmy Claxton, who spent most of his life outside the Nanaimo area, the lives of his parents William Edgar Claxton and Emma Richards were likely even more interesting. A mixed-race union, their marriage certificate from 1892 states plainly that “the bridegroom is a coloured man, his bride a white woman.” See HISTORY, Page A5
Motocross nationals take over Wastelands
Jr. Timbermen inch toward a playoff spot
The 2015 Canadian Motocross Rockstar Energy Drink Nationals took place at The Wastelands race track in Nanaimo over the weekend, bringing in some top riders. » Pictorial, A5
The Nanaimo Junior A Timbermen upset the New Westminster Salmonbellies at home on Saturday before playing the Langley Thunder to a 10-10 tie on Sunday. » Sports, B2
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The number of students taking the controversial foundation skills assessment tests in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district is dropping. A new report indicates that 716 of the of the 952 eligible students in Grade 4 took the FSA exams this year, a drop of 14 per cent from last year. A total of 647 of the 920 eligible Grade 7 students wrote the tests this year, a drop of 17 per cent from last year. The FSAs are given annually to Grade 4 and Grade 7 students in B.C. to test their proficiency in math, reading and writing skills. B.C.’s teachers have been campaigning to boycott FSA testing for years, claiming that the mandatory tests intrude on teaching time, are of little benefit and are unfairly used by the Fraser Institute to rank schools. In January, the local school board sent a letter to parents in the district that presented unbiased information, both for and against, on the FSA tests. The letter also included checkboxes to opt out of the exams, which are required by law, and directed staff to honour parents requests to not have their children write them, without further contact from the school district. Mike Ball, president of the Nanaimo District Teachers’ Association, said the letter likely played a big part in the drop in participation this year. “There are better ways to spend time in school and we’re hoping this will be the last year that FSAs will take place in the province’s schools,” he said. “The government is looking at a number of different assessments to replace them, but nothing has been pinned down yet.” An official in the Ministry of Education confirmed that the government is considering other options, but said “nothing is set in stone yet.”
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