Any Known Blood

by Lawrence Hill

  “Part of my job as a novelist is to write the colour— and by that I mean human drama and struggle—back into history.”

  Oakville, Ontario, was in fact a relatively minor player in the Underground Railroad. What made you choose it as one of your backdrops?

  I’m a bit of a nut for museums and local histories, and I am always curious to see how people examine and represent the past in their own backyards. When I moved to Oakville in 1990, I found that the Oakville museum had a black history exhibit, with information about a local schooner captain named Robert Wilson who had ferried fugitive slaves across Lake Ontario in the 1850s. The idea caught my imagination immediately. I found a black resident named Alvin Duncan, who was already an old man. He was born in Oakville, and so were his parents, and his grandparents had arrived there as fugitive slaves.

  Alvin was a gold mine of information. For decades, he had collected newspaper clippings and photographs about the history of blacks in Oakville. He had great stories to tell, such as being turned away from an air force recruiting station during the Second World War because a medical examination had ostensibly revealed that his heart was located on the wrong side of his chest. Alvin was the first to tell me about the Ku Klux Klan coming to Oakville to try to protest the pending marriage between a black man and a white woman. My conversations with Alvin influenced the shape of Any Known Blood and inspired the creation of the character Aberdeen Williams.

  How did your parents’ active involvement in Canada’s human rights movement influence your novel?

  Like Dorothy Perkins in Any Known Blood, my mother worked for the Toronto Labour Committee for Human Rights and conducted tests to prove that employers, landlords and restaurant owners were discriminating against black people. While my mother was in the community gathering proof that discrimination existed, my father was working on his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. He subsequently became the first director, and later the chairperson, of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Both of my parents wrote books about the history of blacks in Canada, and their other significant contribution was to co-found, with some friends, the Ontario Black History Society in 1978. Aspects of their early life in Toronto—such as the barriers they encountered renting apartments because they were a mixed-race couple—transformed into fictionalized scenes in the novel.

  How have your experiences working in Africa affected you and your writing?

  “Aspects of [my parents’] early life in Toronto … transformed into fictionalized scenes in the novel.”

  I have travelled five times to Africa, three times as a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International. In the 1970s and 1980s, I spent about two months each in Niger, Cameroon and Mali. These trips changed my life completely and opened up a creative vein that I have mined ever since. My first published short story, called “My Side of the Fence,” was set in Niger. Every one of my three novels to date has had scenes set in West Africa. My latest novel, The Book of Negroes, begins in Africa—in the country now known as Mali— in the mid-1700s, and it returns to Africa as the story unfolds. Almost all of my work touches in some way on fundamental and universal questions of identity and belonging. And all of these questions take me back, in one way or another, to Africa.

  “Almost all of my work touches in some way on fundamental and universal questions of identity and belonging.”

  Do you feel that your work and that of other black writers has made a difference to Canadians’ awareness of black history?

  It is human history that interests me, and understanding it—including the things that black people have done and the ways that they have been treated. It reflects back on all of us. It is important for writers to explore history through their works and important for all of us to understand how our leaders have behaved toward our citizens—Japanese Canadians, Black Canadians and others who have faced discrimination—and to see the ways in which racism has limited and diminished our country.

  With your interest in the past, have you been inspired by any particular historic figure?

  I suppose that Muhammad Ali was the first public figure to influence how I saw myself and how I saw the world. As a person and a writer, I like to imagine that I am standing on the shoulders of all the people who have gone before me on this earth. I try to leave behind the worst of their thoughts and actions and to be inspired by the best. Ali inspired me because he rose above his profession to state—with his own beautiful language—why he would not fight in Vietnam. Long before it was remotely popular to do so, he galvanized and inspired the anti-war movement in the United States. Muhammad Ali became my first hero. If I can accomplish with my writing a tiny fraction of the things Ali did to make this world a better place, I will be proud of my work.

  “Muhammad Ali became my first hero. If I can accomplish with my writing a tiny fraction of the things Ali did to make this world a better place, I will be proud of my work.”

  Read on

  An Excerpt from Some Great Thing

  “On that windless January night, Ben Grafton didn’t enter the delivery room. He didn’t consider it.”

  HIS SON WAS BORN in 1957 at the Misericordia Hospital in Winnipeg, before men had to start watching their wives give birth. Asked about it years later, Ben Grafton replied, “What’s a man to do in a place like that, except grow all bug-eyed and wobbly and make a shining fool of himself?”

  On that windless January night, Ben Grafton didn’t enter the delivery room. He didn’t consider it. He waited until Louise was “finished,” poked his head in the door and shouted “atta way Lulu!” Wearing a blue woollen cap that stopped short of his huge brown ears, he followed two nurses who took the infant to the nursery. Ben Grafton was not invited. Nor was he self-conscious. He was a forty-three-year-old railroad porter who had coped with all sorts of nonsense in the past and had long stopped wondering what people thought of his being this or that. They turned to tell him he couldn’t stay in the nursery. He said he wanted to look at his little man.

  “So cute, this little baby,” one nurse cooed, turning the brown face toward Ben.

  Ben touched a tiny cheek. He didn’t understand all this hospital nonsense. Why couldn’t the nurses just leave the boy with his mother? Or with him? But he wasn’t going to raise a ruckus. He was going to take it calm and easy. But then something happened. The nurse crossed the baby. With her thumb. She actually touched his forehead and made a sign of the cross. Then she started mumbling a prayer. “Hey,” Ben said. The nurse continued.

  “No praying.” Gently, but firmly, Ben poked the woman in the ribs.

  She turned on him, eyebrows raised. “Please,” she hissed. “No praying,” Ben repeated.

  The woman’s jaw dropped. The nurse beside her stared at Ben.

  “That’s right,” Ben said, eyeballing both of them. “This little man is a Grafton. And Graftons don’t go in for devils and angels and heaven and hell. This little man will believe in humanity. Humanity and activism. You can leave him here till his mother wakes up but I don’t want any more of those rituals. Is that clear?”

  The praying nurse nodded, the other one blinked. Neither spoke. They lay the baby in his bassinet. Ben backed out of the nursery but watched through the window. He stayed there for an hour or so. He had some thinking to do. Thinking about a name. A good one. This child was destined for great things. No ordinary name would do.

  “This little man will believe in humanity. Humanity and activism.”

  From Lawrence Hill’s Essay “Is Africa’s Pain Black America’s Burden?”

  “We have enough stereotypes to combat as it is,’ May muttered.”

  IN THE 1970s, as a teenager, I took a solo trip from my home in Toronto to visit family in Washington, DC, and foolishly asked my grandmother, May Edwards Hill, what she thought of the black operatic characters Porgy and Bess. May, born in 1896 and raised in a prosperous family that fitted proudly into the ranks of what was then called “the talented tenth”—America’s elite, university-educated blacks�
�tore a strip off me for even mentioning the characters popularized in the 1935 folk opera by George Gershwin, a white composer. The disabled Porgy, who wheeled himself about on a cart, and Bess, an unfaithful lover, were lowbrow Southern blacks who, despite poverty and suffering, loved each other and lived with gusto and passion. Even as fictional characters, they nauseated my grandmother.

  “We have enough stereotypes to combat as it is,” May muttered, “and they just bring shame down on all Negroes with their cavorting around and their immorality.” Her complaint reflected one of the most troubling paradoxes about black identity in North America. For four hundred years, we’ve been seen to be less than human. And so, to compensate, we must be more civilized than the civilized. We place unreasonable expectations on ourselves, such is our desire to succeed in the world and to be accepted as equal by those who dragged us across the Atlantic Ocean.

  By the age of ten, I was well versed in black history and entranced by accounts of how my white, civil-rights-activist mother and black, graduate-student father formed a union against all odds, married in the American South in 1953 and decamped that very week to spend the rest of their active lives fighting for human rights in Canada. Dad’s own father and grandfather had combined their work as ministers in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, disseminating the social gospel in the black communities they served. Stories had filtered down through the generations about my great-great-grandfather purchasing freedom for his wife, his children and himself in Maryland in 1860. “How did he get the money?” We speculated about it at the kitchen table. “Probably stole it,” came one response, with a cackle. But when the laughter subsided, we were quietly warned: “If you don’t fight racism, you become part of the problem.”

  Stories abounded in my family about W.E.B. Du Bois, whose essay collection The Souls of Black Folk stands out as one of the seminal works of African-American literature of the twentieth century. Du Bois, who was born in 1868 and lived to the age of 95, became the first black to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895 and went on to become one of the architects of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

  In 1900, Du Bois coined a phrase that spread like a grass fire and became a mantra among observers of race relations in America: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” And in September 1903, Du Bois published “The Talented Tenth,” one of his most famous essays. In it, he argued that only the elite of the African-American population could pull the rest of the black population up by its bootstraps and that education would save the black people of America.

  “If you don’t fight racism, you become part of the problem.”

  “For people like me, being black and having access to a good education carried certain obligations.”

  For people like me, being black and having access to a good education carried certain obligations. It wasn’t good enough to get A’s in school—you also had to ball up your fists and charge into battle if anybody used the word “nigger.” In the workplace, it wasn’t good enough to merely succeed professionally. You had to change the world, too.

  So what happened to this forward-looking, educated, socially engaged, black middle class? They were a powerful force for social change, leaders and supporters of civil rights movements, eloquent speakers and writers for the plight of North American blacks, and for Africa itself. Africa needs them now, but are they interested in Africa?

  This essay, in its totality, first appeared in the February 2005 issue of The Walrus.

  Further Reading

  Bound for Canaan: The Triumph of the Underground Railroad, by Fergus M. Borde-wich: This is an excellent account of the people who fled along the Underground Railroad and the “conductors” who risked their lives, as well as those of their families, to help them.

  Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks: This novel is about John Brown, his raid on Harpers Ferry and his tortured family relationships.

  The Freedom-Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada, by Daniel G. Hill: Written by my late father, The Freedom-Seekers contains stories and background on the history of black people in this country.

  Kipligat’s Chance, by David N. Odhiambo: Set in modern-day Vancouver, this gritty, engaging novel from a promising young African-Canadian writer is about an immigrant from Kenya who must deal with the ghosts of his past and struggle to overcome poverty and self-abuse.

  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass: This is a classic memoir about a man who fled slavery and became a powerful and respected advocate for freedom.

  The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, collated by Benjamin Drew: First published in 1856, this book is a compilation of interviews that the American abolitionist Drew conducted with black men and women who slipped across the border into Canada to escape slavery.

  Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston: This novel celebrates a free-spirited black woman who takes up with another man without bothering to divorce her husband. First published in 1937, this novel later came under fire from Richard Wright—the most famous Black American writer of his day—for offering “no theme, no message, no thought.” How wrong he was.

  Underground to Canada, by Barbara Smucker: I especially like this wonderful, short novel for young readers because the fugitives in the tale are clever, independent children.

  Web Detective

  www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad

  This interactive site allows you to take on the role of a Maryland slave in the 1850s, following the Underground Railroad to freedom.

  www.oakvilletrails.com

  On the home page, click “Information Stations,” then select “Early Village” for links to an essay (“The Underground Railroad”) and a photo panel.

  www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html

  This is a companion site to the PBS series Africans in America and chronicles the history of racial slavery in the United States.

  www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/on-line-exhibits/index-black-history.aspx

  Explore black history in Ontario through this excellent site.

  www.buxtonmuseum.com

  This site celebrates the Underground Railroad and early black settlement in Canada.

  www.olivetreegenealogy.com/can/ont/fugitives.shtml

  Read fourteen real-life accounts of black fugitives in Ontario from an 1856 book compiled by Benjamin Drew.

  To receive updates on author events and new books by Lawrence Hill, sign up today at

  www.authortracker.ca.

  Acknowledgments

  MY FAMILY HISTORY inspired much of this novel. I couldn’t have written it without help from my mother and father, Donna and Daniel Hill. When I began to research this novel, my father gave me more than twenty interviews — which I taped — about his and his ancestors’ lives. Throughout the writing, my parents, my aunts Doris Cochran and Jeanne Flateau, and other relatives provided information about the black American side of our family.

  I hasten to emphasize that this novel is a novel. Family stories have been altered or exaggerated, and almost all of this book is invented.

  Many people, organizations, and books helped nudge this long project forward, and I am pleased to acknowledge and thank them.

  The Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council provided financial assistance.

  Francine Landry and Terry Smith introduced me to the history of Oakville, and turned over the keys to their cottage in Haliburton, where I finished the book. Alvin Duncan spent many hours with me, giving interviews about the history of his family and of other blacks in Oakville. The Ontario Black History Society paid for a transcription of Mr. Duncan’s interviews, and provided much support and encouragement.

  Members of the Oakville Historical Society led me on a walking tour of historic Oakville, answered questions about the town’s history, and opened up their library to me.

  I consulted various books and documents about the history of Oakville, the mos
t important being Oakville and the Sixteen by Hazel Mathews and Oakville: A Small Town by Frances Robin Ahern. At the Oakville Museum, I learned that Captain Robert Wilson had helped American fugitive slaves by hiding them in his schooner and sailing with them across Lake Ontario to Oakville.

  Employees at the Maryland Historical Society suggested books and articles about the history of Baltimore and Maryland. Most helpful were Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century by Barbara Jeanne Fields; Black Marylanders, 1864–1868, an unpublished University of Chicago doctoral thesis by Richard Paul Fuke; The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History, edited by Elizabeth Fee, Linda Shopes, and Linda Zeidman; and Baltimore: The Nineteenth Century Black Capital by Leroy Graham.

  As for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now Harpers Ferry, West Virginia), I relied on the following books: To Purge This Land With Blood by Stephen B. Oates; John Brown’s Raid by the Office of Publications, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior; John Brown of Harper’s Ferry by John Anthony Scott and Robert Alan Scott; John Brown by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois; and, most important of all, A Voice From Harper’s Ferry by Osborne P. Anderson, a Pennsylvania-born black Canadian who took part in the raid and managed to escape.

  I also wish to acknowledge The Black Discovery of America by Michael Bradley for its lively and detailed thesis. I sought information about the Underground Railroad from my father, from his book The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada, and from Benjamin Drew’s 1865 classic The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Details about rats were drawn from The Rat: A World Menace by A. Moore Hogarth.

  The letters and photographs on the cover come from the Daniel G. Hill Collection of family documents in the Archives of Ontario. Employees at the archives helped me sift through and obtain copies of family letters and photographs, and kindly authorized their reproduction on the cover.