African Nova Scotians: 20th Century Canadian Legacies

My dad was a… he stood up for his children, but he also stood up for his race. We lived in an apartment that had stairs to go up. And every Saturday the iceman… we had an icebox, no refrigerator.

The ice would come every Saturday, big blocks of ice. He had these big tongs, and he would come up the steps: ‘Good morning, everybody ready for the ice?’

Saturday morning, my mom was ready for the ice. She’d cleaned the icebox out. And she had the paper showing what was on sale at the grocery store, which was only a block away.

My brother was waiting to help Mom carry the groceries home. We were sitting at the kitchen table waiting, and the icebox was wide open, waiting.

So dad was there reading his paper. My mom said: ‘He’s a little late today, later than usual.’

My father usually wasn’t home on Saturday mornings, but this time he was. ‘What do you mean, usually he’s not this late? You mean he comes here late?’

‘Well sometimes, my mother said, sometimes. But I want to get the meat in the icebox, I want to get my groceries in.’

So as he comes in, the iceman says: ‘Hello everybody.’ And he comes up with the ice. He’s half way up.

My father goes to the door, opens the door and says: ‘Take that ice and go back, and put it on your wagon and don’t ever come back here again.’

‘But Mr. Davis, you need ice. You need the ice. What’s your wife… she needs it.’

‘Don’t you worry about my wife. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this situation. You come here on Saturday, Saturday afternoon, two or three o’clock. And who gets a full, full size of ice? All the white people, all the white people in the different districts. But the coloured people in our community in the North end, we get your dribbling, your little pitiful piece of ice. Take that pitiful piece of ice and don’t come back here again.’

So the man runs out, and my mother said: ‘Well Jim, here we are, icebox open, no ice. What are we supposed to do?’

He said: ‘Don’t you worry Gwen, we’ll fix it.’ Off he goes, put’s his jacket on and off he goes, down the street to Gloobies Complete Furniture Store.

And he went in there and he put a couple of dollars down. It’s one of those ones you pay forever. Five minutes after he got home, the refrigerator was delivered. And I never had to empty a pan of water under an icebox again. We didn’t get anymore, but other people had said that they were getting their ice earlier, and it was bigger. So he did make a difference.