DEKYAS NEWS World Breaking News and Trusted Source
Related Articles
Halifax is honoring a doctor who dedicated his life to helping people with limited access to medical care, while fighting racial injustice, by naming a street after him.
Dr. Alfred Waddell Street will be part of the new Cogswell District, the area where he worked, lived and volunteered in the 1930s until his death in 1953..
“It’s wonderful,” said Dr. Ron Milne, Waddell’s grandson. “I think it’s about time the city and the county recognize him for all the work he’s done in civil rights and advocacy, but also in medicine.”
Milne’s mother and Waddell’s daughter, Winifred Milne, now 98, is also pleased with the news, he said.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1896, Waddell moved to Halifax to study at Dalhousie University, where he became one of the first black physicians to graduate in 1933.
A tribute to a hero
The street that bears his name will branch off Brunswick Street, where Proctor Street is now. It is a few blocks from where Waddell set up his first practice at what is now the Black Educators Association.
“I think this is a fitting way to honor him,” said Ron Milne, 73. “He made a huge difference. He’s an unsung hero.”
Milne, who was 3 years old when his grandfather died, said Waddell was one of the few doctors in his day who made house calls in historically black communities such as the Prestons, Africville and Beechville.
During the polio outbreak in the 1930s, he also helped immunize people in those communities, all in vehicles he had to borrow to get there.
“They didn’t have a car in the beginning because they were poor and couldn’t pay people for services. They paid him with chickens and eggs,” Milne said.
Waddell is perhaps best known for treating Viola Desmond for her injuries after she was arrested when she refused to leave a whites-only section of a New Glasgow, NS, theater in 1946.
“He was very upset about what had happened to her,” Milne said. “He helped her by writing several letters to the provincial government and the federal government, trying to get her conviction overturned.”
Waddell also played a major role in desegregating the swimming pool on Halifax Common after one of In the 1930s his son was asked to leave.
In addition to his work as a physician, Waddell wrote articles for the Clarion and the Negro Citizen, two black newspapers he helped establish and finance.
Waddell ‘was ahead of his time’
Waddell was in the running to replace Cornwallis Street in Halifax before Nora Bernard was elected.
Proctor Street is a block away, in a former residential neighborhood where many black families lived until their homes were demolished to make way for the Cogswell Interchange.
“By naming a street after Dr. Waddell, we hope to highlight the history, cultural significance and contributions of the Afro-Nova Scotian community in this neighbourhood,” the Halifax Regional Municipality said in a statement.
Waddell’s achievements were highlighted in the 2001 documentary film Before his time.
“He was way ahead of his time in terms of his social activities, his involvement with people and his contribution,” said Lalita Krishna, the film’s writer and director.
The film shows a photo of his classmates from his senior year at Dalhousie, where Waddell faced rejection for an internship because of his race.
“But his classmates stood up for him and protested. They said that they would not do their assistantships either if he was not allowed to graduate,” Krishna said.
Milne continues his grandfather’s legacy as a physician, serving on the team that provides culturally specific health care to Black men with the Nova Scotia Brotherhood Initiative.
It is part of his efforts to continue Waddell’s advocacy.
“There are still inequalities, disparities in income and health care and housing, so many areas of life,” Milne said. “So it’s still a struggle that’s going on.”
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project that Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
