The sleeping car porters’ company was very prejudiced. The porters had to get off the train before it came into the station, sometimes 10 to 15 miles and they had to walk. You couldn’t go into a restaurant. You couldn’t go in the bathroom, you had to go in the back. They had black bathrooms, period.
When Edwin Theophilus Phillips was born on 11 March 1888, in Saint John, Barbados, his father, Robert James Phillips, was 21 and his mother, Elizabeth Anne Catherine Critchlow, was 25. He married Rachel Clotilda Weekes on 24 December 1914, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He died on 5 November 1951, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at the age of 63.
Rachel Clotilda Weekes was born on 1 April 1890, in Mahaica, Demerara, Guyana. Her father, James Weekes, was 61 and her mother, Matilda Hinds, was 57. She married Edwin Theophilus Phillips and they were the parents of 6 sons and 3 daughters. She died on 11 December 1994, in Montreal at the age of 104.
Edwin Phillips immigrated from Barbados, his wife from British Guyana, and they married in Montreal. Edwin Phillips arrived in Halifax as a first class shoemaker but couldn’t get any work except in the coal mines. Rachel’s father had been a contractor in Guyana and she immigrated to better herself, working for a rich family as a maid.. When she got to Halifax the family disappeared, so she was on her own. She found where the Blacks lived but didn’t like Halifax; in Africville Blacks had a tough time. Those with a little education worked on the train and settled in Montreal. Edwin started his own business as a shoemaker and worked for Agnew Surpass (Peel and St. Catherine) for forty-seven years.
I lived in the plateau and we were the only Blacks around there. Most of the Blacks lived around here (Little Burgundy/St Henri area). We lived far away because my father was supposed to be high society. He didn’t want to live downtown; he wanted to live away, so the kids would have opportunity.
You went to church Sundays then you had the Negro Community Centre to meet people. I took piano lessons here along with Oscar Peterson. My mother learned how to play the piano and organ by herself.
At that time you had to pay for whatever furniture was left behind in an apartment you rented. In 1950 I had to pay for a stove, an old couch, an old bed, an old table and chairs-- 600$. There were nine of us- six brothers and three girls. Three in the single bed ; two in the front and one at the bottom. And in that same room there was a single bed with two. If you had a guest, you had a folding bed for them.
Barbados is “Little England,” my father used to say. “Speak the king’s English!” We had to sit beside him and do homework, and to read and if we read it wrong we had to read it until we got it right. We had to sit straight in the chair, eat with your right fork, and chew with your mouth closed. Neighbours saw us as high class. They thought we had a butler. I said “I am the butler.” All our family dressed well. Fathers in those days didn’t have a relationship with their children. They were so busy struggling to work. My father walked with a cane and a derby hat to work. If you saw him going to work you would swear he was an accountant but he was going to work as a shoemaker- a proud shoemaker. We had a lookout fella down the street when we were out skating, and running around. When my father came, you could not play past where he could see you.
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