Pearleen Oliver

Oliver was born into a Church of England-following family as Althea "Pearleen" Borden[2] at Cook's Cove near Chedabucto Bay in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia in 1917.[3] Her great-grandfather was an African slave, her great-grandmother was Dutch and her family was the only Black family in her community. Their daughter, Oliver's grandmother, was Catherine Jewell, who married a man from Newfoundland.[4] Oliver lived in Cook's Cove with her nine[5] brothers and sisters and her mother for her first two years, before moving to New Glasgow to live with her father Joseph Borden (sometimes written Bowden), who worked as a miner in Allen Mines. Her father was killed by a mining accident when she was three or four years old. her mother remarried to a potter who worked at L.E. Shaw's Clay Works in New Glasgow.[4]

Oliver attended New Glasgow High School and was the first Black graduate in 1936.[4][5] She aspired to work in nursing, but was Black students were prohibited from studying nursing in Nova Scotia at the time.[2]

Oliver was a historian, writer, and an educator[6] who founded the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.[3] Oliver co-led Halifax’s Cornwallis Street African Baptist Church, Nova Scotia’s premier late 19th and mid 20th century Black church[7][8] and hub for many lower socioeconomic status neighborhoods.[9] The church was a cultural hub and social hub for the Black community.[10] As a leader in the Black community Oliver campaigned against racial segregation in schools.[6]

Oliver expanded the African United Baptist Association in 1953 to include a Women’s Institute for Black women to gather annually and discuss racialized socioeconomic problems and their solutions.[9] These women-run church clubs also raised money, through social functions like bake sales, to combat localized social inequities.[11] She campaigned to get the book Little Black Sambo replaced from the reading list at her son's school.[3]

After repeatedly denouncing Canada’s exclusion of Black women from nursing,[12] Halifax’s Children’s Hospital had Oliver select two Black applicants for admittance and training.[13] Oliver selected Gwenyth Barton and Ruth Bailey, who had been rejected from multiple hospitals due to their race despite their educational qualifications.[13] Oliver personally informed them of their admittance and invited Bailey, a Torontonian,[14] to stay with her family until Oliver arranged Bailey’s permanent room with another family of the Cornwallis Street Church.[13] Oliver’s church network, public speaking, and written correspondence[15] helped Barton and Bailey become the first Black students to attend and graduate nursing school in Canada in 1948.[15]

Oliver received an honorary doctorate degree in Doctor of Humane Letters from Saint Mary's University (Halifax) in 1990.[16][17]

• A Brief History of the Colored Baptists of Nova Scotia, 1782–1953, Published by the African United Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, in Halifax, 1953[6][18][19]

Husband William Pearly Oliver in 1934

Oliver and married William Pearly Oliver just before she graduated from high school in 1936.[4] They had five sons[2] William Jr., Leslie, Jules, Steven and Philip.[3]

Her brother Hector Borden was the father of the actor Walter Borden.[4]

Oliver died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 24 July 2008, aged 91.[20] Her life was documented in Ronald Caplan's 2020 book Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights (Cape Breton Books, ISBN 9781926908816.)[3]

• Black Nova Scotians

• "The Dinner Church": Cornwallis Street and its Social Outreach Programs post-Pearleen Oliver
• Black Mother Black Daughter Film
• Pearleen Oliver interviews at the Nova Scotia Archives