[Ron] My great grandfather Henry Sneed
is buried here.
He died in 1914.
[Reporter] Ron Mapp has been to this spot many times growing up as a boy.
[Ron] My grandmother is buried here.
[Reporter] His family goes back six generations in Alberta.
It all started here in Amber Valley
over a 100 years ago.
And it wasn’t an easy journey.
My great grandfather Henry Sneed
led the original scouting party up here
along with two other scouts.
They liked the land
and they decided to bring up
other families from Oklahoma.
[Reporter] Amber Valley was the largest
and most prosperous Black settlement west of Ontario.
It had a school, a church, and a famous baseball team.
Ron now lives in Edmonton
and has two grown children and two grandchildren.
While they didn’t grow up in Amber Valley,
the Mapp family history is something Ron
has been passing along to his children for years.
I heard a lot of stories from my father and my uncle.
When I was young
I spent a lot of time in Amber Valley on the farm
sometimes weeks and months at a time.
[Reporter] While the Mapp family feels connected to its past in Alberta,
it was a painful lesson for Mapp’s great grandfather Henry Sneed
learning that Canada wasn’t as welcoming as he’d hoped.
[Ron] Growing up in U.S.A.,
in Texas and Oklahoma
going through Jim Crow
and seeing all the racial discrimination,
and to bring his family and other families up here
hoping that they wouldn't have to endure the same hardships.
[Reporter] Only four months after Henry Sneed settled in Alberta,
Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier signed an order-in-council
prohibiting Black migration for one year
suggesting that Black people were
“deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.”
Within a year of this order,
Black migration slowed almost to a halt across the country,
contributing to a racist
and isolating environment for Black Canadians
who had already made their way here.
When the Canadian government invited Americans,
they didn't think that African-Americans would answer the call,
and they did.
[Reporter] Karina Vernon has been studying the history
and impact of Black people on the prairies for decades.
They risked everything moving across the border
into a territory that they had no idea where they were coming.
They'd heard that there was greater freedom under the Canadian flag.
What they found was, of course, a mixture of freedom,
but also complications.
[Reporter] This year Canada Post
issued a stamp to honour Henry Sneed and Amber Valley.
The stamp depicts Sneed standing tall
along with other prominent community members of the time.
To take on such an endeavour
to bring the families from Oklahoma
up to Western Canada.
This is my grandfather.
[Reporter] Ron Mapp hopes his family’s story
and other Black families’ legacy on the Prairies
will be taught in schools across the country
to recognize their place in Canada.
For now though,
Ron and his family continue to celebrate their roots.
Amber Valley is home.
No matter where I go,
Amber Valley will always be home.
Omayra Issa, CBC News, Amber Valley.