'The last one': 85-year-old African American still living in rural Alta. where family settled 7 decades ago

Black pioneers: Man shares story about Breton Alison MacKinnon spoke to one man who remembers what it was like to settle as a Black man in the Breton area during the 1940’s.

Around 1911, five towns in Alberta were the destinations for African American settlers, primarily from Oklahoma.

Many of the settlers came to Canada with hopes that racial segregation and discrimination wouldn’t follow them.

“The government wanted to shut them down. They didn't want anymore of them people up here,” Vant Hayes says he remembers hearing from others.

Hayes, now 85, was a part of one of those families who settled in what was then called Keystone. Today, that area is known as Breton, Alta., a small town about an hour south of Edmonton.

The area promised as a reprieve wasn’t free from racism; Hayes can recall multiple incidents over the years.

“One guy, you know, he figured he was smart. ‘How did a man like you ever get up that high?’ I said I had to work twice as hard as anybody else to get where I'm at,” Hayes told CTV News Edmonton.

With the passage of time, many of those experiences changed as the town grew and residents became more accepting.

“It was like any other town... Most of the people (were kind) but there were some that were prejudiced,” Hayes said.

Every February, the Breton Museum honours those families who settled in the area by telling their history and hardships.

“It’s a story about migration and the challenges that they found here,” Allan Goodard, the manager and curator of the Breton Museum said.

“I liken it back to when the Syrian refugees were coming into Canada and the resistance that they were meeting from the general population to some degree. There’s common threads 100 years apart.”

Through its research, the museum has found the settlers were instrumental in developing a church, school and a cemetery in the area.

“We have contact with some of the descendants of some of the families and they may be in Edmonton. Other ones we’ve lost all contact with,” Goodard said.

Hayes' family have all moved out of the area or passed away.

"I'm the last one," he says, referring not only to his family but of all the African American settlers who landed in the area.

“You'd see a lot of coloured people but no more. I'm the only one and sometimes they'll ask, ‘Don't you feel lonesome?’ and I say no.”

Hayes carries on the legacy of his family and the other settlers of Breton; he still cares for his cattle and lives with his wife on their farm 15 miles north of the town.