Beatrice J. Wilkins-nee West
BIO
I was born in one of the black communities, called Lake Loon, Cherry Brook in Halifax County, Nova Scotia, Canada, and was delivered , in the house where we lived by my grandmother who was a midwife in the community.
I am the 9th child and 5th girl born to my mother Lena West. I grew up in another black community in Halifax, Nova Scotia, namely Africville, Nova Scotia, which was demised by the city of Halifax displacing 80 families for a total of 400 people in the name of urban renewal.
I am a co-founding director of the Africville Genealogy Society (AGS) which was a former resident’s dream to bring the former members of Africville together every July to camp out on the property where we once lived.
My father’s mother, my grandmother was a mid-wife in the community of Lake Loon, Cherry Brook, who trained my mother in the practice of midwifery, and who in fact deliver her last child, who is 63 today. She birth the baby on her own, cut the umbilical cord, wrap the baby warmly, dressed herself and walked over 15 sets of train tracks, which were very close to the house, to get into a cop car, because ambulance nor fire trucks would come to Africville. She arrived just in time at the hospital to hand the nurse the baby before the placenta came.
This practice that I witnessed from my mother, at the age of 10, has given me the confidence that I to would take the chance in midwifery if the need arises.