Considering the lengthy history of Black people in the province, it’s no surprise that Black Nova Scotians were also part of this long-standing tradition. Yet their stories were not told and quilts were not shared.

In 1998, “In This Place” by David Woods became the first exhibit in Nova Scotia to feature quilting as Black Art in 1998, and now he has more quilt designs currently showing at an exhibit at the Textile Museum in Toronto called The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilting.

Though David Woods himself is not a quilter, he is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, the founder of the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia and has become a quilt designer. Woods, originally from the Caribbean, moved to Nova Scotia and was quickly adopted into the family of quilter Rosella “Mamay” Fraser. For 40 years, Woods watched Mamay Fraser quilt on evenings and weekends. 

Back in 1998, Woods was going around different communities in the province curating different paintings, carvings and sculptures for an art exhibit. When he got to North Preston, he asked a woman if she knew of any painters in her community. She replied by asking if he had considered any quilters because that’s what she did as her form of art. Woods says that speaking to her changed the course of his exhibit. “That one comment, in a sense, triggered my interest and put quilts on the radar. So [the idea of featuring quilts] really came from a woman, almost as a protest that they were not being included. Because of that, I began looking at quilts and lo and behold, found that it was the true tradition. Although you could go to many communities and not find a lot of paintings, almost all the communities had a quilting tradition.” 

One of the women featured in the current exhibit is quilter and teacher Myla Borden of New Glasgow. In 2004 Borden founded the Vale Quilters, mostly senior quilters who encompass what is the only Black quilting association in Nova Scotia. The Vale Quilters were born from Borden’s realization that Black art and culture had not been collected or celebrated in this province and had often left out the history of quilting. 

Installation view of The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts. Photo by Naomi Boyd, courtesy of the Textile Museum of Canada. 

Typically these quilters would come together and do pattern quilting which are basic, traditional patterns that most quilt makers know. Borden suggested they try something more challenging: picture quilting. “With picture quilts, it requires a whole lot more imaginative involvement in terms of you as a quilter.”

Borden asked Woods to share drawings and doodles from when he would visit Black communities and had the Vale Quilters make quilt creations from his art. “Each one of [the Vale Quilters] chose two drawings that they felt they related to,  and they made quilts out of them, and all the reluctancy went out the window when they first showed them.” This sharing of Black quilting, Black art and Black storytelling is how the Secret Codes were born. 

When touring the Secret Code quilts, Woods has found them to be “reflective of Nova Scotian Black community experiences, female experiences and in this latest iteration of the exhibition, we've added sections of older quilts from Black Nova Scotia.” The oldest quilt on display right now is over 100 years old. Through the various iterations of exhibits they’ve added contemporary quilts which are abstract patterns and even quilts that were said to have helped Black enslaved people find freedom. 

“In the 1970s, a book called Hidden in Plain View proposed that quilts were used as a method of escape from southern plantations to the north and freedom. What this book and several other cultural writers suggested was that certain patterns symbolize certain things. The Log Cabin pattern, for example, if that was seen at a place, it meant that this was a safe house. This is a house where if you're running, if you're escaping, or being enslaved, you could go to this place and be hidden or provided nourishment. There's one called Drunkard's Path, which means in this particular area you are supposed to walk in a zigzag to confuse bounty hunters or slave catchers. There's one called Bow Ties where you're supposed to, in this particular community,  dress up in formal suits to pretend that you're a freedman. There's a whole series of patterns where meaning is ascribed to them as part of the underground railroad escape route.”

Woods says that though some people doubt the truth behind the use of quilts to guide enslaved people through the Underground Railroad, he also shares that any Black quilter in a way is making their own code and contributing to their Black identity. 

“The most important thing is that the very proposition of the secret codes as a system of escape gave Black quilt makers an identity in quilt making. Before that, they were making patterns that everybody else was making. Their pride was only in the execution of those patterns. Now with the secret code patterns, they felt they were contributing directly to their history and their own identities." 

Woods adds that the secret code quilts became popular and educational because they taught kids about a period of slavery through arts and crafts. For Woods as an artist, it became a metaphor for many things. “When I was envisioning the Secret Codes exhibition,  the metaphor of Secret Codes was kind of widened. [I saw it] not only as the actual quilts that were used to help us through slavery but the Secret Codes that we use every day in terms of our language, our ways of communicating. Even in my own journeys through Nova Scotia, how I was able to navigate all the different types of experiences to have access to all these different communities.”  

Woods shares that being born in Trinidad, but growing up in Nova Scotia felt to him like learning a secret code. To Woods the secret code is a way to look at our lives, how we enter them and make something our own, the things we’ve gathered and converted into beauty and culture.

The Secret Code of African Quilting in Nova Scotia is currently on exhibition at the Textile Museum and Woods says the response has been “overwhelming”. Woods adds, “I'm so connected, not only connected to the works, but also to the people in the show. It was also a very personal thing, the whole effort to lift our culture from being completely ignored by the establishment. Nova Scotia is well known for quilts, but all of the shows that predated ours never included any from the Black community. Every time we have shown this it has had a tremendous reaction.”

“When I walked in that room that night and saw just the overflow of people and the overflow of joy and the overflow of reactions - It's just been really touching. You have to understand this was an experiment for the Vale Quilters. They never claimed to be expert story quilters or picture quilt makers, or visual artists. They were simply doing a project that was kind of given to them, but also that they felt a connection with. To see hundreds and hundreds of people coming in has just been amazing for us, to know that this resonates among Black quilt makers, among white quilt makers, among artists, among cultural folk and the outpouring of praise.”

For those outside of New Glasgow who want to join the beautiful community Borden and Woods created they can join the group Woods founded called 

African Nova Scotia Quilting Association. Right now, there are just four members but together with the Vale Quilters they are able to do different projects in various locations while also conducting research and publications on quilt traditions and sponsoring events in other provinces.