Lawrence Bruce watched flames gobble the wooden structure he'd worked years to establish. The Black Loyalist Heritage Society office was going up in smoke on a warm March night and all he could think was: Why?
"I was just in awe," said Mr. Bruce, 65, who spent hundreds of volunteer hours designing the one-storey building, which contained scores of original documents and photographs on the lives of North America's first freed African slaves, who were handed freedom certificates and passage to Nova Scotia in exchange for fighting for the British during the American Revolution.
"It was like, 'I don't believe this is happening,' " he said. His wife's ancestors were among the black Loyalists. "It didn't make sense. I thought 'Maybe some fool is drunk or on dope.' "
But the fact that a witness saw a car speed away just as the building's front porch lit up made him think that hate -- not stupidity -- fuelled this fire.
"The image of fire, it makes you think of Alabama or someplace like that."
The RCMP have said the fire was arson and are investigating. So far, no arrests have been made but Sergeant Barry MacLellan said police have a "solid" lead. But Sgt. MacLellan said there is nothing to indicate the fire is race related.
However, others in Nova Scotia's black community are concerned. The fire at the black Loyalist society's office was one of three vandal attacks with racial overtones in the province in the past three months.
In February, an incendiary device was tossed into the Black Cultural Centre in Dartmouth, causing about $1,500 damage.
On Easter Sunday, two weeks after the black Loyalist society's fire, a church hall in Pictou was spray painted with the letters KKK. It was not a black church.
Sharon Oliver, who was a consultant for the Loyalist society when it was designing the office complex, said the wave of vandalism is alarming.
And Ms. Oliver criticized Nova Scotia's black community, law enforcers and political leaders, saying they have failed to speak out against the attacks, which she called clearly race related.
"Burning down that building [the heritage society office]isn't racist?" she asked. "No one wants to say it's a racist act. I am terribly, terribly concerned."
While some black leaders have expressed their worry, others have been noticeably silent.
The curator of the Black Cultural Centre, Henry Bishop, has refused to discuss the incident.
The centre, which is part museum, archive and community meeting place is a marquee attraction and source of pride for African Nova Scotians. Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby and the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks have all toured the centre.
In a brief interview with a local paper not long after the vandalism, Mr. Bishop said he wouldn't discuss the incident. "I don't want to change the whole atmosphere of this," he said. "We're beyond that now."
When contacted this week by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Bishop was brusque. "I don't want to comment on it," he said. When asked why, he replied: "I'm not interested. Good-bye."
Wayn Hamilton, CEO of the provincial Office of African Nova Scotia Affairs, said the province's black community isn't sure how to react.
"That whole issue of talking about race in an open, constructive dialogue is something that causes people a lot of anxiety," Mr. Hamilton said. "We don't really know how to sit down and have mature conversation about differences on race."
Mayann Francis, who heads the provincial human-rights commission, urged Nova Scotians to speak against the attacks. "When you don't have dialogue, you don't find solutions," she said. "When you have these dialogues you begin to isolate the perpetrators."
In Birchtown, which is about 200 kilometres south of Halifax on Nova Scotia's South Shore, the volunteer members of the black heritage society are devastated.
Mr. Bruce said the centre was a resource for people researching their family roots. Visitors from across North America would come to the rural headquarters, located near the port town of Shelburne, where the majority of 3,500 black Loyalists were dropped off by British ships in 1783.
In addition to their freedom, the British promised slaves land and rations for three years in Nova Scotia for their military efforts against American rebels.
The Birchtown office building was the culmination of a decade-long drive by local residents to salvage hard-to-find mementos of this history for public display.
Once in Nova Scotia, black Loyalists faced incredible hardship. Fewer than 200 of the more than 600 black men received the land grants promised them.
Many arrived in late fall and were literally dropped in Shelburne to fend for themselves. Some lived in tents or dug pits in the ground, which they covered with logs and moss.
Their arrival in Shelburne caused friction with the white population, some of whom accused the blacks of stealing jobs. In 1784, the summer after the first wave arrived, Shelburne was the site of Canada's first race riot, when white settlers burned 20 homes of black Loyalists.
After the riot, black Loyalists set up their own community about five kilometres west of Shelburne and called it Birchtown, after British General Samuel Birch, who signed their freedom certificates. Today, it's a tiny village of just a few dozen families.
"This was the largest group of freed Africans in the world," Mr. Bruce said, standing beside a replica pit house across the road from the razed office. "They were so important and yet they were forgotten."
On the night of March 31, Mr. Bruce said, he was at home when a fellow volunteer called to say the office was on fire. He raced to the scene, where other volunteers had already gathered.
Firefighters were able to save four computers that contained descendants' names. Some file cabinets containing original documents were also pulled from the burning building, but suffered water damage. A bag of costumes used for period plays was salvaged, but the clothes are smoke damaged and will be destroyed.
"It was heartbreaking really," Mr. Bruce said. "All we could do was stand and watch it happen and give each [other]a hug."
The society, which came together in the early 1990s when a landfill was proposed for the site, has been heartened by a wave of donations, which have poured in from across Canada since the fire.
Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., has donated $6,000 for the reconstruction. Right now, the society's office is temporarily operating in a room above a gift shop.
Not for long, Mr. Bruce said. The office will be rebuilt and the damaged documents restored, and databases will one day be up and running again.
"We will build again," he said. "We've come too far now to stop."