Delta McNeish

Grey Street East of Colborne Street, next to the British Methodist Episcopal church

Excerpt from an original interview by Megan McPhaden for http://www.huronantislaveryhistory.ca/fugitive-slave-chapel.html

My name is Delta McNeish. I’m the pastor here at Beth-Emmanuel Church, and I’ve been here close to 10 years. I personally want to see the chapel as a community connection. I think for me that’s one of the bigger pieces because this is… This part of London is kind of, uhm… It’s been tainted in so many ways with drugs, alcohol, and a lot of abuse. I can personally see where the chapel could be a, for the lack of a better term, like an injection of Godly B-12, in the arm of the community. Yeah, it’s just to kind of make, you know, just change the complexion of the community by building community and substantiate educational processes that will help the community to come together. 

It matters to me from different perspectives. From the spiritual perspective, I understand where these people went through a lot of pain and God was very much there to help them.  That means a lot to me. Actually when I stood for the first time on the grounds at 275 Thames street, I felt the blood, I felt the cries, I heard the cries, I sensed them. I know that there is more to this than meets the eye and like my husband said that if the walls could talk, we’d all be crying, I think. For sure. So, it means a lot to me from that perspective. 

 It also means a lot to me from the perspective of building that community of people that cares about the same thing. Where we develop respect and honour for one another.  

There’s a final piece, the part that says a lot of Blacks are not involved with the slave chapel.  That’s my… my challenge, because I think, I’m finding out why they’re not involved. They are not involved because of shame. And so I’ve tried to pull this apart to understand how our forefathers could build the United States of America on their blood, and their ancestors relinquish that to shame.  That to me is one of the bigger pieces. And so for us as a community, I think we need to unite our hearts together to cause people–both Blacks and whites together to show that there’s no real shame here if we unite together. If we leave it as it is, as just an old building that we want to restore–there will be shame.  But if we use it to unite the hearts of people I say glory to God.