It was a great thing the former Africville residents and their families held their annual reunion looking to the future, not the past.

This was in spite of someone printing ethnic hatred over furnishings around the Seaview Memorial Park venue, site of the former community, prior to the July 28 event.

Municipal employees cleared up the mess before the celebrants arrived.

From television reports, however, the perpetrator got whatever response he or she wished.

There was talk things hadn't changed, there’s continued victimization and so on.

Our sister publication, The Daily News, reported the opposite, noting the annual celebration went on as if nothing had happened.

The park site is akin to sacred soil for the former residents and Africville descendants. The long-standing African Nova Scotian community was pushed into an area later thought by the government to be needed to build the A. Murray MacKay Bridge. The community was moved out, the homes and other structures destroyed in the mid-1960s.

Africville needed upgraded housing and services. But hindsight shows it could have been accomplished with a lot more sensitivity.

These are things you learn as a society.

Another learned thing is not to rise to the utterings of every troublemaker or crank case who gets loose with paint or markers. Those kinds need to be ignored - and pitied.

No one gains from attacking or hobbling another ethnic group in our socio-economic fabric; none profit from any over-reaction to such foolish behaviour.

No one gains when there is discrimination and/ or action against - however trivial - any ethnic group.

No one gained when the Massachusetts militia and a renegade Nova Scotia governor smashed the Acadian socio-economic hegemony in the province in the late 1750s; in fact, the imperial government had - albeit too late - advised against any such move.

No one gained when more than a thousand Black Loyalists, Maroons and other African Nova Scotians formed an exodus to settle Sierra Leone in the late 1700s. Again, Halifax authorities and business people didn't want them to leave - not through any altruistic sentiment, but because it hurt the province's economy and labour situation.

I suppose no one took into account the frosty climate and reception from other ethic groups in the province may have hastened the unfortunate exodus. Other Loyalists had left en mass when they had found New England Planters had received the best lands before the revolutionary war, and they didn't want - or have the means to invest in - other areas of the province.

Other migrations, though not ethnic, have continued to this day because of economic pressures. Look at Cape Breton County: 3,500 people lost in five years, from 2001-2006. Cumberland County was somewhat more fortunate, only losing 550. Pictou County lost only 450 - before the recent closure of the rail car plant, and its 1,100 well-paying jobs.

Had we retained all our ethnic groups and economic exiles, we could well have built up our demographic critical mass to a point we could have a more self-sufficient economy, and could have resisted political pressures that have accelerated our decline.

Our past is a great source of common, collective wisdom.

After all, we're all on the same team - older groups such as the African community, First Nations, Acadians and British - as well as newer ones. Though Nova Scotia is a good place to live, it's far from paradise. It requires teamwork just to survive, let alone foster any ambitions to further our place in a less than amicable world.

I don't like to have to say that we're all we have. It increasingly appears to be the case.