In George Elroy Boyd’s Gideon’s Blues, Momma-Lou remembers how her husband, Poppy, used to say that this was “one nigger-hatin’ town.” I hazard a guess that it might be comforting for some Canadians’ self-image if Poppy had been talking about the Deep South rather than Halifax. But Nova Scotian playwright and journalist Boyd isn’t interested in comforting Canadian readers with Gideon’s Blues and Consecrated Ground, the two plays that make up Two By George. Boyd’s plays argue that we Canadians can take no more pride in our racial circumstance than the Americans.

Consecrated Ground, a short teleplay in three acts set in Africville, doesn’t remind one so much of the United States as it does pre-liberated South Africa. Africville was a black community within the city of Halifax that was denied even basic services. Blacks couldn’t even bury their dead in Africville because the white community did not consider it consecrated ground. By the mid-1960s the people of Africville were being pushed off their land by the city to make way for new developments. Consecrated Ground is a moving fictional account of a young mother’s attempt to bury her dead child in Africville before she is forced to leave forever.

Gideon’s Blues, a longer, two-act stage play, brings us to the present day. Life has improved for African Nova Scotians – but not enough. Gideon is a young, university-educated black man whose dreams have come apart. Unable to get the banking position that he wanted and fired from his janitorial job, Gideon hooks up with Seve, his reprobate brother-in-law, and falls into a life of crime with obvious tragic consequences.

“Obvious” is the key word with Gideon’s Blues and Consecrated Ground: white men are uncaring villains, black men are nothing but members of the underground, and black women – strong though they may be – cannot stop their men from destroying themselves. But if Boyd can’t make political points without falling back on clichés, he cetainly makes up for it with gripping storylines, vibrantly realized black speech, and female characters who touch the heart.