Name: "In Conversations"
Start: 2026-03-28T13:00:00-03:00
Location: 406 Queen St., Fredericton, NB, Canada, New Brunswick E3B 1B6

This Saturday's talk has been postponed due to weather
To celebrate Black History today and every day, Join us on Saturday March 28th at 1-3 for “In Conversations”with Guests Ralph Thomas, Founder of the Black History Society, Artists April Pyne and Rhonda Simmons.
Ralph Thomas ONB (born 1938) is a Canadian activist and former amateur boxer from Willow Grove, New Brunswick, Canada. He was the president of Pride of Race, Unity and Dignity through Education (PRUDE), a New Brunswick-based organization promoting inclusion. He is also a co-founder of the New Brunswick Black History Society, an organization dedicated to promoting and preserving Black history in New Brunswick.
In June 2010, Thomas co-founded the New Brunswick Black History Society (NBBHS), serving as the group's project coordinator.
With his work with the NBBHS, Thomas has contributed towards changing geographical names tied to racism and slavery, renaming them to honour historical Black figures in the province such as Abraham Beverley Walker.
April Pyne’s abstract geometric paintings are informed by a childhood spent in Brooklyn, New York. April has studied the language of abstraction looking to past modern masters and spent a summer studying sculpture at Cooper Union in New York. Her style embraces modernism, geometric forms and sculptural elements. She is fascinated with circles and with finding the shapes in the painting as a sculptor finds the shapes in wood or clay.
April has been a recipient of a New Brunswick Arts Board Creation Grant.
Rhonda Simmons is a descendent of Black Loyalists who came to New Brunswick in 1783 following the American Revolution. She is well known for her thought-provoking assemblage art which often addresses issues of women, race, and power. She is a mixed media artist, an altar maker, an assemblage artist, a tea maker, a storyteller, an expressive arts facilitator, an avid baker, and the keeper and tender of creative flames at Casa Sanctuary Art House. I was asked for a creative perspective from the new exhibit opening at the Fredericton Region Museum “Our Black Heritage”.