They were fleeing from Canadian slave owners and headed for freedom in Detroit.
“We tend to think of it as ‘not in my backyard’ myth about slavery,” says Delorean Kilen, project coordinator at the Ontario Black History Society. “People don’t remember that slavery existed here because we’ve been ‘slave-free’ longer than the U.S.”
Slavery existed in Canada for 200 years and was officially abolished 30 years before the Emancipation Proclamation order was issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Historians believe there was an estimated 4,000 slaves who were forcibly brought to Canada, either directly as property, or shipped through the trans-Atlantic slave trade from other British colonies.
In 1793, Upper Canada outlawed importing slaves and the practice was officially abolished in 1833 alongside the rest of the British Empire.
“It’s something that people don’t want to talk about and not comfortable talking about,” says Natasha Henry, a historian and educator. “Slavery was used as a tool for both [British and Canadian] colonies. “By ignoring that we’re not portraying a complete history of Canada.”
Rosemary Sadlier is one of many Canadians whose roots reach back to pre-Confederation. Her mother’s family can be traced to 1840, while her father’s ancestors arrived in New Brunswick in 1793.
“Everyone assumes that everyone who is black is a recent immigrant, but there are thousands of black Canadians who have been here since the founding of the country,” says Sadlier, an author and recipient of the Order of Ontario.
“In my younger years I didn’t come away with a real sense of my family’s historic contributions to this country and I think there’s a way that we are made to feel to various measures that we aren’t the same, we haven’t paid our dues, we’re visitors in someone else’s country,” she says.
“When you have something like black history it changes all of those stereotypes because you can’t be an unwelcomed visitor in a country that’s your own.”
Charmaine Nelson, an art historian and professor at McGill University, believes a heavy dose of corrective action is needed to educate people who see slavery as only an American experience.
“We don’t ever want to take credit for slavery in Canada so we have to keep it out there in the tropics or the U.S.,” she says.
Photos and portraits that depict slavery in Canada are not easily found or publicized, which adds to the difficulty Nelson and other educators have when talking and teaching the public about this stain on our nation’s history.
A painting originally called Portrait of Negro Slave is one of the few items that gives a face to slavery in Canada. The name of the portrait was controversially changed to Portrait of a Haitian Woman.
“The renaming in effect expels slavery from Montreal and Quebec, rendering it only a troubling history of tropical colonies like Haiti and not one of immediate concern to Canadians.”
Here are just a few of the many black Canadians who helped define and shape our country.
Measha Brueggergosman is a Juno award-winning Canadian soprano opera singer and recipient of prestigious Canada Council and Chalmers Performing Arts grants.Malcolm Taylor/The Canadian PressPrevious photoNext photo
Here are some common myths about slavery in Canada debunked.
Slavery never existed in Canada, right?
FACT: Many Canadians are under the assumption that slavery never existed in Canada (or not at the same levels found in the U.S.), which is false. The first recorded slave to arrive in Canada was a six-year-old boy named Olivier le Jeune from Madagascar in 1628. Most slaves were imported from other British colonies and the Americas.
Was Canada the first country to abolish slavery before other parts of the world followed suit?
FACT: Although slavery in Canada was officially abolished in 1833 politicians enacted legislation in 1793 that would set limitations on slavery in the country. The bill meant slaves would secure their freedom at 25 if born a slave, which was no help to most since the average lifespan of a slave was 20 to 25 years.
Weren’t all black slaves who escaped to Canada from the U.S. afforded all the civil liberties enjoyed by other European Canadians?
FACT: Despite the warm and fuzzy images and scenes displayed in most current-day slave narratives, black slaves who escaped to Canada faced discrimination, violence and segregation. Unlike racist laws that were found in the U.S. (think: Jim Crow), Canada had largely unwritten racist codes, which many could argue made it more difficult for black people in Canada.
Slaves who escaped north lived out the rest of their lives in Canada
FACT: Some former slaves left Canada for the U.S. once slavery was abolished in America to escape difficulties in Canada and for chances at upward mobility afforded to them by moving to cities with higher black populations. Entire generations of black Canadians were completely lost to Canadian history by moving to the U.S.
source: http://metronews.ca/voices/mom-and-pop-shops/935648/canadian-secret-slave-past/
When you accept a name that you are not, in time you become what you are not. Richard Moore said, "Slaves and dogs are named by their masters, free men name themselves." So in this country, when we began to accept the word Negro which means nothing, and accept the word colored which means even less, and accept the word Black which only tells you how you look and not who you are, we failed to understand that we had been named, and we must become namers, we must be namers of ourselves.
ReplyDelete-Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"Africa history is as old as world history. In fact, African history is the essence of world history. In order to understand African history in its true light, it may be necessary to place Africa at the center of world history and to start the rest of human history from that center. With the second rise of Europe in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries and the creation of the slave trade and the colonial system that followed, the African people were systematically readout of world history. The Europeans knew then and now that you cannot successfully oppress a consciously historical people. They had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known about African people...In order to justify the slave trade, the Europeans created an African people in their mind who never existed. They created a people with no known culture and no known contact with a civilized way of life. This was a lie then and it is a lie now."
"Without the African connection,we are a disjointed people begging for entry into somebody else’s house." Dr. John Henrik Clarke
When you accept a name that you are not, in time you become what you are not. Richard Moore said, "Slaves and dogs are named by their masters, free men name themselves." So in this country, when we began to accept the word Negro which means nothing, and accept the word colored which means even less, and accept the word Black which only tells you how you look and not who you are, we failed to understand that we had been named, and we must become namers, we must be namers of ourselves.
-Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"Africa history is as old as world history. In fact, African history is the essence of world history. In order to understand African history in its true light, it may be necessary to place Africa at the center of world history and to start the rest of human history from that center. With the second rise of Europe in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries and the creation of the slave trade and the colonial system that followed, the African people were systematically readout of world history. The Europeans knew then and now that you cannot successfully oppress a consciously historical people. They had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known about African people...In order to justify the slave trade, the Europeans created an African people in their mind who never existed. They created a people with no known culture and no known contact with a civilized way of life. This was a lie then and it is a lie now."
"Without the African connection,we are a disjointed people begging for entry into somebody else’s house." Dr. John Henrik Clarke