The Legacy of Canadian Slavery

The Legacy of Canadian Slavery.(Exert from talk given on August 5, 2028 at Neighbourhood Unitarian Universalist Congregation in recognition of Emancipation Day) Wilburn Hayden, PhD Professor, School of Social Work, York University August 5, 2018 In 1834, England legally abolished slavery across the British Empire. Until that year slavery existed in all regions that became the provinces of Canada. The Act was passed in the British Parliament on August 28, 1833 with August 1, 1834 being the date in which slavery was abolished. The first section of the Act addressed the compensation to the slavers for the enslaved. Only six of the thirty-one pages addressed the enslaved. Most sections dealt with the financial and structures for implementing the Act. While slavery formally ended, most of the enslaved, “full age of six years or upward” were bound into force apprenticeship until August 1, 1840. There were three classes for the former enslaved: procedural attached (agriculture and manufacturing enslaved labours attached to the slavers’ land); procedural unattached (agriculture and manufacturing enslaved labours not attached to the enslavers’ land); and non-procedural (enslaved not in the first two classes). The Act speaks to children who were not full six years old on August 1, 1834 and born of an enslaved/apprentice mother. The children were bound over by a Special Justice\Magistrate to the mother’s holder of apprenticeship until the child reached the age of twenty-one. Children born during apprenticeship would be held into apprenticeship by the mother’s apprentice until the aged of twelve. Whether, you called it enslavement or apprenticeship, most of the former enslaved were not freed on August 1, 1834. Not-with-standing the conditions or economic ties to the former slaver, freedom did not come to all Canadians and the British Empire until 1855. Black people came to Canada as slaves, Loyalists, pioneers, freemen, refugees and immigrants. They experienced oppression through racism in the forms of prejudice, discrimination, poverty, powerlessness and reduced privileges. Unlike other ethnic or racial groups, force slavery was how most early blacks were introduced to North America. From the beginning as enslaved, the practice of defining blacks as the “other” was the norm for white Canadian society. Elements of “othering” resulting from slavery remains in today’s society. The legacy of Canadian slavery is the historical connections between the treatment of and the justification of enslaving blacks with current attitudes and beliefs of most whites and blacks today. In fact it is not just having been a slave or having had a slave that creates the legacy. It has more to do with how, the English and Europeans, created the need to justify the enslavement and treatment of black people. As in the case of natives in North America or tribal groups in Africa, the English and Europeans created racism, based on their standards for a civilization which included the printed word, hording gold, individual ownership of land, greed, technology and Catholicism or Christianity. Racism, then gave them the authority to take land, power, the human body, the riches and beliefs of peoples. And now it has been so ingrained in the Western culture, that most Canadians only see it in terms of the overt acts of individual bigots and racial hate groups. The reality is that the overt acts though very serious, is not were the battle has shifted. It has shifted more directly to oppression in attitudes and prejudices of Canadians and New Canadians. It is these attitudes and prejudices that make race a factor today. Let us turn to the black presence as part of Canadian history. Slavery did not develop widely in Canada, but its legacy produced a low status for blacks, and an ideological heritage unfavorable to black people. Contrary to popular belief, slavery has been as much a part of the Canadian experience as it has been in the USA. From the founding of the present Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario, there was never a time when blacks were not held as slaves in colonial Canada. Slavery in Canada was not on a large scale. The climate was unsuitable for plantation farming. French farmers along the St. Lawrence River worked their small farms under a feudal system of serfs and masters. The uneven and rocky terrain of Nova Scotia would not support a system of slavery. Since the types of agriculture in those earlier years did not support a full-blown slave system neither the other two main industries -- fishing and hunting. Yet slavery still existed. Daniel Tseghey provides a summary of Canadian black slavery: "In an economy propelled by the fur trade, as well as urban economies in some places, enslaved Africans worked as rat catchers, hangmen, and domestic servants. They were miners and fishermen, blacksmiths and carpenters, and worked in hotels and bars and wherever else the burgeoning cities needed unpaid labour. Legally owned by the Church, lawyers, business people, and merchants, they suffered indignities, loss of control over their lives, and a dimming view of their own and their families' futures that we can only imagine." (Daniel Tseghey, A Forgotten History of Slavery in Canada, Ricochet, February 16, 2015. https://ricochet.media/en/331/a-forgotten-history-of-slavery-in-canada) Canadians like to speak of the failure of slavery as a result of their historically intense opposition to slavery. The public may have had a distaste for it, but history shows it was more about being non-profitable than the evils of enslaving another human being. So despite the limited use of slavery, those early years created a foundation that defined the oppression and inferior status of blacks as well as secure our place as a reserve cheap Canadian labor force. Whereas, in our southern neighbors, especially in the southern USA, black slaves quickly became the primary labor force. Again the numbers of the enslaved may not have been large, black and Indigenous peoples were enslaved. In French Canada, ninety-five percent of the enslaved were Indigenous and the remaining were black. The French Canadians enslaved Indigenous people, and English French Canadians enslaved blacks. The conditions in which the enslaved lived were much like that of the USA enslaved. In both nations the range went form worst to acceptable practices by the slavers. For example, every state in the newly formed nation of the USA that touched Canada by 1800 had abolished slavery. Canada as indicated, still enslaved people until 1834. The historical record shows that Canadian enslaved would escape to the Free States. This was especially so, when the rivers would freeze. If slavery was better in Canada why would there have existed a reverse Underground Railroad before the often cited Underground Railroad to Canada existed?