Slavery in Canada
What they didn’t teach us in school
A true and comprehensive Canadian history textbook would include the history of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour on this land, and not just the stories of white colonizers.
And while we hear things are different in classrooms across the country today (thank fucking god), most millennials and older were not taught about Canada's true history of slavery - instead, most of our textbooks choose to paint Canada as a safe haven, erasing the systemic violence and human rights violations experienced by Black people on what we now know as Canadian soil.
So what did slavery look like in Canada?
Slave ownership was found at every level of colonial Canadian society, "whether French or English, working on farms, in bakery shops, working in leather tanning, slave orderlies working in hospitals, working for merchants, working in the fur trade as slave canoe paddlers for Scottish and French Canadian fur traders crisscrossing the country."
During the American Revolution, many enslaved folks escaped to fight on the British side and were promised that doing so would allow them to be free.
The vast majority of them would face broken promises from the British/Canadian government and discrimination and violence from the colonists.
The Underground Railroad began helping escaped enslaved people in 1815, but it didn’t really take off until well after Canadian slavery came to a close in 1834 when Britain banned it across the empire.
But slavery in Canada wasn't as bad as it was in America, right?
Well, it really depends on your perspective here.
If you learned about slavery in America and felt disgusted and angry at how Americans treated Black people, then you should feel just as disgusted, angry, and ashamed about Canada's history with slavery.
If you think slavery is wrong, then there is no situation in which 'better conditions' make it okay. Slavery happened in Canada, meaning Indigenous and Black people were treated as property; they were traded, sold, and inherited, on the very land you read this from.
In short, there is no such thing as "good" or "better" slavery.
Furthermore, our country has spent 100s of years hiding the fact that it was built on slave labour - at least in America everyone knows that slavery existed.
Canada abolished slavery only ~30 years before America did.
Also, our history books heavily talk about the underground railroad as if it was sponsored by the Canadian government, but it is important to understand that governments didn't build the underground railroad, Black people (with the support of white allies) did.
So we really need to stop claiming the underground railway as a country, because it isn't ours to claim.
Further, it's also worth reflecting that between 1629 to 1834, enslavement occurred in Canada - which is 205 years. It's only been 189 years since slavery was abolished in Canada, and Black people are still facing disproportionate inequities as a result of ongoing state-sanctioned neglect.
Taking the time to learn about Canada's true history is critical to our unlearning journey as Canadians.
Personally, our unlearning journey to unsubscribe from neutrality (around topics of oppression), and to unlearn the great Canadian fallacy started with realizing what was intentionally left out of our history textbooks and what was put in them.
Because while many people in Canada comfort themselves by thinking white supremacy is something of the past, because "slavery was a long time ago," we have to recognize that it is that same white supremacy that intentionally excluded Black histories and enslavement from our textbooks - we all get that right?
The end of slavery did not mean the end of white supremacy in Canada. White supremacy is a shapeshifter, if you don't intentionally dismantle it, it'll morph into something different.
Canada is a nepo-baby and it's time it pays its dues
The countries that used enslaved labour did not have to pay anyone, which is how European/Western countries accrued their wealth - so it's not surprising to see how wealthy the British, and its nepo-child Canada, are.
And all it cost was the human rights violations and crimes against humanity against Black, Indigenous and other peoples of colour around the globe.
This is why people call for the redistribution of wealth - because the people who hold wealth have not earned it, they've taken it. It's why Canada owes Black peoples and Indigenous peoples - at a minimum - a comprehensive social safety net.
(You know, the very social safety net conservative governments across the country are ripping apart.)
We are owed livable incomes (including disability support), comprehensive health care and prescription drug coverage, free education, clean water, affordable basic necessities, and a fucking roof over all of our heads.
The Great Canadian Fallacy
So many of us in Canada spend time rationalizing our country's inequities by saying well at least we aren't as bad as America.
For example, we've been watching politicians in the States ban a person's access to reproductive health, criminalize drag shows, and ban a child's access to gender-affirming care (and no Karen, that doesn't mean kids can choose to cut their penises off, jfc), telling children/schools they can't say the word 'gay,' and recently with Florida looking to ban African American History in it's schools.
It's easy to read all of this and participate in the Canadian exhale - "well at least it isn't that bad here" but we've got to ask... is that even true?
Most of us were not taught about Canada's history of enslavement, about residential schools, about the crimes colonizers and our government committed against humans.
Canada is really similar to America - we just have a better public relations game.
And while we can't change what Canadians did in the past, we can decide what Canadians do next.
Ask yourself, your colleagues, your family members, your bosses, and your neighbours - what changed after the murder of George Floyd?
We all know better, there is no excuse for ignorance.
Anyone minimizing or ignoring the realities of the Black experience in Canada - both historic and to this day - is making this about how they feel uncomfortable grappling with their complicity in our systems of oppression - and we must challenge that.
Because we can't change Canada's history, but we can change what we do next.
Ignoring Canada's unethical and inhumane treatment of Black people during the 205 years of enslavement and the 189 years that followed makes you a modern-day version of white people who were just going with the flow in the 1700s.
Let's be better than that, Canada.
