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Emancipation Day and its relevance to Canada

Emancipation Day and its relevance to Canada

Global News
Monday, August 1, 2022 4:20 PM GMT

'There (are) people in this country who fail to recognize that Black people had been here since before Confederation.'

First Baptist Church was founded in 1826 in Toronto by 12 fugitives from slavery seeking freedom. They arrived on the Underground Railroad a few years shy of Aug. 1, 1834 — the day slavery was abolished across the British Empire, including in Canada.

It’s a day historian Rosemary Sadlier says Canadians still know very little about.

“There (are) people in this country who fail to recognize that Black people had been here since before Confederation,” said Sadlier, the former president of the Ontario Black History Society. “On the lands that we now call Canada, slavery began in 1628, the enslavement of Africans. It did not end until August 1st, 1834.”

The passing of the Slavery Abolition Act freed more than 800,000 people across the Caribbean, South Africa and Canada, initiating Emancipation Day Celebrations in Ontario in places like Windsor, St. Catharines, Collingwood, Woodstock, Amherstburg and Toronto.

“The people who were celebrating Emancipation Day were Black people who made themselves free and were in Canada, or newly arrived freedom seekers,” said Sadlier. “The early celebrations … were about just the immediate joyful expressions that were spiritual, that were cultural, that were included dance and prayer, that included speeches.

“Initially, it was about perhaps more identity building and celebration, but it also took on an element of advocacy for the end of slavery” — because slavery wasn’t over for everyone.

The U.S. would wait 30 more years before ending the practice, during which time tens of thousands fled to Canada to taste emancipation.

On their journey to freedom, many African Americans would stop and settle in Owen Sound, Ont. — the northernmost part of the Underground Railroad. The courage and experiences of these pioneers are commemorated in Harrison Park.

Read full story on Global News
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