Emancipation Day in N.S.: A time to reflect on the past – and look to the future
Global News
Tuesday marked the third annual Emancipation Day in Canada, the anniversary of when the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect across the British Empire in 1834.
Tuesday marks the third annual Emancipation Day in Canada, the anniversary of when the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect across the British Empire in 1834.
The historic act freed about 800,000 enslaved people of African descent across the colonies, including in Canada and Nova Scotia.
“The day acknowledges the tragedies of the transatlantic slave trade in which millions of African-descended people were enslaved or lost their lives,” the province of Nova Scotia said in a release.
Canadian senator Wanda Thomas Bernard – who pushed for years for Emancipation Day to be officially recognized before legislation was finally passed in 2021 – said this is an opportunity to tell “Canada’s full history.”
It’s a day “to look back, reflect on the past, reflect on the harms of the past, remember our ancestors and how hard they worked for our freedom,” Bernard told Global News Morning Tuesday.
“But it’s also a time for us to look forward. What do we do next? How do we move forward in a way that brings justice, where there has been so much injustice for African Canadians?”
In March 2021, the House of Commons voted unanimously to officially designate Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day. The Nova Scotia legislature also passed the Emancipation Day Act in April 2021.
“Emancipation Day marks a significant recognition of the past business of Slavery in our province and Country as well as the lasting effect on the Black Community,” Russell Grosse, the executive director of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, in a release.
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