August 1 is recognized as Emancipation Day in Canada, marking the end of slavery which persisted from 1628 until 1834. The document discusses key historical figures and events related to Canadian slavery, including the first documented enslaved African, Olivier Le Jeune, and the struggles of enslaved people like Chloe Cooley. It also highlights the ongoing legacy of slavery in Canada and the celebrations of Emancipation Day by African Canadians.

1. Copyright © by Murphy Browne 2015
MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
August 1 is Emancipation Day in Canada and other countries that were once
British colonies. As quiet as it is kept, Africans were enslaved in Canada from
at least 1628 to August 1, 1834. The first documented enslaved African in Canada
was a six-year-old child who was kidnapped from Africa and brought to Quebec
where he was sold. The enslaved African child, whose name we will never know was
sold by an Englishman, David Kirke, to a Frenchman, Olivier Le Baillif. The
enslaved African child was sold a few times and finally given the name Olivier
Le Jeune.
In his 2013 book, "Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of
America’s Universities" African-American history professor, Craig Steven Wilder,
writes: ’African slavery was also established in Canada. Jesuit superior general
Paul Le Jeune had an enslaved boy who was probably the first African in the
colony. Olivier Le Jeune, as he was renamed, arrived during the Englishman David
Kirke’s 1629 conquest of French Canada. Father Le Jeune obtained him when the
French retook that region under the treaty of St. Germain.’ Olivier Le Jeune is
also mentioned in the 2010 book "Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in
Canada" by African Canadian historian, Natasha L. Henry, who wrote: ’The
earliest recorded incident of slavery in Canada was a young African boy given
the name Olivier Le Jeune. David Kirke an English merchant was his original
owner.’
White Canadian historian, Marcel Trudel, wrote about the history of slavery in
Quebec in a 1960 book, "L’esclavage au Canada Français histoire et conditions de
l’esclavage." In 2013, Trudel’s book was translated into English (by White
Canadian author George Tombs) with the title "Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two
Hundred Years of Bondage." In 1960 when "L’esclavage au Canada Français" was
published, it was considered so controversial and caused such a furor among his
colleagues that Trudel was forced to leave Quebec’s Laval University and move to
the University of Ottawa. Trudel documented that for 200 years the enslavement
of Africans was legal in (New France) Quebec. Enslaved Africans were owned by
White people from all levels of Quebec society, including bishops, blacksmiths,
carpenters, merchants, military officers, priests, surgeons, tailors and nuns.
Marguerite d’Youville, the founder of the Grey Nuns (canonized in 1990) and the
first Canadian-born person to attain sainthood in the Catholic Church, was a
slave owner. Not surprisingly, the Hôpital Général de Montréal, where Marguerite
d’Youville was in charge, also owned slaves. There were 23 members of the
Executive and Legislative Councils of Quebec who were slave owners, as well as
eight judges and 17 members of the House of Assembly. The founder of McGill
University, James McGill, was a slave owner. Trudel linked many prominent
French-Canadian family names (including Beauchamps, Beauchemin, Demers,
Lachasse, Raymond, Sabourin, Trudel and Villeneuve) to ownership of enslaved
Africans.
In 2006, African Canadian historian, Dr. Afua Cooper, published "The Hanging of
Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal"
where she documented the story of enslaved African woman, Marie-Joseph
Angélique, who was accused of setting a fire in April 1734 which destroyed much
of Montreal. She was tortured (including having the bones in her leg smashed)
until she confessed and was executed on June 21, 1734. I first read about the
enslavement of Africans in Canada in 1981 when I bought "The Freedom Seekers:
Blacks in Early Canada" published by African-American historian, Daniel G. Hill.
Daniel Grafton Hill III was director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission,
Ontario Human Rights Commissioner and co-founder of the Ontario Black History
Society. In 1994, African Canadian author Robert Ffrench published "Out of the
Past, Into the Future: An Introductory Learning Guide" and in 1995 "In Our Time:
An Introductory Learning Guide." Both books were published to introduce children
to African Canadian history and included stories about the lives of enslaved
Africans. In 2015, whenever I hear African Canadians declare that they know
nothing about our history in Canada I am reminded of Bob Marley’s words: ’Don’t

2. forget your history. Know your destiny. In the abundance of water the fool is
thirsty.” Marcus Mosiah Garvey, whose philosophy greatly influenced Marley,
said: ”A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture
is like a tree without roots.” The enslavement of Africans in this country was
not confined to Quebec and the French.
The British brought enslaved Africans to Canada following the September 8, 1760
surrender of the French to the British. The popular narrative of slavery in
Canada consists mostly of stories about enslaved Africans from the USA fleeing
to freedom in Canada on the Underground Railroad. What is mostly hidden is the
fact that enslaved Africans fled slavery in Canada to places in the USA where
slavery was abolished before August 1, 1834 (including Vermont, where slavery
was abolished on July 8, 1777). Africans, who had been enslaved by the British
in Antigua, Canada and South Africa, were freed on August 1, 1834, while
Africans who had been enslaved by the British in several Caribbean islands were
subjected to a system of ”apprenticeship” which lasted from 1834 to August 1,
1838. These former colonies include Barbados, British Honduras (Britain”s sole
colony in Central America,) British Guiana (Britain”s sole South American
colony,) Dominica, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. Africans were forced to live
on the plantations of the people who had enslaved them and work 40 hours a week
without pay (and paid a pittance for work over 40 hours) as ”apprentices.” The
Africans were also forced to pay taxes and rent for the dreadful hovels in which
they dwelled on the plantations. In 1838, two White British writers, Thomas
Harvey and Joseph Sturge, documented the brutality of the ”apprenticeship”
system when they published "The West Indies in 1837: Being the Journal of a
Visit to Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica,
Undertaken for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Actual Conditions of the Negro
Population of Those Islands." Harvey and Sturge wrote: ”A new kind of slavery
under the name Apprenticeship; an anomalous condition, in which the Negroes were
continued, under a system of coerced and unrequited labour.” They also observed
that ”the planters have since succeeded in moulding the Apprenticeship into an
almost perfect likeness of the system they so unwillingly relinquished. An
equal, if not greater amount, of uncompensated labour, is now extorted from the
Negroes; while, as their owners have no longer the same interest in their health
and lives, their condition, and particularly that of mothers and young children,
is in many respects worse than during slavery.”
While the Africans were suffering in slave-like conditions under the
apprenticeship system, White people in Britain were in self-congratulatory mode.
On Saturday, August 2, 1834 a British newspaper "The Guardian" published:
”Throughout the British dominions the sun no longer rises on a slave. Yesterday
was the day from which the emancipation of all our slave population commences;
and we trust the great change by which they are elevated to the rank of freemen
will be found to have passed into effect in the manner most accordant with the
benevolent spirit in which it was decreed, most consistent with the interests of
those for whose benefit it was primarily intended, and most calculated to put an
end to the apprehensions under which it was hardly to be expected that the
planters could fail to labour as the moment of its consummation approaches. We
shall await anxiously the arrivals from the West Indies that will bring advices
to a date subsequent to the present time.”
The slave holders were compensated for losing their ”property” while the unpaid
work of the ”emancipated” Africans bankrolled the 20 million pounds the British
government paid out as compensation to the slave holders. Since the abolition of
slavery Africans have celebrated August 1 as Emancipation Day or August Monday.
In Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada, Natasha Henry has researched
and written about the history of August 1 celebrations throughout Canada,
including the connection of Caribana (modelled on Trinidad”s carnival) to
Emancipation Day. In 1985 the government of Trinidad & Tobago was the first of
the former British Caribbean colonies to declare August 1 a national holiday. In
Toronto the August 1 holiday has been Simcoe Day since 1969 in honour of the
first Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario (Upper Canada) who attempted in 1793 to end
slavery in Ontario. In March 1793, Simcoe listened to the case of Chloe Cooley,
an enslaved African woman who had been violently removed from Canada when she

3. was sold by the White Canadian family that owned her to a White American. Simcoe
was unsuccessful in ending slavery in Ontario because many of his colleagues on
the Executive Council of Upper Canada and other influential White families
(members of the infamous Family Compact) were slave holders. Some of those slave
owning Family Compact members were James Baby, Richard Cartwright, Alexander
Grant, Robert Hamilton, Hannah Jarvis, William Jarvis, John McDonell, Peter
Russell, David William Smith, Hazelton Spencer and Peter Van Alstine. The end of
slavery owes much to enslaved Africans like Chloe Cooley who did not go quietly.
Chloe Cooley’s struggle is recognized
(http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/slavery/index.aspx) on an
Ontario government archives website: ’March 14, 1793, Queenston, at the American
border William Vrooman, a Canadian slave owner, takes a woman slave by force
across the river and sells her to an American buyer. Chloe Cooley does not go
quietly. It takes three men to tie her up and throw her in a boat. Once on the
American side she screams and resists again. They bind her once more and hand
her over to a new owner.’
On July 31, at 11:00 p.m. a group will gather at Union Station and travel to
Downsview subway station where August 1 will be greeted and commemorated with
drumming and spoken word performances. Get on the Underground Freedom Train to
commemorate Emancipation Day on August 1. Zion train is coming our way!
tiakoma@hotmail.com
Copyright © by Murphy Browne 2015