Black people in Canada seem to have an interesting history. Apparently many of them (most?) arrived there from the United States, escaping slavery.
My question is simply this: What is black culture like in Canada? In particular, what is it like for those descended from the people who escaped slavery? In the United States, black culture wherever it is found is typically Southern. They like Southern food. And they typically talk with Southern dialect. Is that what it is like in Canada too?
I ask these questions because I am just curious:).
A good portion of blacks in Toronto are second- or third-generation Caribbean-Canadians, I think. I suspect the population of blacks in Toronto descended from escaped slaves is significantly smaller.
Canada is a big country, so it depends on where you are.
Nova Scotia was one of the first major black settlements & in the war of 1812, many blacks of American slavery origins fought against the US.
I’ve never been out to Nova Scotia, but I have met blacks in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and on the prairies.
The majority of blacks I’ve met, regardless of what province, are of Caribbean descent, not the descendants of slaves who left the US. Food, diction, and black culture don’t seem to emulate the US southern culture even among backs who are descendant from American slaves.
It seems far more culturally integrated, although you do occasionally see some 18-20 year old black kids emulating US urban black culture - but other than Caribbean culture, I really don’t think there is a black culture in the parts of Canada I know.
A few might be descendants of Canada’s own slaves, who were never that numerous (and many not black). It was legal until 1834 although, like in most Northern US states, it had largely disappeared much earlier.
Like Nova Scotia, there is an African-American community with deep roots in Montreal, for example in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy. There is also a large Haitian community in Montreal, including Canada’s present Governor-General, Michaëlle Jean, and communities from Africa, chiefly the French-speaking African countries.
Maybe African-American is a subgroup of Southern dialects. But yeah, they definitely sound Southern to me at least, wherever they are. Lenny Kravitz, for example, once used the word “y’all” in an interview (he must be emulating his mother I guess–his father was Jewish, of course).
I had a related post sometime back… where is it… ah-ha! It was about an award-winning novel called Book of Negroes.
Since I grew up near Preston I learned a lot of African-Canadian history in school. However since the Black Canadian community in Nova Scotia is very old (made up mostly of descendants of Maroons and black loyalists) it really isn’t an accurate picture of Black Canaidans as a whole (who mostly live in other provinces and are mostly Caribbean/African immigrants).
If you are interested I would suggest you look up topics like Africville in addition to the novel “Book of Negroes”
A relevant comment from that article:
“Blacks of Caribbean origin form a much larger proportion of the black community in Canada than in the United States — in fact, almost 30% of Canada’s black population is of Jamaican origin alone,[7] and a further 32% are from other Caribbean nations.[5]”
Its legality depended on the province. I once - totally by chance - came across a copy of the actual act that ended slavery in Ontario - it was I think in 1793 or so.
Slavery had never been a big deal here though, mostly confined to the servants of aristocrats and some tradesmen, like blacksmiths’ helpers. I never saw any figures, but there was no culture of chattel agricultural slavery in what was then Upper Canada, and I understand very few actual slaves. Their descendants do not form any sort of identifiable community today.
I know of an interesting bit of Black history though: near my family cottage in Oro-Medonte township, Simcoe County, there is a famous historical site - the African Episcopal Church. This was the church build by freemen, escaped slaves, who formed a community up there - the very “end” of the “Underground Railroad”. Most escaped slaves settled further south, but these were the ones who were most concerned about the possibility of hunters crossing the border after them - so they moved further north. Apparently, the area had originally been settled by Black soldiers of the War of 1812, granted land as a reward for service (they mostly left in disgust over the remoteness of the “rewarded” land!)
Sadly, their community has entirely died out. What happened was that after the Civil War, most of them left for warmer climes. The winters up there are harsh and bleak, and the farmland - not the best. Some stayed, but gradually most drifted away. I believe the last descendant to stick it out died in 1950 or so, the end of over a century of the Black settlement.
Anyway, the Church is maintained as a historic site, and I stop from time to time to visit it. The oddest collection of folks can be found checking it out - most surreal was one time I stopped to visit and it was the rally point for a group driving Model T antique cars.
Canada is mainly a community of immigrants. A significant number of the population, especially the non-white population, are barely second or third generation.
Nova Scotia has the best know of the escaped slave communites, but iIRC there was a smaller one in southern Ontario. Canada made it easy for (black) Carribean people to come to Cnada, since many were fellow British Commonwealth countries and for decades that gave them an edge. Along with regular immigration, there was famously the maid or nanny from the Carribean or Jamaica. Once established, Canada also had generous family reunification policies, so they brought in the rest of the family. Plus, until a decade ro two ago, illegal immigration was easy. So a person like Ben Johnson who won and lost the 1988 gold medal for sprinting, was the son of an immigrant Jamaican maid.
I would suggest that the immigration of blacks from the USA was much more limited, because the job opportunities were no different than in the USA, and the immigration requirements - like education levels - were the sort that meant if you could pass them, you were just as likely to be successful south of the border; so Canada did not hold a big appeal to US Africa-Americans in the last half century. Before that, Canada was as quietly racist as the northern USA.
Nowadays, Canada opens its doors to immigrants from all over the world. IIRC there’s a geographic quote system. Also, we have the most lenient refugee system in the world. As a result, we have large numbers of people of various hues, especially in the larger cities. Somali gangs are a problem in some neighbourhoods. I hear there’s one out west called the “mad cows”; one of the many wives of the (former?) head of Somalia is living on welfare as a refugee in Canada with a number of her children.
Quebec is particularly concerned about the waning number of French-speaking Quebeckers and the growing influence of English. They encourage immigration of French-speakers, and from the Americas this generally means large numbers of Haitian immigrants.
So you name it, we got it. But the influence of American culture is such that many kids, black white yellow or brown, tend to immitate “gangsta” culture.
It feels weird being the only one pointing out the obvious, but Jewish folks can speak with a Southern accent, too. That LK must be emulating his mother when he uses words like yall–rather than, you know, having simply acquired the accent from his surroundings like most people do–is also a groundless assumption.
Black culture in Canada seems to generally be an Eastern thing. I don’t know why, but there are very few blacks in the Prairie provinces (I grew up knowing about 5 black kids in all my school days). And there don’t seem to be many in BC.
In Quebec, it’s a lot of French-speaking immigrants and in Ontario, as mentioned before, it’s largely Caribbean blacks. If there’s a ‘Canadian Black Culture’, it would be centered around Caribbean traditions and American black pop culture.
Roxie Roker grew up and lived in Brooklyn most of her life. Her parents were Bahamian, so whereever Lenny got his “Y’all” from, he wasn’t emulating her; as she wasn’t from the south, or even African-American.
Perhaps his “Y’all” was just an affectation and you are suffering from a case of confirmation bias.
I would imagine there are a few of them. I recalled South Buxton from Ron Brown’s books on Ontario history, but I didn’t know about Oro-Medonte. I’m up there occasionally when I’m back in Ontario, so it’s something I’ll look for. Thanks for the tip!
Yup; various groups moved various distances from the border, for safety. Those who moved further away tended to regard their settlements as the “end of the line”.
I can only imagine how miserably an isolated rural Ontario winter would have appeared in the 1850s to a runaway who made it all the way from the deep south!
And if you’re American, and you’re going to look it up, you’ll want to use its American title: *Someone Knows My Name. *I wonder why it would have been published with a different title in the U.S. Would Book of Negroes be considered offensive?