Black Culture in Canada.

[lexi]

John Ware is a very interesting character, he was a former slave turned cowboy in Alberta, and honestly I’ve always thought his life would make a great movie - even without the legends ascribed to him.

[kushiel]

In Saskatchewan, the black population is largely refugees or educated professionals from places like South Africa. There’s a huge increase in foreign-born doctors here.

I’m trying to figure out how to say this politically correctly, so blame this on ignorance not malice. You know how black people from the Caribbean or Africa usually have very dark skin, almost black, because of very little breeding with Caucasians, whereas African-Americans tend to be a lighter brown? I was an adult before I ever saw a lighter skinned black person here.

[Sparky812]

@Jim_B

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).

Whoa! Y’all is a exclusively a Southern African-American word? I was sure I learned it from Gunsmoke or Bonanza…or maybe it was Alice?

@md2000

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.

Exactly! We have a saying in Ottawa, “It’s tough growing up in da ‘hood, …especially when da’ hood is Barrhaven!” (or substitute your own suburb:D)

[Malthus]

In Toronto, a great portion of the gun violence appears to originate in Jamacan “gangsta” culture, rather than in an imitation of American culture.

[Northern_Piper]

@Malthus

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.

I have a copy of it in my library. The full title was: An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and to limit the term of Contracts for servitude within this Province, S.U.C. 1792-1793 (2 Geo. III), c. VII.

I believe that it was the first statute to limit slavery in the British Empire. It didn’t abolish it all at once. It had three main provisions:

s. I - no further importation of Negroes [I’m using the language of the statute] as slaves, and no Negroe who came to Upper Canada after the enactment of the statute could be enslaved.

s. II - slaves lawfully obtained prior to the enactment of the Act continued to be slaves.

s. III - any child of a Negroe woman slave should be kept by her Master or Mistress, and required to provide service for the Master or Mistress, until achieving the age of 25, at which time the grown child was entitled to be released from service.

So it wasn’t abolished at one fell swoop. Slaves obtained prior to the Act coming force continued in slavery, unless released by their Master or Mistress. However, if any individuals were still enslaved in Upper Canada by 1834, they would have been liberated by the imperial Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery throughout most of the British Empire, effective August 1, 1834, the date cited by Mehitabel.

[Malthus]

@Northern_Piper

I have a copy of it in my library. The full title was: An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and to limit the term of Contracts for servitude within this Province, S.U.C. 1792-1793 (2 Geo. III), c. VII.

I believe that it was the first statute to limit slavery in the British Empire. It didn’t abolish it all at once. It had three main provisions:

s. I - no further importation of Negroes [I’m using the language of the statute] as slaves, and no Negroe who came to Upper Canada after the enactment of the statute could be enslaved.

s. II - slaves lawfully obtained prior to the enactment of the Act continued to be slaves.

s. III - any child of a Negroe woman slave should be kept by her Master or Mistress, and required to provide service for the Master or Mistress, until achieving the age of 25, at which time the grown child was entitled to be released from service.

So it wasn’t abolished at one fell swoop. Slaves obtained prior to the Act coming force continued in slavery, unless released by their Master or Mistress. However, if any individuals were still enslaved in Upper Canada by 1834, they would have been liberated by the imperial Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery throughout most of the British Empire, effective August 1, 1834, the date cited by Mehitabel.

That’s very interesting, I did not know or remember the exact terms of the Act (though I did remember it was intended to be gradual).

Though in practical effect, as you note, there would have been very few actual individual slaves left to free, forty years later, considering there never were all that many, the Act prohibited importing any, and made any adult children of slaves free.

In short, it was not that there existed a flourishing slave-owning culture in Upper Canada that was cut short by the Act of 1833. In Ontario, its effect would have been largely moot - the 1793 Act made the end of slavery inevitable, because it broke the cycle of chattel slavery.

Here is some interesting history I did not know. Apparently, the Act was inspired by the resistance of a slave woman - Chloe Cooley - to being transported into the US, and set the stage for the wider abolition movement throughout the Empire:

http://www.heritagefdn.on.ca/userfiles/HTML/nts_1_9982_1.html

http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques_MNO/Plaque_Niagara74.html

And this is interesting:

Early Canada Historical Narratives -- AN ACT TO PREVENT THE FURTHER...

Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807. In 1833 the newly elected British parliament contained 104 members who had pledged on the hustings to abolish slavery. On August 23rd, 1833 the Imperial Parliament passed an act to abolish slavery throughout the empire effective August 1st, 1834. The Imperial Act of 1833 abolished slavery in the British Empire effective August, 1834. This Act made no mention of Upper Canada because the Imperial government believed that slavery had already been eliminated from the province many years before. By the time Imperial emancipation finally did occur there were few if any slaves left in Upper Canada.

[JKellyMap]

@matt_mcl

Like Nova Scotia, there is an African-American community with deep roots in Montreal, for example in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy.

As someone born and raised in the US, the first time I came across a black Canadian was through jazz…the great (now late, great) pianist Oscar Peterson. Turns out he was from that Little Burgundy neighborhood of Montreal.