Канада празднует 200-летие отмены рабства: от истории Уайт-Плейнса до современного приёма иммигрантов

Neil Macmillan: Emancipation 200 years after the end of British slavery Article content As Canadians we tend to equate slavery with the cotton fields of the Deep South of the United States but not with Canada itself. However, as the Department of Canadian Heritage notes on its website, Recommended Videos “Canadians are not always aware that Black and Indigenous Peoples were once enslaved on the land that is now Canada.” Indeed, in the aftermath of the American War of Independence, the United Empire Loyalists who moved north were legally permitted to keep their slaves as “human property.” This background is why, in March 2021, Canada’s Parliament voted unanimously to designate Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day, marking the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect across most of the British Empire. Then in December 2021, Ontario went further by declaring the entire month of August as Emancipation Month, having previously established its own Emancipation Day in 2008. Curiously, despite being a Christian country, England had, since the days of Queen Elizabeth I, operated the incredibly brutal yet enormously profitable slave trade that brought African people from their native lands via “the middle passage” to the country’s North American territories. And yet it was ultimately as a result of the moral outrage of Quakers and other devout Christians like William Wilberforce that led to the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act by the British Parliament in 1833. However, even earlier than that, the Upper Canada Legislature in 1793 had passed an act that automatically granted freedom to any enslaved person arriving from the United States. As a result, until the end of the American Civil War in 1865 over 30,000 enslaved African Americans took the “Underground Railroad,” a secret network of routes and safe houses, to Canada, settling mostly in southern Ontario. In our area, Upper Canada Village, recognizes Emancipation Day with an annual event featuring music, dancing, poetry and speakers to complement its Black History-themed permanent exhibit. In Ontario, the most notable Emancipation Day celebration is surely the one in Owen Sound where an annual Emancipation Festival has been held for the past 164 years to mark its status as the farthest point north of the Underground Railroad. One of the festival’s guest speakers this year was Sen. Bernadette Clement — affectionately known as “Cornwall’s Senator” — who not only has the distinction of being Ontario’s first Black woman mayor but is also widely seen as a role model for Canada’s Black community. Cornwall, along with many other communities in Canada are now experiencing an influx of newcomers from Africa as well as from Asia and Latin America. These African newcomers are not coming to North America as slaves like those sent here hundreds of years ago. They’re arriving on airplanes as economic immigrants — think of Cornwall Coun. Fred Ngoundjo, another role model of Black excellence, who moved here from Cameroon. Many of these Afrodescendant newcomers to Cornwall are francophone. Recently, the federal government has designated Cornwall as one of 24 “welcoming francophone communities” in Canada. The successful integration of all these newcomers represents a new challenge and opportunity for Cornwall but it is one the community seems to be rising to meet. For example, on the religious front, local faith communities, traditionally composed of members of European ancestry, are experiencing an enriching diversification in their membership, while on the cultural front, Lamoureux Park is now hosting festivals featuring cultures from around the world, including Africa. All this seems to bode well for a Cornwall that lives up to the high spiritual and ethical standards enshrined in the world’s spiritual traditions — in other words, a community in which everyone feels they belong!