Black Like Who By Rinaldo Walcott Summary

In Black Like Who?, Rinaldo Walcott addresses the erasure of the Black body in national historical narratives to the extent that “many people continue to believe that any black presence in Canada is a recent and urban one spawned by black Caribbean, and now continental African, migration (43).” As a matter of fact, as exemplified by Myriam Chancy, Canada is widely considered as a harbor, as a place of tolerance and diversity for people seeking refuge “differentiating it from the United States and other leading First World countries as a place where true demography has taken root and flourished (Chancy, 80).
In The Hanging of Angelique, Afua Cooper investigates the secret of slavery in Canada. She points out that this “lurid” image is ingrained in the national psyche and is a part or their national identity (page). For her, this idealistic image of Canada as a land of refuge takes its origins between 1830 and 1860, the period known as the Underground Railroad when “thousands of American runaway slaves escaped to and found refuge in the British territories to the north” (Cooper, 69). As a consequence, this part of Canadian history is written out of books. Afua Cooper states that it is difficult to find scholarly or popular accounts and depiction of slave life at the time
demonstrating the inexistence of an archive. As a consequence, it is important to reestablish the reality of the experience of slavery in Canada:
SLAVERY IS CANADA’s best-kept secret, locked within the national closet. And because it is a secret it is written out of official history. But slavery was an institutionalized practice for over two hundred years. Canada also engaged in the nefarious business of slaving (Cooper, 68)
She explains that although Canada was not a slave society namely “a society whose economy was based on slavery”, it was “a society with slaves” making slavery “common” in Canada (68). Besides, shipyards of several of the “older Canadian colonies constructed ships for use in the British slave trade” (68).
To some extent, it can be stated after Afua Cooper that the word “slavery” often pinpoints the United States in North America. I would also add from my personal experience that the history of slavery in Canada is rarely mentioned in curricula, favouring the harsher slave societies of the Caribbean and the United States: “the American economy, especially the southern portion, was fueled by the labour of millions of African slave captives (68).” Black presence is Canada goes back to the 17th century: the first Black man to set foot in Canada was Mathieu Da Costa, a free man who worked as a translator during Samuel Champlain’s excursion around 1608 (Chronologie).
Eight one years later, Louis XIV officially allowed slavery in New France to meet labour shortage and the demands of the colonists who wanted Black slaves to compensate for the extermination of the Native populations (through genocide, the harsh conditions of slavery and the arrival of the new diseases) (Cooper, page?). Black slaves were then brought from New York, New England, the Carolinas and other American colonies, but also from the West Indies, Africa and Europe
(page?).
By the time of the British conquest in 1706 – after the end of the Seven Years War between Britain and France – “over 1,500 Black slaves had landed in Canada”. (page?”). The conquest and later the American Revolutionay War (1776-1783) naturally led to the intensification and expansion of slavery in Canada (page?), the latter led to the escape of at least 35,000 Loyalists - composed of Americans with their slaves - to Nova Scotia five thousand of whom were Black both slave and free (Cooper). They were the largest group of people from African descent to settle in Nova Scotia at the time (novasscotia) leading to the expansion of Nova Scotia and the creation of New Brunswick in 1784.
In 1793, “An act to prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contrats for serviture within the province” was pushed through the legislature. While confirming that the current slaves would remain enslaved, it ensured that their children would gain their freedom at 25 years of age while banning the introduction of new slaves (page). For the other slaves living in the United States, it meant that reaching the soil of Upper Canada would make them free. The rest of the story is well known through the name “the Underground Railroad period” describing the period when the largest number of slaves arrived independently in Canada. Hence, slavery gradually declined in Canada and would come to an end in 1834 when it was outlawed by the British parliament. It is noteworthy to know that though slaves in Canada did not perform the same chores than in other slave societies being farm labourers, house servants and other skilled occupations, slavery was not milder at all. The slave system was not lenient: Slaves were baptized and converted to Catholicism. They were whipped, tortured, they committed sucide and practiced “marronage” (running away). Black women were assaulted and impregnated by slaveholders signyfing “the loss of control that Black people especially women, experienced over their bodies (page?)” The children inherited of the status of their mothers and were then enslaved (page?).”