What slavery looked like in Canada – By Tristin Hopper (National Post) / Feb 27 2021
A generation before it was the final stop of the Underground Railroad, Canada was the westernmost outpost of a British Empire that was the biggest slave trader in the world
They came in great, dusty columns trudging north; the persecuted refugees of a new country founded on freedom and liberty.
These were the United Empire Loyalists; the thousands of men, women and children loyal to the Crown who were forced into Canada by the victory of rebel forces in the American War of Independence. “Neither confiscation of their property, the pitiless persecution of their kinsmen in revolt, nor the galling chains of imprisonment could break their spirits,” reads a stirring monument to the loyalists in Hamilton, Ont.
And they brought their slaves with them.
A memorial statue of United Empire Loyalists in Hamilton, Ont.
When Canadian historians talk about Africans coming here after the American Revolution, they generally focus on the Black Loyalists; freed slaves escaped from American masters who were emancipated by the British and settled in Nova Scotia. But not every African brought to Canada after the Revolutionary War was free.
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