These articles discuss black Canadians in enslavement, and how they overcame it. This significant part of Canadian History debates the enslavement of Africans in the 19th century of upper Canada, and how they resisted enslavement in many diverse ways; influencing a defiant behaviour on the effort to legislate against the effects of slavery in the province. For example, when examining the past life of Chloe Cooley, it shows that her courage during the attempt to sell her away to a New Yorker. Her active resistance administered the catalyst that drove the Canadian Government to pass the progressive Emancipation Act. Which eventually led to the passage of the 1793 “Simcoe Act,” sponsored by and named for Upper Canada’s antislavery lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe. Although the act had not freed many, black Canadians fled for the border of the Northwest Territory, where enslavement had been dissolved. This anti-slavery law occurred 40years before any other anti-slavery law was passed by the British Empire. Once slavery was abolished in Canada, many slaves from the United States started to make their way to Canada so that they could become “free people”.  As a result, Chloe Cooley’s resistance inspired the Simcoe Act and thereby set in motion what became known as the Underground Railroad.

Bibliography:

Cooper, Afua (2007). Acts of Resistance; Black men and women engage slavery in upper Canada . (Volume XCIX, Number 1 Ed.). Ontario: Ontario Hi

Jan Noel, “‘Nagging Wife’ Revisited”

Noel’s “Nagging Wife’s Revisited “, concentrates on women in the fur trade and their different roles in New France. It narrows this by fixating on the role of the native and elite women of New France, and their involvement/characteristics in the economy. The Lower and Middle classes of women in the fur trade did not have the same advantages as the elite women, due to their social categorizations, such as their race, class or economic status. The elite women of the fur trade demonstrated that they were a big part of the fur trade economy. “This active participation was quite normal in New France, compared to the women in Europe[1].” The woman of the fur trade played an essential part in the trade of raw materials. Their roles in what resource they traded also depended on her status and marital ties. To conclude, generally it was the upper classes of the elite women that benefited from their privileged positions, due to their wealthy husbands and their own form of status’.

 [1]      Jan Noel, “‘Nagging Wife’ Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France” in Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History. 6th ed. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2011.

James Ronda’s article focuses on the connection between the First Nations and Missionaries. While using several resources to highlight his points, the article, “We are well as we are”: an Indian Critique of 17^th-century Christians Missions indispensable content examines how the missionaries are identified as living a sinless life. They were ¹ “dedicated, self-sacrificing people who truly believed in their task, historians have tended to see them as they saw themselves: as humble servants, saving souls from savagery, and damnation.” (p. 66). These stories of heaven and hell, and living the “sinless life”, told by the missionaries, were not accepted by the First Nations people, and were deemed distrustful. While the aboriginals were able to resist missionary impulses, the missionaries were also blamed for the outbreak of afflictions and natural disasters (ie. droughts) that grew prevalent among the native’s populations. This article focuses religion and American culture, as well as the racial tension between the European missionaries and the aboriginal people.

¹ Ronda, James P. “‘We Are Well As We Are’: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions.” ‘We Are Well As We Are’: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions 34, no. 1 (January 1, 1977): 66-82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1922626?&seq=16#page_scan_tab_contents.

The first chapter of Canadian History: Pre-Confederation reviews the fundamentals of studying history, and a variety of studying methods. Historical sources are creditworthy after being verified and are subject to change through new methodologies. By using a variety of studying techniques, we find that the reader is open to the probability that there may be different perceptions to the past. E.H. Carr notes that “Events and personalities to which we apply importance are a matter of choice….. In other words, history doesn’t exist independently of the human imagination: it is something that is created.”

E.H. Carr, What is History? (London: Penguin, 1961): 11.