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