Executive summary
This study summarizes the key facts on slavery in Canada, from the colonial period to slavery’s eradication in British Columbia over four centuries later.
In early Canada, indigenous slave-trading networks were robust:
Before the transatlantic slave trade, in pre-Columbian North America alone there were at least 39 distinct slave societies.
By the late 17th century, up to two-thirds of the population of some Iroquois communities consisted of “adoptees”—that is, captives.
A system of native alliances traded slaves to the colonists of New France from as far away as the Missouri River basin, Upper Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and Chesapeake Bay.
Well into the 19th century, indigenous networks traded slaves along the Pacific Coast and Columbia River, with only minimal involvement of Europeans.
Thus, it makes sense that about 64 percent of all the slaves held by Europeans in New France from the mid-17th century to 1834 (when slavery was fully abolished in the British Empire) were indigenous; 34.5 percent were African. Using the upper estimates of historians, the grand total of all slaves held in Canada across that period numbered 7,000 to 7,500. For comparison, more than thirteen hundred times that many souls—nearly 10,000,000—were enslaved from 1619-1865 in the United States.
Despite opposition from slave-owning legislators, Upper Canada passed the first legislation in the British Empire to end slavery—15 years before Britain outlawed the slave trade, 41 years before Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies, and 72 years before the States settled the issue on the battlefield. Thus, if by “Canada” we mean the country confederated in 1867, the fact is that slavery has never been legal here; all legal Canadian slavery was pre-Confederation.
Moreover, Canada welcomed over 30,000 African-Americans who escaped slavery and found freedom at the northern terminus of the Underground Railroad.
Yet, indigenous slavery was not fully stamped out in British Columbia until near the turn of the 20th century. And human trafficking remains a grave evil facing Canadian society today.
On balance, Canada’s history and record on slavery deserve to be cherished and celebrated.
