Dan Rather: "Obama couldn't sell watermelons if you........"

[Kramer]

<<true that's why Obama got elected -- good old White Guilt. Surly it has nothing to do with his experience and ability.>>

Obama got elected because he wasn't George Bush and because he wasn't a Republican.  A fucking dog running in his place under the Democratic Party banner would have won that election against any two Republicans on earth.

In 2012 A fucking dog running in his place under the Republican (or ANY) Party banner (other than Democrat) will win that election against any two Democrats on earth.

[Amianthus]

Most of the Black Canadian slaves were of the indoor type. They went where their masters went. The rest of the slaves were aboriginals captured and indentured as the white man traveled westward.

Actually, the biggest influx of slaves to Canada was immediately after the American Revolution when British Loyalists moved to Canada, bringing their slaves with them. Since they were promised free land as long as they developed it, they made sure that they brought enough agricultural slaves to clear and farm the land.

[BT]

I guess that there would be a dependency on the region the Loyalists emigrated from. if they were urban North easterners i doubt they would have a plethora of field slaves. Southern Loyalists most like stayed in warmer climes and emigrated to places like the West indies.

[Michael Tee]

<<Since they were promised free land as long as they developed it, they made sure that they brought enough agricultural slaves to clear and farm the land.>>

LMFAO.  Nice try, Ami.

According to that theory, since Ontario (then called Upper Canada) was totally devoid of settlements prior to the American Revolution and was only settled by Loyalists after the Revolution, most of Ontario's agricultural counties should have the same high concentration of blacks as the counties of the rural South.

Never happened.  Never even came close.

[Amianthus]

Never happened.  Never even came close.

As for pioneer Canada, Power writes that "slave owning was widespread among the emerging political and social elites of Upper Canada." Peter Russell, Matthew Elliot, and many other distinguished men who sat on the Legislative Council of Upper Canada each owned dozens of slaves.

Most sought to protect their "right" to own slaves by arguing that a slave was legally owned property, and the right to own property was basic to all free societies. Courts that took away legally-owned slaves, could then take away land, or homes, and tyranny would reign.

Farmers asked, Who will compensate us for our freed slaves, and the lost benefits from slave labour? Many settlers were Loyalists who came here because government had promised them cheap land on the condition they clear it. So slaves were purchased specifically for that purpose. The government had lured them. Was the government now going to ruin them?

http://www.williamgairdner.com/canadas-slave-trade/

Little has been said about these people of colour who were considered chattels, and accompanied Loyalists to British territory. When Rev. John Stuart planned his family?s evacuation from Schenectady, NY, to the province of Quebec in 1781, he wrote, ?my negroes, being personal property, I take with me.? One of these ?negroes? was Tom Doe, who Stuart sold to John Conyn in 1783 for $275. Later, Rev. Stuart and his household settled in Kingston. Stuart was the first Anglican clergyman in Upper Canada.

One of the largest slaveholders in Canada, and a slave-trader, was Col. Matthew Elliott. He had worked for the British as a scout and Indian agent, and eventually became a member of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. With peace, Elliott acquired several thousand acres of land on the east of the Detroit River (near Malden, now Amherstburg), which he cleared using a workforce that included sixty slaves he had captured in Kentucky. Elliott had a reputation as a harsh master, and several of his slaves ran away.

http://www.ontarioheritageconnection.org/live/main.php?page=news.201002_e.html

[Michael Tee]

Thanks, those were interesting articles, but they really work against your argument.

For example, a propos the quoted remark that <<Peter Russell, Matthew Elliot, and many other distinguished men who sat on the Legislative Council of Upper Canada each owned dozens of slaves.>> your second linked article says that <<Resistance from the eleven slaveholders in the twenty-five member first Parliament of Upper Canada forced Simcoe to rethink his bill.>>  Eleven slaveholders, the biggest of whom own "dozens of slaves" means that the smallest of whom own 24 or less; say that half own "dozens" (24 or more) and half own fewer than "dozens" (23 or less) and pick 23.5 as a representative figure for the number of slaves owned by each of the 11 slaveholders - - 258 slaves owned by the legislators?

We're not really talking about a hell of a lot of slaves.  There just aren't any Ontario counties with anything near the black population of the rural counties of the Southern States.  The anecdotal evidence is highly interesting, I admit, but in reality, there just isn't any real evidence of massive slave-holding in Ontario.

[BT]

The year was 1790. Thomas Peters of Birchtown stood on the deck of a ship and watched the coast of Nova Scotia disappear in the distance. He had a mission. Peters was on his way to England with orders to contact the directors of the Sierra Leone Company and say to them: ?The Black people of Nova Scotia want to go home.?

Somewhere in their blood, their music and in a dozen half-forgotten languages, American slaves ? even illiterate, third- or fourth-generation slaves ? had always remembered Africa. They had heard about a group of well-meaning British abolitionists ? the Sierra Leone Company ? that had set up a colony for former slaves on the coast of Africa. They did not know how troubled that colony was, plagued by the resentment of local peoples, bullied by the company and situated next door to slave traders who were continuing their inhuman work. To many Canadian Blacks, Africa seemed to offer a possible future.

Peters came back from England with an invitation, but the Black community of Nova Scotia split on whether to accept it or not. In the end, a third of them decided to leave Canada. In 1791, 1,196 former slaves ? around half from Birchtown ? set sail from Halifax. Sadly, that group included most of Birchtown?s leaders, and the settlement was much weakened as a result. As for the African colonists, once again there was no happy ending.

http://agora.virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitDa.do;jsessionid=0564D4DE0F3814202ECE6063B32A4A76?method=preview&lang=EN&id=3115

[Michael Tee]

It's a sad story.  The ugliness of slavery and racism just seems like a bottomless pit.  Halifax is one of the few places in Canada with a long-standing black community, in this case, Africville, whose population goes back to the times of the article that you just posted.  Canadians white-wash this shit probably more than Americans, but I think that's because of the relatively large population of U.S. blacks who won't let you get away with it.  Here there's no comparable pressure to tell the historic truth and I think it's a bigger secret to Canadians than U.S. racism is to Americans.

[Plane]

What became of the slaves who escaped their masters in the early 1800s ?

Wasn't there a big group of them who made their way to Canada?

[Amianthus]

Barrington Walker, Associate Professor of History at Queens University, joins the discussion to explain that the "Underground Railroad" flowed both ways.  For a short period in 1784, slavery was abolished in some Northeastern U.S. states, and black slaves were actually smuggled south of the border to escape slavery in Canada.
 
Sylvia Hamilton, producer of the documentary "Little Black Schoolhouse", talks about segregation, revealing that the last segregated school in Ontario still existed until 1964, while one was still maintained in Nova Scotia until 1983.  She also discusses Viola Desmond, a Nova Scotia businesswoman who was jailed and fined in 1946, for sitting in the white section of a movie theatre.  Desmond is largely regarded as "Canada?s Rosa Parks". 
 
The show concludes with George Elliott Clarke, a Nova Scotian African Canadian author and historian.  Among other facts Clarke discloses that many African Canadians actually returned to the U.S., after the Civil War ended in 1865, because their treatment in Canada was so deplorable.  He warns that keeping Black History hidden allowed Canada to repeat human rights violations, including the Japanese internment during the Second World War and the Chinese Head Tax.

More at this link

[BT]

Segregated schools up until 1983?


Geez

[Michael Tee]

<<She also discusses Viola Desmond, a Nova Scotia businesswoman who was jailed and fined in 1946, for sitting in the white section of a movie theatre.  Desmond is largely regarded as “Canada’s Rosa Parks”.>>

She may well be Canada's Rosa Parks, but I'll bet that the ratio of Rosa Parks' name recognition to Viola Desmond's in Canada is at least a hundred to one.  I do recall reading about her, though not by name, in several articles relating to Africville and racism in Nova Scotia.

As depressing as it may be to consider what Canadians are guilty of in racial matters, I still don't think that Canada can come close to the U.S. in terms of lynch-mob violence and the horrors of racism generally and the low percentage of blacks in the population prior to the postwar Caribbean immigration demonstrates that there was far less slavery here than in the U.S.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Among other facts Clarke discloses that many African Canadians actually returned to the U.S., after the Civil War ended in 1865, because their treatment in Canada was so deplorable.
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I would guess that the weather in Nova Scotia might also have seemed a bit deplorable to someone who grew up in Alabama as well.