Month: February 2021

By Heather Escoffery

Canadians have a habit of making connections to the United States when describing our own history. One of the most insidious uses of this kind of comparison is apparent when exploring the institution of slavery in the Americas. Most Canadians’ knowledge of the history of slavery relates to Canada’s role as the “North Star” for Black people escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad. Focusing on Canada as sanctuary for enslaved Black people results in Canada’s own history of slavery is often undermined or downplayed. Queen’s Bush resident Sophia Burthen Pooley, and her first-person slave narrative, helps sheds light on the violent reality many Black people faced as enslaved subjects in early Canada.

Originally from New York, Sophia Pooley (née Burthen) “was stolen from [her] parents when [she] was seven years old” (Drew 192). She was brought to Canada and sold to the Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant, whom she lived with for five years until she was again sold to a white man named Samuel Hatt. She lived another seven years in slavery to Hatt until some “white [neighbours] said [she] was free, and put [her] up to running away” (194). After escaping bondage, she married Robert Pooley, but he eventually left, and by the time she was in her 90s, Sophia was living in Queen’s Bush where “plenty of people [… helped her] a good deal” (195). Sophia’s story challenges a lot of preconceived notions regarding Canada’s relationship with slavery, and by investigating the ways in which her narrative undoes the separation that Canada tries to achieve by positioning itself in comparison to the United States, it is easy to see how we often minimize our unpleasant and prejudice past to maintain a virtuous reputation.

Canadian history tend to gloss over our treatment of Black people, especially when discussing Canada’s involvement with the institution of slavery. Published in 1869 (just 13 years after Sophia’s testimony and 35 years after slavery was abolished in the British colonies), W. M. Canniff’s History of the Settlement of Upper Canada commends early Canada for its restraint and good treatment of the people enslaved. He states that “the record of our country is so honorable upon the question of slavery, that the fact that slaves did once breathe among us, cast no stigma upon the maple leaf” (570). He goes on to say that “Canadians are almost ignorant of the fact that the “institution” of slavery existed in Canada” and that the “principles which guided the settlers of the country were of too noble a nature to accept the monstrous system of human bondage” (570).

This historical revision of Canadian slavery diminishes the pain and hardship faced by Black people subjected to Canadian slavery and minimizes Canadian responsibility in its practice and so dismisses the historical Black experience of our country. In her 2004 book on the Queen’s Bush settlement, Linda Brown-Kubisch describes slavery in New France as “less abusive” than the United States: slaves received “relatively humane treatment, frequently adopting their owner’s surname and remaining with the family until their death” (2). While she does touch on the changes that stripped slaves of personhood when the British legal system overtook the French, Brown-Kubisch classifies Canada’s practices as the “relatively less brutal system of slavery” (4). This diminishing of the (violent) realities of slavery in early Canada, through comparisons with the peculiar institution in the “colonies further south,” in Canadian history is a long-established tradition (2).

Sophia’s story helps to combat this minimization, especially when reading about the evidence of violence presented in her testimony. When discussing her experience in slavery, Sophia mentions “a scar on [her] head from a wound [her master’s wife] gave [her] with a hatchet” and another “where she cut [her] with a knife” (Drew 149). Benjamin Drew (the biographer who recorded Sophia’s story) feels the need to add that “the scars spoken of were quite perceptible, but [he] saw many worse looking cicatrices” that were inflicted during the time she was enslaved (149). These undeniable indications of brutality and violence help combat the perception of Canadian slavery being humane and less abusive (which is often claimed in comparison to the U.S.’s history). Katherine McKittrick also notes that “black women were often purchased for sexual violence (113), which although is not noted in Sophia’s story, is another worrying possibility of her enslavement that demonstrates the atrocities done to Black women held in bondage in early Canada.

Examining Sophia Pooley’s story, and how her documented existence contradicts many common perceptions about Canadian history, helps to illuminate the experiences faced by Black people in Canada’s slave past; consequently, it also helps us recognize this continued minimization of the Black Canadian experience in our present through identifying how scholars continue to perpetuate a false narrative of Canadian tolerance.

Works Cited

Brown-Kubisch, Linda. The Queen’s Bush Settlement Black Pioneers, 1839-1865. Dundurn, 2004.

Canniff, W M. History of the Settlement of Upper Canada (Ontario,) with Special Reference to The Bay Quinte. Dudley & Burns, 1869.

Drew, Benjamin. A North-side View of Slavery: The Refugee: Or, The Narratives of Fugitive. J.P. Jewett and Company, 1856.

McRae, Matthew. “An Announcement of the Sale of Enslaved People. It Appeared in the Quebec Gazette in May 1785.” Canadian Museum of Human Rights, 2020.

McKittrick, Katherine. “Nothing’s Shocking: Black Canada.” Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, U of Minnesota P, 2006, pp. 91–119.

By Heather Escoffery

Just north of Waterloo, straddling the Townships of Wellesley and Peel, a stretch of unclaimed government land would become home to a thriving group of 19^th century Black settlers who demonstrated strength and community during harsh physical and social conditions. Known as the Queen’s Bush, this area was considered Crown Land, meaning it was not surveyed for sale; however, as increasing numbers of people escaping American slavery and other newly immigrated individuals came to Canada looking for opportunity, Queen’s Bush provided an open environment to establish a home and new life.

Residents who came to the area immediately began building dwellings and clearing land; while considered squatters, many hoped for future prosperity and the eventual ownership of the land they worked. For most, these dreams proved unrealized, as changing social conditions in the United States and the colonial Canadian government’s unwillingness to compromise with Queen’s Bush residents led to many people leaving for better opportunities elsewhere; however, during the time that the Queen’s Bush settlement flourished, it provided an example of a Black community that was able to blur social divisions and establish a deep sense of community.

Due to there being no intention behind settling the area with any particular group, the Queen’s Bush community was able to encourage greater interactions between black and white residents when compared to other settlements that sponsored the immigration of Black individuals. This is partly due to the random nature of their homesteads, as many people settled on the first piece of unclaimed land they came across, resulting in black and white homesteads being mingled together (Drew 216). As a result, unlike planned communities such as Oro Township, Queen’s Bush was not as segregated physically when first being settled. Along with the harsh winter conditions and lack of readily available supplies, this spatial integration led to residents depending on one another for assistance (Drew 217).

Some residents discussed this neighbourly reliance; for example, like John Little, a Black man who escaped slavery in the U.S. South, who described protecting himself and his wife from wildlife in the early days of the settlement: “we saw four bears in the cherry-trees eating the fruit. My wife went for my gun, called some neighbours, and we killed all four” (Drew 217; emphasis added). The close spatial proximity between black and white settlers resulted in less social segregation, as eventual schools in the area admitted both black and white students (which was unusual as the school system was becoming increasingly segregated due to legislation intended to allow separate schools for religious reasons) (Stamp 26).

Additionally, it was not uncommon to encounter interracial families in the settlement, like Peter E. and Elizabeth Susand, Levi and Elizabeth Jones, and Reverend Jacob Libertus and his wife Hannah (Brown-Kubisch 139). All of these factors allowed black and white settlers to prosper together; however, even though the Queen’s Bush settlement was established with these more tolerant tendencies, it can not be said that it was without discrimination or racist sentiments, especially after the interference of the government led to a shift in the demographics and social openness of the Queen’s Bush.

Increasing immigration led to greater interest in Crown Land, so in 1843 surveyors were sent out to divide Queen’s Bush for eventual sale (Brown-Kubisch 65). Although residents had petitioned the government to make accommodations that would enable them to buy the land that they had spent so much effort to clear and farm, these petitions were ignored or dismissed by government officials. In one case, Queen’s Bush residents asked that they might purchase the land in “installments” rather than in one lumpsum of “cash” or that the lots be divided into smaller sections, both of which would allow many residents to afford their land claims (Brown-Kubisch 236-237). However, this petition was ignored, along with others, and while many residents did not immediately lose their homes, predatory and discriminatory practices began to emerge as Queen’s Bush land became increasingly valuable.

The once close community began to crumble: the increased interest in the now cleared and farmable land in Queen’s Bush brought land agents who targeted Black families with lies and intimidation to get residents to flee or undersell their property. A Black man named John Francis described the agents’ behavior as ruining “a great many poor people here in the bush” and that he himself was intimidated into selling “two cows and a steer, to make the payment that [he] might hold the land” (Drew 196). Some white arrivals interested in the valuable land took it upon themselves to bully Black families into selling or fleeing (Brown-Kubisch 97-98). These increasing tensions and the rise in land prices lead to a mass exodus of the Black community out of Queen’s Bush between the 1850s and 1860s.

By 1864, only a few Black families were left in the Wellesley and Peel Townships, and the Queen’s Bush settlement became a quiet farming community of mostly white settlers. However, the memories and written histories of the Queen’s Bush reveal that even with racial prejudice, an indifferent or actively hostile government, and the continuing erasure of Black narratives in Canadian history, Black lives that prospered and worked together existed and carved a space in the Canadian landscape.

Works Cited

Benjamin Drew. A North-side View of Slavery: The Refugee: Or, The Narratives of Fugitive. J.P. Jewett and Company, 1856.

Brown-Kubisch, Linda. The Queen’s Bush Settlement Black Pioneers, 1839-1865. Natural Heritage Books, 2004.

Colton, Joseph Hutchins, Colton’s Canada West or Upper Canada, 1855. Digital Archive, Toronto Public Library, Toronto. https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca, Nov 2020.

Stamp, Robert. The Historical Background to Separate Schools in Ontario. Ontario Department of Education, Toronto. 1985.