The presence of Black children, women, and men who were enslaved in Upper Canada has been omitted from, or marginalized, in the Canadian historical narrative. Because of my years of research on slaver...

During the colonial era of present-day Ontario, more than 600 Black men, women, and children were enslaved, many of them by white loyalists such as Matthew Elliott, one of Upper Canada’s largest slave...

The Historical Significance of Emancipation Day in Canada with Dr. Natasha L. Henry-Dixon

One of the hundreds of Black people who were enslaved in Upper Canada, Chloe Cooley (fl. 1793) came to public attention in March 1793 after her enslaver, Adam Vrooman, forcibly transported her across the Niagara River to sell her on the American side. Two witnesses reported the incident and her desperate resistance, which directly influenced the subsequent passage of the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada. In 2022 the Canadian government designated Cooley a person of national historic significance.