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To the Canadian elected officials:
I would like Emancipation day to be a national holiday. Combined, there is over 10,000 petition signatures. Making Emancipation Day a holiday would help force that desperately needed reckoning with our past—a day to confront the legacy of slavery and white supremacy our world globally. As recent months have shown, this is something our country and many others need now more than ever. A Vancouver City Council motion for Emancipation Day unanimously passed on Oct 15, 2020: https://council.vancouver.ca/20201007/documents/pspc10.pdf
Emancipation Day, which falls on Aug. 1, commemorates the day slavery was outlawed in the British Empire — including Canada — in 1834. When the Abolition of Slavery Act came into force, it freed an estimated 900,000 slaves of African and Indigenous descent across British-controlled territories.
But the fact that Emancipation Day is primarily celebrated by Black and Indigenous people, and generally ignored by the rest of the world, is part of a larger problem. We have never truly reckoned with the horrors of slavery. We would still prefer to just not think about it, or to picture it in harmless terms, whitewashed of its true brutality. Making Emancipation Day a federal holiday would be far more than a symbolic gesture. It would provide space for growth as a nation. It’s a day for celebration, but also a day for education.
Slavery isn’t something that’s in our distant past; we’re still living with its legacy every single day. Slavery created institutions designed to protect a privileged small elite of white wealthy landowners—affecting everything from public schools to property laws to our tax system.
Today, we live in a nation where people at the top of our democracy and economy continue to divide and conquer us, Canadian citizens, by pitting us against one another on the basis of our identity. People of colour are both exploited and made to shoulder the blame for our own suffering. When people of African and Indigenous descent are more likely to live in poverty, to be killed by the police, to be incarcerated, and to live in areas where housing has been neglected, that is seen by the majority of white people as our own fault.
Only by acknowledging its ugly past can a nation begin to heal itself. Our government has never gone through the Truth and Reconciliation process that Germany, South Africa, and Rwanda undertook after genocide and state-sanctioned violence in those countries. We have never apologized for our actions, nor enacted policies to undo the harm. We whitewash the brutality of slavery in our national dialogue, and most egregiously in our school curriculum. There are still history textbooks in schools across this country that portray slavery in vivid terms.
I feel that making Emancipation Day a Canadian holiday would be an obvious first step to end systemic racism. Emancipation Day is a very important day in our country's history. The declaration of August 1st as Emancipation Day, accompanied by an apology, would be an obvious way to acknowledge ongoing systemic racism.
The bottom line is that we can’t move forward as a nation until we come to terms with our past. Recognizing Emancipation Day on a federal level would be a major step toward acknowledging the sins of our history, and toward building a genuine multiracial democracy where all of us are finally, truly free.
We want our country, Canada to officially proclaim August 1 as the Emancipation Day holiday, and to celebrate it on that day each year.
Sincerely,
NAME HERE
Send to: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
What we want
Slavery and segregation created circumstances of marginalization, a cycle of unequal access, lost opportunities and systemic poverty. Even after slavery was abolished in Canada, Black people continue to be devalued with subpar health care, education and lack of employment opportunities. Communities were legally segregated, creating significant barriers to economic success.
As the City’s Emancipation Day proclamation acknowledged, local Black communities have worked and continue to work to bring awareness to these present and historical realities, and there is a contemporary campaign to declare a National Emancipation Day in Canada.
As the City’s Emancipation Day proclamation acknowledged, local Black communities have worked and continue to work to bring awareness to these present and historical realities, and there is a contemporary campaign to declare a National Emancipation Day in Canada.
- We want our country, Canada to officially proclaim August 1 as the Emancipation Day holiday, and to celebrate it on that day each year.
Why do we want this?
- Black enslavement was and is not just an American thing— it happened in Canada, and to ignore that is to ignore years of history and trauma that our current systems are built on.
- Enslavement in Canada existed before the European colonizers arrived, but the Europeans made it about race and property.
- The enslavement of Black people in Canada began in the early 1600s and “officially” ended in 1834—that’s two hundred years.
- Enslaved people in Canada were not treated better than enslaved people in other countries, such as the United States.
- Canada didn’t even end enslavement itself. It was abolished by Britain across its empire in 1834 (so, Canada was included by extension).
- A lack of Black history curriculum in Canadian schools means that many students don’t learn the above, which feeds into the myth that there is no anti-Black racism in Canada.
- Making Emancipation Day a national holiday would help force that desperately needed reckoning with our past—a day to confront the legacy of slavery and white supremacy in the United States, in the UK, and globally. As recent months have shown, this is something our country and many others need now more than ever.
- On August 1st, 1834 only slaves below the age of six were freed. Enslaved people older than six years of age were re-designated as “apprentices” and required to work 40 hours per week without pay, as part of compensation payment to their former owners. Full emancipation was finally achieved at midnight on July 31, 1838, almost four full years later.
- A big part of recognizing Emancipation Day is talking about the many segments of Canada’s past that often do not make it into the mainstream history-class curriculum.
- Emancipation Day is not just about honouring the past. It continues to have an effect on the lives of African Canadians today.
- Emancipation Day is also about reflecting on our present, taking the time to examine the current circumstances and remembering why Black lives matter. When we talk about intergenerational trauma within African Canadian families, we are looking at generations of trauma stretching back to times of slavery, pre-1834. Tying our present to our past is a way of recognizing how slavery and segregation are actually the roots of anti-Black racism.
- Emancipation Day is also about preparing for our future. It is in this preparation and fight for equality that we will prepare the future generations for success.
- Emancipation Day is about learning Canada’s collective history — not rewriting that history but telling a more complete history that includes the history of slavery.
- Even after emancipation, African heritage and history continued to be erased by methods of segregation, murder and systemic marginalization and racism.
- Canadian history is taught in schools from a Eurocentric perspective that omits or minimizes the human rights violations against African Canadians, as evident because students like me learn about European explorers, rather than African or other ethnics ones.
- Slavery and segregation created circumstances of marginalization, a cycle of unequal access, lost opportunities and systemic poverty. Even after slavery was abolished in Canada, African Canadians continue to be devalued and left to survive with subpar health care, education and lack of employment opportunities. Communities were legally segregated, creating significant barriers to success.
- August 1 is important in Canadian history because the Slavery Abolition Act affected the lives of those enslaved and the lives of their descendants.
- Recognizing Emancipation day is a step forward in recognizing African history as part of society’s story and teaches the next generation about the shameful and forgotten parts of the past that must not be repeated.
- The fact that Emancipation Day is primarily celebrated by black people, and largely ignored by the rest of the world is part of a larger problem. Our world has never truly reckoned with the horrors of slavery. Many would still prefer to just not think about it, or to picture it in harmless terms, whitewashed of its true brutality.
- Even though segregation is no longer legal nor happening regularly, Africans continue to experience systemic anti-Black racism through social exile, through significant economic disparities and through active discrimination. This history gives context to the current circumstance of poverty and violence. Where this context is not provided, poverty and violence are dismissed as individual issues rather than being accurately understood as systemic issues.