Афроканадцы: история, культура и современность

Canadians of African descent

Black Canadians , also known as Afro Canadians (French: Afro Canadiens), are Canadians of African or Afro Caribbean descent. The majority of Black Canadians are of Afro Caribbean and African origin, though the Black Canadian population also consists of African Americans in Canada and their descendants (including Black Nova Scotians). Black Canadians have contributed to many areas of Canadian culture. Many of the first visible minorities to hold high public offices have been Black, including Michaëlle Jean, Donald Oliver, Stanley G. Grizzle, Rosemary Brown, and Lincoln Alexander. Black Canadians form the third largest visible minority group in Canada, after South Asian and Chinese Canadians. Of the black population, 10 per cent identified as mixed race of "white and black". The five most black populated provinces in 2021 were Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba. Preston, in the Halifax area, is the community with the highest percentage of Black people, with 69.4%; it was a settlement where the Crown provided land to Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. Brooks, a town in southeastern Alberta, is the census subdivision with the highest percentage of Black people, with 22.3%. The community there is mainly composed of East African immigrants. In the 2011 census, 945,665 Black Canadians were counted, making up 2.9% of Canada's population. In the 2016 census, the black population totalled 1,198,540, encompassing 3.5% of the country's population. The 10 largest sources of migration for Black Canadians are Jamaica (136,505), Haiti (110,920), Nigeria (109,240), Ethiopia (43,205), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (37,875), Cameroon (33,200), Somalia (32,285), Eritrea (31,500), Ghana (28,420), and the United States (27,055). 69.1% of Black Canadians are Christian, while 11.9% are Muslim and 18.2% are irreligious. This is compared to 53.3%, 4.9%, and 34.6%, respectively, of Canadians as a whole. Amongst first generation Black Canadian immigrants, 74.2% are Christian, 13.3% are Muslim, and 11.4% are irreligious. A small amount of Black Canadians (0.6%) also have some Indigenous heritage, due to historical intermarriage between Black and First Nations or Métis communities. Historically little known, this aspect of Black Canadian cultural history began to emerge in the 2010s, most notably through the musical and documentary film project The Afro Métis Nation.

In the 2006 census, 25.5% of Black Canadians were in a mixed union with a non Black person. Black and non Black couples represented 40.6% of pairings involving a Black person. Among native born Black Canadians in couples, 63% of them were in a mixed union. About 17% of Black Canadians born in the Caribbean and in Bermuda were in a mixed relationship, compared to 13% of African born Black Canadians. Furthermore, 30% of Black men in unions were in mixed unions, compared to 20% of Black women.

The Black presence in Canada is rooted mostly in voluntary immigration. Despite the various dynamics that may complicate the personal and cultural interrelationships between descendants of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, descendants of former American slaves who viewed Canada as the promise of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad, and more recent immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa, one common element that unites all of these groups is that they are in Canada because they or their ancestors actively chose of their own free will to settle there. The first recorded Black person to set foot on land now known as Canada was a free man named Mathieu da Costa. Travelling with navigator Samuel de Champlain, de Costa arrived in Nova Scotia some time between 1603 and 1608 as a translator for the French explorer Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts. By the time of the British conquest of New France in 1759–1760, about 3,604 enslaved people were in New France, of whom 1,132 were Black and the rest First Nations people. The majority of the enslaved Africans brought to New France were female domestic servants, and were usually raped by their masters (enslavers), who tended to literally see their enslaved women and girls as their sex slaves. Their family names are Carbonneau, Charest, Johnson, Lafleur, Lemire, Lepage, Marois, Paradis, etc.

At the time of the American Revolution, inhabitants of the British colonies in North America had to decide where their future lay. Those from the Thirteen Colonies loyal to the British Crown were called United Empire Loyalists and came north. Many White American Loyalists brought their enslaved African people with them, numbering approximately 2,500 individuals. During the war, the British had promised freedom and land to enslaved African people who left rebel masters and worked for them; this was announced in Virginia through Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Enslaved African people also escaped to British lines in New York City and Charleston, and their forces evacuated thousands after the war. They transported 3,000 people to Nova Scotia. This latter group was largely made up of merchants and labourers, and many set up home in Birchtown near Shelburne. Some settled in New Brunswick. Both groups suffered from discriminatory treatment by white settlers and prominent landowners who still held enslaved African people. Some of the refugees had been free black people prior to the war and fled with the other refugees to Nova Scotia, relying on British promises of equality. Under pressure of the new refugees, the city of Saint John amended its charter in 1785 specifically to exclude people of African descent from practising a trade, selling goods, fishing in the harbour, or becoming freemen; these provisions stood until 1870, although by then they were largely ignored. In 1782, the first race riot in North America took place in Shelburne; white veterans attacked African American settlers who were getting work that the former soldiers thought they should have. Due to the failure of the British government to support the settlement, the harsh weather, and discrimination on the part of white colonists, 1,192 Black Loyalist men, women and children left Nova Scotia for West Africa on 15 January 1792. They settled in what is now Sierra Leone, where they became the original settlers of Freetown. They, along with other groups of free transplanted people such as the Black Poor from England, became what is now the Sierra Leone Creole people, also known as the Krio. Although difficult to estimate due to the failure to differentiate enslaved African people and free Black populations, it is estimated that by 1784 there were around 40 enslaved Africans within Montreal, compared to around 304 enslaved Africans within the Province of Quebec. By 1799, vital records note 75 entries regarding Black Canadians, a number that doubled by 1809. Funds had been provided by the Government of Jamaica to aid in the resettlement of the Maroons in Canada. Five thousand acres were purchased at Preston, Nova Scotia, at a cost of £3000. Small farm lots were provided to the Maroons and they attempted to farm the infertile land. Like the former tenants, they found the land at Preston to be unproductive; as a result they had little success. The Maroons also found farming in Nova Scotia difficult because the climate would not allow cultivation of familiar food crops, such as bananas, yams, pineapples, or cocoa. Small numbers of Maroons relocated from Preston to Boydville for better farming land. The British Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth made an effort to change the Maroons' culture and beliefs by introducing them to Christianity. From the monies provided by the Jamaican Government, Wentworth procured an annual stipend of £240 for the support of a school and religious education. After suffering through the harsh winter of 1796–1797, Wentworth reported the Maroons expressed a desire that "they wish to be sent to India or somewhere in the east, to be landed with arms in some country with a climate like that they left, where they may take possession with a strong hand". Upon their arrival in West Africa in 1800, they were used to quell an uprising among the black settlers from Nova Scotia and London. After eight years, they were unhappy with their treatment by the Sierra Reynolds Company.

The Canadian climate made it uneconomic to keep enslaved African people year round, unlike the plantation agriculture practised in the southern United States and Caribbean. Slavery within the colonial economy became increasingly rare. For example, the powerful Mohawk leader Joseph Brant purchased and enslaved an African American named Sophia Burthen Pooley, whom he kept for about 12 years before selling her for $100. In 1772, prior to the American Revolution, Britain outlawed the slave trade in the British Isles followed by the Knight v. Wedderburn decision in Scotland in 1778. This decision, in turn, influenced the colony of Nova Scotia. In 1788, abolitionist James Drummond MacGregor from Pictou published the first anti slavery literature in Canada and began purchasing slaves' freedom and chastising his colleagues in the Presbyterian church who owned slaves. In 1790, John Burbidge freed the African people he had enslaved. Led by Richard John Uniacke, in 1787, 1789 and again on 11 January 1808, the Nova Scotian legislature refused to legalize slavery. Two chief justices, Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange (1790–1796) and Sampson Salter Blowers (1797–1832) were instrumental in freeing enslaved Africans from their enslavers (owners) in Nova Scotia. These justices were held in high regard in the colony. In 1793, John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, attempted to abolish slavery. That same year, the new Legislative Assembly became the first entity in the British Empire to restrict slavery, confirming existing ownership but allowing for anyone born to an enslaved woman or girl after that date to be freed at the age of 25. Slavery was all but abolished throughout the other British North American colonies by 1800. The Slave Trade Act outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slave holding altogether in the colonies (except for India). This made Canada an attractive destination for many African descendant refugees fleeing slavery in the United States, such as minister Boston King.

In 1858, James Douglas, the governor of the British colony of Vancouver Island, replied to an inquiry from a group of black people in San Francisco about the possibilities of settling in his jurisdiction. They were angered that the California legislature had passed discriminatory laws to restrict black people in the state, preventing them from owning property and requiring them to wear badges. Governor Douglas, whose mother was a "free coloured" person of mixed black and white ancestry from the Caribbean, replied favourably. Later that year, an estimated 600 to 800 black Americans migrated to Victoria, settling on Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island. At least two became successful merchants there: Peter Lester and Mifflin Wistar Gibbs. The latter also entered politics, being elected to the newly established City Council in the 1860s. Gibbs returned to the United States with his family in the late 1860s after slavery had been abolished following the war; he settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, the capital of the state. He became an attorney and was elected as the first black judge in the US. He became a wealthy businessman who was involved with the Republican Party; in 1897 he was appointed by the President of the US as consul to Madagascar.

Unlike in the United States, there were no "Jim Crow" laws in Canada at the federal level of government and outside of education, none at the provincial level of government. Examples include Amber Valley, Campsie, Junkins (now Wildwood) and Keystone (now Breton) in Alberta, as well as a former community in the Rural Municipality of Eldon, north of Maidstone, Saskatchewan (see, for example, Saskatchewan Municipal Heritage Property No. 439: the original log style Shiloh (Charlow) Baptist Church and associated cemetery, 30 km north of Maidstone.) Many of them were disappointed to encounter racism when they arrived in Canada, which they had regarded as a kind of Promised Land. Historically, Black Canadians, being descended from either Black Loyalists or American run away slaves, had supported the Conservative Party as the party most inclined to maintain ties with Britain, which was seen as the nation that had given them freedom. is still remembered to this day in many Toronto publications. To fight against the discriminatory treatment, the all black Order of Sleeping Car Porters union was founded in 1917 to fight to end segregation on the railroad lines and to fight for equal pay and benefits. The Reverend William White, the chaplain of the all Black Number 2 Construction Company of the CEF, founded on 5 July 1916, was named an honorary captain and thereby became one of the few Black men to receive an officer's commission in the CEF. However, the Canadian historian René Chartrand noted that in the 1918 painting The Conquerors by Eric Kennington showing the men of the 16th Canadian Scottish battalion (which was recruited in the Toronto area) marching through a ruined landscape in France, one of the soldiers wearing kilts is a Black man, which he used to argue that sometimes Black volunteers were assigned as front line infantrymen. Despite the rules restricting Black Canadians to construction companies, about 2,000 Black Canadians fought as infantrymen in the CEF and several such as James Grant, Jeremiah Jones, Seymour Tyler, Roy Fells, and Curly Christian being noted for heroism under fire. Jones was recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his heroism at Vimy Ridge, where he captured a German machine gun post and was wounded in action, but he never received it. Many of Canada's railway porters were recruited from the U. S., with many coming from the South, New York City, and Washington, D. C. They settled mainly in the major cities of Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver, which had major rail connections. The railroads were considered to have good positions, with steady work and a chance to travel. A noted cause célèbre in the 1920s was the case of Matthew Bullock. He fled to Canada to avoid a potential lynching in North Carolina and fought extradition to the US. In September 1915, the U. S. film The Birth of a Nation was released in Canada, where it was very popular, and helped to inflame race relations. The willingness of various left wing groups in Canada to promote the "Black Horror on the Rhine" campaign as part of the critique of the Treaty of Versailles as too harsh on Germany – which appealed to the worse racial fears by promoting the image of the Senegalese as brutes with superhuman strength and an insatiable need to rape white women – estranged Black Canadians from the left in Canada during the interwar period. Another source of estrangement was the work of one of Canada's leading progressives, the feminist Emily Murphy. In a series of articles for Maclean's in the early 1920s, which were later turned into the 1922 book The Black Candle, Murphy blamed all of the problems on drug addiction amongst white Canadians on "Negro drug dealers" and Chinese opium dealers "of fishy blood", accusing Black Canadians and Chinese Canadians of trying to destroy white supremacy by getting white Canadians addicted to drugs. The Black Candle was written in a sensationalist and lurid style meant to appeal to the racial fears of white Canadians, and in this Murphy was completely successful. Eatman's call to defend Ethiopia drew an enthusiastic response to defend what the black lawyer Joseph Spencer Pitt called “the last sovereign state belonging to the coloured race”. Over the next decades, several hundred thousand Afro Caribbeans arrived, becoming the predominant black population in Canada. Between 1950 and 1995, about 300,000 people from the West Indies settled in Canada. Like other recent immigrants to Canada, Black Canadian immigrants have settled preferentially in provinces matching the language of their country of origin. Thus, in 2001, 90 per cent of Canadians of Haitian origin lived in Quebec, while 85 per cent of Canadians of Jamaican origin lived in Ontario. A major change in the settlement patterns of black Canadians occurred in the second half of the 20th century as the mostly rural black Canadian communities had become mostly urban communities, a process starting in the 1930s that was complete by the 1970s. The student occupation ended in violence on 11 February 1969 when the riot squad of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal stormed the Hall building, a fire was started causing $2 million worth of damage (it is disputed whether the police or the students started the fire), and many of the protesting students were beaten and arrested. In Atlantic Canada, the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia was established in Cherry Brook. Starting in the 1960s with the weakening of ties to Britain together the changes caused by immigration from the West Indies, black Canadians have become active in the Liberal and New Democratic parties as well as the Conservatives. Alvin Curling told the Toronto Star in 2013: "I think BADC raised the question that this wonderful looking society of Canada and Toronto, as organized as it was, had some systemic racism going on and police behaviour that was not acceptable." On the evening of 4 May 1992, a march was held on Toronto's Yonge Street by the BADC to protest the killings of Lawrence and Lawson together the acquittal of the police officers who had beaten Rodney King in Los Angeles that was joined by thousands of people who marched to the U. S. consulate in Toronto. The issue of police harassment of Black people in Toronto has continued into the 21st century. In 2015, the Toronto journalist Desmond Cole published an article in Toronto Life entitled "The Skin I'm In: I've been interrogated by police more than 50 times – all because I'm black", accusing the police of harassing him for his skin colour. With the secularization of society in late 20th century, the churches have ceased to play the traditionally dominant role in black Canadian communities.

Source: Canada 2021 Census and Amber Valley in Alberta. North Preston currently has the highest concentration of Black Canadians in Canada, many of whom are descendants of Africville residents. Elm Hill in Hampstead Parish is the last remaining black community in New Brunswick. One of the most famous Black dominated urban neighbourhoods in Canada is Montreal's Little Burgundy, regarded as the spiritual home of Canadian jazz due to its association with many of Canada's most influential early jazz musicians. In present day Montreal, Little Burgundy and the boroughs of Côte des Neiges–Notre Dame de Grâce, LaSalle, Pierrefonds Roxboro, Villeray–Saint Michel–Parc Extension, and Montréal Nord have large Black populations, the latter of which has a large Haitian population. Several cities in Greater Montreal such as Laval, Terrebonne, Repentigny and Châteauguay also have large Black populations. In Winnipeg, the Central Park neighbourhood has the largest concentration of Black Canadians in Manitoba. Nearly 25 per cent of area residents are black, as of 2016. The Queen Mary Park and Central McDougall neighbourhoods form the centre of the black community in Edmonton. Queen Mary Park has been home to a long standing African American population since the early 1900s, centred around Shiloh Baptist Church in Edmonton, Alberta, although today the neighbourhood is composed mostly of recent migrants from Africa. In Toronto, many Black people settled in St. John's Ward, a district which was located in the city's core. Others preferred to live in York Township, on the outskirts of the city. By 1850, there were more than a dozen Black businesses along King Street; First Baptist Church, founded in 1826, is the oldest Black institution currently operating in the city. Several urban neighbourhoods in Toronto, including Jane and Finch, Rexdale, Downsview, Malvern, Weston, West Hill, Lawrence Heights, Mount Dennis, and Maple Leaf have large Black Canadian communities. The Toronto suburbs of Brampton and Ajax also have sizable Black populations, many of whom are middle income professionals and small business owners. The Greater Toronto Area is home to a highly educated middle to upper middle class Black population who continue to migrate out of the city limits, into surrounding suburbs.

Media representation of Black people in Canada has increased significantly, with television series such as Drop the Beat, Lord Have Mercy!, Diggstown and Da Kink in My Hair focusing principally on Black characters and communities. The films of Clement Virgo, Sudz Sutherland and Charles Officer have been among the most prominent depictions of Black Canadians on the big screen. Notable films have included Sutherland's Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, Officer's Nurse. Fighter. Boy and Virgo's Rude and Love Come Down. In literature, the most prominent and famous Black Canadian writers have been Josiah Henson, George Elliott Clarke, Lawrence Hill, Austin Clarke, Dionne Brand, Esi Edugyan and Dany Laferrière, although numerous emerging writers have gained attention in the 1990s and 2000s. Since the late 19th century, Black Canadians have made significant contributions to the culture of sports, starting with the founding of the Coloured Hockey League in Nova Scotia. Boxer George Godfrey became one of the first Black Canadian sports stars by winning the World Colored Heavyweight Championship in 1883. In North America's four major professional sports leagues, several Black Canadians have had successful careers, including Ferguson Jenkins (Baseball Hall of Fame member), Grant Fuhr (Hockey Hall of Fame member), Jarome Iginla (Hockey Hall of Fame member), Russell Martin, Rueben Mayes, and Jamaal Magloire; most recently, Andrew Wiggins, RJ Barrett and P. K. Subban have achieved a high level of success. In athletics, Harry Jerome, Ben Johnson, and Donovan Bailey were Canada's most prominent Black sprinters in recent decades; the current generation is led by Andre De Grasse. In 1912, Jerome's grandfather, John Howard, became the first Black Canadian to represent Canada at the Olympics. The largest and most famous Black Canadian cultural event is the Toronto Caribbean Carnival (also known as Caribana), an annual festival of Caribbean Canadian culture in Toronto which typically attracts at least a million participants each year. The festival incorporates the diversities that exist among the Canadians of African and Caribbean descent. In 2021, the government of Canada officially recognized Emancipation Day, marking the abolition of slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834, as a national observation for the first time. However, Black Canadians have already commemorated Emancipation Day with community events for decades. The annual Emancipation Festival has been held in Owen Sound, Ontario since 1862; an annual Emancipation Day festival in Windsor, Ontario was formerly one of the city's largest and most prominent cultural events; and an annual "Freedom Train" event takes place in Toronto, symbolically commemorating the Underground Railroad with musical and spoken word performances taking place on a Toronto Transit Commission subway train from Union Station to Sheppard West. Since 2020, CBC Gem has also marked Emancipation Day with the annual FreeUp! The Emancipation Day Special, a televised edition of actress Ngozi Paul's annual Black Canadian arts festival. Black Canadians have had a major influence on Canadian music, helping pioneer many genres including Canadian hip hop, Canadian blues, Canadian jazz, R&B, Caribbean music, pop music and classical music. Notable musicians in the early to mid 20th century include Garnet Brooks, Robert Nathaniel Dett, Portia White, Oscar Peterson, and Charlie Biddle. Some Black Canadian musicians have enjoyed mainstream worldwide appeal in various genres, such as Drake, The Weeknd, Daniel Caesar, Dan Hill, Glenn Lewis, Tamia, Deborah Cox, and Kardinal Offishall. While African American culture is a significant influence on its Canadian counterpart, many African and Caribbean Canadians reject the suggestion that their own culture is not distinctive. In 2020, Black Canadian actors Shamier Anderson and Stephan James launched The Black Academy, an organization that will present awards to honour Black Canadian achievements in film, television, music, sports, and culture. The awards were presented for the first time in 2022.

In a 2013 survey of 80 countries by the World Values Survey, Canada ranked among the most racially tolerant societies in the world. Nevertheless, according to Statistics Canada's Ethnic Diversity Survey, released in September 2003, when asked about the five year period from 1998 to 2002 nearly one third (32 per cent) of respondents who identified as Black reported that they had been subjected to some form of racial discrimination or unfair treatment "sometimes" or "often". From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, a number of unarmed Black Canadian men in Toronto were shot or killed by Toronto Police officers. In response, the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC) was founded in 1988. BADC's executive director, Dudley Laws, stated that Toronto had the "most murderous" police force in North America, and that police bias against Black people in Toronto was worse than in Los Angeles. In 1990, BADC was primarily responsible for the creation of Ontario's Special Investigations Unit, which investigates police misconduct. Since the early 1990s, the relationship between Toronto Police and the city's black community has improved; restrictions against arbitrary carding came into effect in Ontario in 2017. Throughout the years, high profile cases of racism against Black Canadians have occurred in Nova Scotia. The province continues to champion human rights and battle against racism, in part by an annual march to end racism against people of African descent. Black ice hockey players in Canada have reported being victims of racism.

Black Canadians have historically faced incarceration rates disproportionate to their population. In 1911, Black Canadians constituted 0.22 per cent of the population of Canada but 0.321 per cent in prison, compared to white Canadians incarcerated at a rate of 0.018 per cent. By 1931, 0.385 per cent of Black Canadians were in prison, compared to 0.035 per cent of white Canadians. Contemporary rates of incarceration of Black Canadians have continued to be disproportionate to their percentage of the general population. Per the 2016 Census, Black Canadians comprise 3.5 per cent of the national population, but Black inmates made up 8.6 per cent of the federal incarcerated population as of 2017.

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