Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

"Drovers used to come with horses, cattle, sheep and negroes, for the use of the troops, forts and settlers in Canada, and my father purchased his four negroes, three males and one female named Sue." Colonel Clark, Ernestown, Prince Edward County

Most black Canadians in the 18th and 19th Centuries were born in the United States. But a black slave from Madagascar arrived at Quebec with his owner, David Kirke in 1629. Records show that the black man, named Olivier Le Jeune, served as a domestic and died, still a slave, in 1654, bought from his original master by Guillaume Couillard, Samuel de Champlain's master-builder.

American-born blacks came to Canada through what was euphemistically called the "Underground Railroad". Where blacks escaped slavery in the United States with the help of willing and sympathetic helpers, to attain their freedom in Canada.

During the American Civil War, a black Canadian, Henry Jackson wrote: "I wish to impress upon your mind that the war is a trial between freedom and slavery not only here, but all over the world", as he enlisted in the Union Army. As soon as President Abraham Lincoln allowed black enlistment in Union armies, blacks from Canada streamed into the States to enlist.

In Canada slavery flourished just as it did in the U.S. Many people of prominence, even in the Church, bought slaves. Loyalists brought their slaves with them to what was then British North America in the wake of the American Revolution, or would buy them from livestock dealers coming to Canada, selling slaves along with their livestock offerings.

But in 1791, Colonel John Graves Simcoe, newly appointed Governor of Upper Canada, pledged never to support any law to "discriminate by dishonest policy between Natives of Africa, America or Europe". And in two years' time introduced a bill in the Legislative Assembly prohibiting the importation of slaves. That bill helped to alter public attitudes to slavery.

By 1800 most Canadian blacks were no longer slaves. And American blacks, hearing of that freedom from enslavement began a careful and slow migration:

I'm on my way to Canada
That cold and distant land
The dire effects of slavery
I can no longer stand -
Farewell, old master,
Don't come after me.
I'm on my way to Canada
Where coloured men are free

Thus began the Underground Railway, running through the northern states to Canadian terminals where Quakers and Methodists, free blacks and "shareholders", together united in hatred of slavery drove carts and farm wagons with false compartments hiding slaves, transferring them to 'stations' along the routes leading to Canada.

It is estimated that 30,000 blacks were smuggled out of the United States to Canada between 1800 and 1860. In pursuit of the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".