An Enduring Heritage: Black Contributions to Early Ontario

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Most students of Canada’s past are aware of the underground railway, which brought to Canada Black refugees from American slavery; but it seems that often these immigrants disappeared from our historical consciousness as soon as they entered it. Thus, some readers may be surprised to learn that nearly 1,000 Blacks volunteered for service in defense of the Crown at the time of the 1837 rebellions, from fear that a successful establishment of a Canadian republic might lead to a union with the United States. Or that North America’s first Black newspaperwoman edited a newspaper in Ontario a century ago.

This admirable little book, prepared by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture, is little more than two short essays. The first, and most interesting, offers but a glimpse of its topic: Ontario’s Black pioneers. The second accompanies a collection of photographs of buildings, mostly churches, associated with early Black communities in Upper Canada. Not detailed enough to be a guide to these sites, it does at least draw them to our attention, and invites us to visit that part of Ontario with a new insight into a relatively unexplored area of our history.