John Graves Simcoe was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York, which is now known as Toronto, and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada.
The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided, but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.
The Province of Upper Canada was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Quebec since 1763. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada to the northeast.
United Empire Loyalist is an honorific title which was first given by the 1st Lord Dorchester, the Governor of Quebec and Governor General of the Canadas, to American Loyalists who resettled in British North America during or after the American Revolution. At that time, the demonym Canadian or Canadien was used by the descendants of New France settlers inhabiting the Province of Quebec.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is a town in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the Niagara Peninsula at the point where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario, across the river from New York, United States. Niagara-on-the-Lake is in the Niagara Region of Ontario and is the only town in Canada that has a lord mayor. It had a population of 19,088 as of the 2021 Canadian census.
Slavery in Canada includes historical practices of enslavement practised by both the First Nations until the latter half of the 19th century, and by colonists during the period of European colonization.
Black Canadians, also known as African Canadians or Afro-Canadians, are Canadians of full or partial sub-Saharan African descent. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and African origin, though the Black Canadian population also consists of African Americans in Canada and their descendants.
Events from the year 1793 in Canada.
The Act Against Slavery was an anti-slavery law passed on July 9, 1793, in the second legislative session of Upper Canada, the colonial division of British North America that would eventually become Ontario. It banned the importation of slaves and mandated that children born henceforth to female slaves would be freed upon reaching the age of 25.
Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists, or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriots or Whigs, who supported the revolution, and considered them "persons inimical to the liberties of America."
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. Passed by Earl Grey's reforming administration, it expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon, and Saint Helena. The Act came into force on 1 August 1834, and was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
William Hamilton Merritt was a businessman and politician in the Niagara Peninsula of Upper Canada in the early 19th century. Although he was born in the United States, his family was Loyalist and eventually settled in Upper Canada. Merritt fought in the War of 1812, was captured by the invading American forces, and held as a prisoner of war. After the war, he returned to the Niagara region and began a career in business. He was one of the founders of the Welland Canal. He was a supporter of the Abolitionist cause to end slavery in the U.S., and of the settlement of escaped slaves in St. Catharines.
By the arrangements of the Canadian federation, Canada's monarchy operates in Ontario as the core of the province's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. As such, the Crown within Ontario's jurisdiction may be referred to as the Crown in Right of Ontario, His Majesty in Right of Ontario, the King in Right of Ontario, or His Majesty the King in Right of Ontario. The Constitution Act, 1867, leaves many functions in Ontario specifically assigned to the sovereign's viceroy, the lieutenant governor of Ontario, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the constitutional conventions of constitutional monarchy.
Richard Pierpoint was a Senegalese-born farmer and soldier. Brought as a slave to British North America via the Atlantic slave trade, he fought as a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he settled in a Black community in Upper Canada, where he was given some land. He also participated in the War of 1812.
William Jarvis was a civil servant, militia officer, and the Connecticut-born head of the Jarvis family in what is now Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Benjamin Hardison was a farmer, miller and political figure in Upper Canada. He represented 4th Lincoln and Norfolk in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada from 1797 to 1800.
During the American Revolution, those who continued to support King George III of Great Britain came to be known as Loyalists. Loyalists are to be contrasted with Patriots, who supported the Revolution. Historians have estimated that during the American Revolution, between 15 and 20 percent of the white population of the colonies, or about 500000 people, were Loyalists. As the war concluded with Great Britain defeated by the Americans and the French, the most active Loyalists were no longer welcome in the United States, and sought to move elsewhere in the British Empire. The large majority of the Loyalists remained in the United States, however, and enjoyed full citizenship there.
Elizabeth Russell (1754-1823) was a Gibraltarian-born English diarist who settled in Upper Canada, with her half-brother, Peter Russell, the Province's first Receiver General.
Black Canadians migrated north in the 18th and 19th centuries from the United States, many of them through the Underground Railroad, into Southwestern Ontario, Toronto, and Owen Sound. Black Canadians fought in the War of 1812 and Rebellions of 1837–1838 for the British. Some returned to the United States during the American Civil War or Reconstruction era.
Sophia Burthen Pooley was a formerly enslaved African American in New York before being forcibly brought to the Canadas by Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. Her testimony, documented in American abolitionist Benjamin Drew's 1856 book The Refugee: or Narratives of the Fugitive Slaves in Canada is considered to be one of the only works regarding slavery in Canada which contained first-person accounts from enslaved people.
Chloe Cooley