Black Canadians in the New Dominion, 1860s–1880s

Let's start with a question

In 1882, a young Black man in Toronto got a good government job delivering mail. On his first day, his co-workers refused to train him, and his boss moved him to a lower job. What do you think his community did next?

You'll find out in this lesson. Black Canadians in the years after Confederation kept building, serving and speaking up, even when the new country did not treat them as equals.

The US Civil War and the end of US slavery

• The American Civil War (1861–1865) ended with the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865.
• Some Black men from Canada joined the Union army. Mary Ann Shadd (from Lesson 2) worked as a recruiter of Black soldiers for the Union army from late 1863.
• Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott of Toronto served as a civilian surgeon with the Union army in Washington from 1863 to 1865.
• After 1865, some Black families who had come to Canada returned to the United States to reunite with relatives and help rebuild Black communities there. Shadd stayed in the US to teach people who had just been freed. The Black population of Ontario became smaller in the decades after the war.
• Many families stayed, and the communities they built in places like Chatham, Buxton, Windsor, Amherstburg, Hamilton, Toronto, St. Catharines and Owen Sound continued.

Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott (1837–1913)

• Born in Toronto in 1837 to free Black parents, Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen Toyer.
• He studied at William King's school at Buxton (from Grade 7) and then studied medicine in Toronto.
• In 1861 he was licensed by the Medical Board of Upper Canada, becoming the first Canadian-born Black doctor.
• During the Civil War he worked in hospitals for the Union army in Washington. He was among those who kept watch at the deathbed of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865.
• He returned to Canada in 1866. In Chatham, he was president of the Wilberforce Educational Institute (1873–1880), where he opposed racially segregated schools, and in 1874 he became coroner for Kent County.

Celebrating freedom: Owen Sound

Owen Sound, on Georgian Bay, was one of the most northern stops of the Underground Railroad. Its Black community has held an Emancipation Day gathering every summer since 1862, marking August 1, 1834, when slavery ended in the British Empire. Today it is called the Emancipation Festival, and organizers describe it as the longest continuously running emancipation picnic in North America. Descendants of early Black settlers still gather there.

Albert Jackson: Toronto's first Black letter carrier

• Albert Jackson was born into slavery in Delaware in 1857. In 1858, his mother, Ann Maria Jackson, led her children's escape to Toronto.
• On May 12, 1882, he was hired as a federal letter carrier. His co-workers refused to train him, and his supervisor moved him to a lower job as a hall porter.
• Toronto's Black community, led by George Washington Smith, met with Prime Minister John A. Macdonald on May 30, 1882. Macdonald ordered Jackson reinstated and trained, and he returned to his route a few days later.
• Jackson delivered mail for almost 36 years, until his death in 1918. Today a Canada Post stamp (2019) and a laneway in Toronto honour him.

This story shows systemic racism (workplace rules and customs that kept Black workers out) and community advocacy working to overcome it.

John Ware: a cowboy in the North-West

• John Ware was born in the United States, probably in the 1840s, and likely gained his freedom when slavery ended in 1865.
• In 1882 he helped drive about 3,000 cattle from Montana to a ranch southwest of Calgary, in what is now Alberta.
• He worked on large ranches, including the Bar U, registered his own cattle brand in 1885, and started his own ranch near Millarville in 1887. He became known for his outstanding skill with horses and cattle.
• He faced racism throughout his life, and few records in his own words survive, so many details about him come from others.

Obstacles that continued

• Segregated schools continued in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Black parents and leaders like Abbott fought them, but Ontario's last segregated school closed only in 1965, and Nova Scotia's in 1983.
• Jobs: Black workers were often kept out of skilled and government jobs, as Albert Jackson's story shows.
• Public places: some hotels, restaurants and theatres refused or segregated Black customers.

Responses: churches, newspapers, mutual-aid groups, petitions, delegations to politicians, court cases, and celebrations like Emancipation Day that built pride and memory.