The first Emancipation Day marked freedom for Black Canadians: the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 went into effect in British colonies on August 1, 1834, ending the legalized bondage, forced labour, and torture of enslaved Africans and their descendants. From this emanated impactful ripple effects: the Underground Railroad with its terminus points in what would become colonially known as “Canada”, where Africans escaped their enslavers at the risk of their own lives.
Yet freedom was, and is, conditional when Black Canadians went on to endure discriminatory housing, healthcare, policing, and other practices, and when the official governmental page on Emancipation Day flouts the passive voice to avoid naming not just the enslaved, but the enslavers. Anti-Black racism must be viewed as not just a sin of the past but a choice repeatedly made by our society and governments in the present.
This Emancipation Day, we at Room Magazine decry the ways in which freedom is incomplete: the constant raising of police budgets for new weapons, facilities, officers, and “diversity training” that doesn’t lessen the police’s deadliness or anti-Blackness; the harassment, via our court systems, of BLM activists like Adora Nwofor and Taylor McNallie; the grim effects of minority stress on Black people in this country, especially those with other marginalized identities.
But we also celebrate what freedom, seized and safeguarded by the oppressed for the oppressed, has made flourish: art and mutual aid networks, science and healthcare advances, and boundless creativity, as is shown repeatedly at Room partner the Unbound Reading Series’ events, including one upcoming on August 8.
Celebrate, defend, and materially support Black people. Emancipation Day is August 1, but we must act upon it year-round.
