On the Long Road to Freedom: Canada’s Emancipation Day

Good day all you beautiful heathens!
Today, August 1st marks a red letter day that is surprisingly not talked about much. In Canada, today is Emancipation Day.

In 1793, then-Governor-General of Upper Canada (now known as Ontario) John Graves Simcoe tabled the Act Against Slavery, after Adam Vrooman forced his slave Chloe Cooley onto a boat, in the hopes of selling her in the United States. While the act did pass, it was more compromising than John Graves Simcoe wished it to be, due to many members of the legistlature being slave-owners.

Despite it’s compromising nature, this act paved the way for the Underground Railroad, where, until the end of the American Civil War in 1865, over 30,000 slaves from the United States came to Canada. They were able to settle mostly in Southern Ontario, with some going to Quebec and Nova Scotia.

On July 22, 1833, after decades of hard work amongst hundreds of individuals around the world, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was passed, unopposed, in the British House of Commons. On August 28th of the same year, it recieved Royal Assent, and on August 1st of the following year, it finally came into force. This act, alone, laid a path for more than 800, 000 Africans and their descendants to be freed.

It’s a long road; a really, really long road that we all trudge along. We all trudge through the muck and mire to find a better place – not just for ourselves, but for all of our communities. These events are only a snapshot, and they span nearly 40 years. We all sit here, almost 200 years after the fact, and we share in the joy and grief that has passed. Heathenry has always been, “the faith with homework”; the gods, from aeons past, show us how to learn and grow – and a large part of that growth is learning from past mistakes.

So, today, as a Canadian, as a Heathen, as a Human, join me in taking a moment to appreciate all the work, heart, blood, sweat, love that so many before us have poured into making this entire world – existence – a better place for everyone, by showing us a way for us to learn.