Did slavery exist in early Canada?

Yes, chattel slavery existed in early Canada from the early 1600s until the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect on August 1, 1834. About 4,200 enslaved people were documented in New France and the British colonies of Lower Canada, Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. About two-thirds of those enslaved in New France were Indigenous (called Panis after the Pawnee, though the term was applied generally to enslaved Indigenous people), and about one-third were Black.

Slavery in New France was first documented in 1629 when an English merchant named Olivier Le Jeune was brought to Quebec as a young Black slave from Madagascar. Slavery was formally legalised by an ordinance of King Louis XIV (King's Decree of May 1, 1689) authorising the import of enslaved Africans to New France, although the practice was already well established. The Code Noir of 1685 (which applied formally to French Caribbean colonies but was treated as a model in New France) regulated the treatment of enslaved persons. The 1709 ordinance of Intendant Jacques Raudot formally recognised the legal status of enslaved Indigenous people and Black people as the absolute property of their owners. The leading historian of Canadian slavery, Marcel Trudel, documented the names and biographies of many enslaved persons in his 1960 book 'L'esclavage au Canada français'.

The British colonial period continued slavery in a smaller form. The Quebec Act of 1774 confirmed the legal status of slaves, and slavery existed in Lower Canada (about 300 enslaved persons in 1790s), Upper Canada (about 500 in 1790s), and the Maritime colonies. About 3,000 Black Loyalists who came to the Maritimes after the American Revolution were free, but Loyalist slaveholders also brought enslaved Black people. Upper Canada's Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe pushed through An Act to Prevent the Further Introduction of Slaves and to Limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude on July 9, 1793, the first measure to abolish slavery in the British Empire. The 1793 Act prohibited importation of new enslaved persons and freed children of enslaved mothers at age 25.

Slavery was finally abolished throughout the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which came into force on August 1, 1834. About 50 enslaved persons remained in British North America at the time of abolition. After abolition, Canadian abolitionists supported the Underground Railroad (active 1830s to 1865), which brought about 30,000 to 40,000 Black refugees from American slavery to Canada. Canadian historians and educators have increasingly worked since the 1960s to recover this often-suppressed history; the federal government recognised Emancipation Day on August 1 in 2021.