| Total population | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 783,795 – 2.5% of Canada's population[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Regions with significant populations | ||||||||||||||||||
| Canada | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Languages | ||||||||||||||||||
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Canadian English, Canadian French, Caribbean English, Haitian Creole, and African languages |
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| Religion | ||||||||||||||||||
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Christianity, Islam, Rastafari, and others |
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| Related ethnic groups | ||||||||||||||||||
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Afro-Caribbean, African American, Black British, Afro-European, African Australian |
Black Canadians is a designation used for people of Black African descent, who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada.[2][3] The term specifically refers to Canadians with partial or direct Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean origin.[4]
Black Canadians and other Canadians often draw no distinction between those of Afro-Caribbean ancestry and those of other African roots. The term African Canadian is also used by Black Canadians who trace their heritage to the first slaves brought by British and French colonists to the mainland of North America,[3] but many Blacks of Caribbean origin in Canada use the term African Canadian as an elision of the uniquely African aspects of their heritage,[5] and instead identify as Canadian African Caribbean .[5] Unlike in the United States where African American is the most widely accepted term, due to these tensions and controversies between the African and Caribbean communities the term "Black Canadian" is still accepted in the Canadian context.[6] The vast majority of Black-targeted cultural and social institutions in Canada serve both the African-Caribbean-Canadian and African Canadian communities equally.
Black Canadians have contributed to many areas.[7] Many of the first visible minorities to hold high public offices have been Black, opening the door for other minorities. Some of whom include, but are not limited to: Michaëlle Jean, Donald Oliver, Stanley G. Grizzle, Rosemary Brown and Lincoln Alexander.[8] Black Canadians form the third largest visible minority group in Canada, after South Asian and Chinese people.[1]
According to the 2006 Census by Statistics Canada, 783,795 Canadians identified themselves as black, constituting 2.5% of the entire Canadian population.[1] Of the black population, 11% identified themselves as a mixed-race of "white and black".[9] The five largest provinces of black population in 2006 were Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.[1] The ten largest census metropolitan areas of black population were Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Halifax, and Oshawa.[10] Preston, in the Halifax area, is the community with the highest percentage of Blacks at 69.4%.[11]
Blacks of Caribbean origin form a much larger proportion of the black community in Canada than in the United States — in fact, about 30% of Canada's black population is of Jamaican origin alone,[12] and a further 32% are from other Caribbean nations.[13] However, there are also regional demographic variations. In particular, the community in Nova Scotia, which has a unique history stretching back to the Black Loyalist movement during the American Revolution, and the community in Southwestern Ontario, a major historical destination along the Underground Railroad, are much more strongly associated with African American immigration from the United States, and much less with Caribbean immigration, than in most of Canada. Because of their distinct history, blacks in Nova Scotia are also commonly identified as a distinct Black Nova Scotian community within the larger Black Canadian group, a distinction that is not shared by any other Canadian province.
| Year | Population | % of Canadian Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1871 | 21,500 | 0.6 |
| 1881 | 21,400 | 0.5 |
| 1901 | 17,500 | 0.3 |
| 1911 | 16,900 | 0.2 |
| 1921 | 18,300 | 0.2 |
| 1931 | 19,500 | 0.2 |
| 1941 | 22,200 | 0.2 |
| 1951 | 18,000 | 0.1 |
| 1961 | 32,100 | 0.2 |
| 1971 | 34,400 | 0.2 |
| 1981 | 239,500 | 1.0 |
| 1991 | 504,300 | 1.9 |
| 2001 | 662,200 | 2.2 |
| 2006 | 783,795 | 2.5 |
At times, it has been alleged that Black Canadians have been significantly undercounted in census data. Writer George Elliott Clarke has cited a McGill University study which found that fully 43 per cent of all Black Canadians were not counted as black in the 1991 Canadian census, because they had identified themselves on census forms as British, French or other cultural identities which were not included in the census group of Black cultures.[14]
Although subsequent censuses have reported the population of Black Canadians to be much more consistent with the McGill study's revised 1991 estimate than with the official 1991 census data, no recent study has been conducted to determine whether some Black Canadians are still substantially missed.
One of the ongoing controversies in the Black Canadian community revolves around appropriate terminologies. Many Canadians of Afro-Caribbean origin strongly object to the term "African Canadian", as it obscures their own culture and history, and this partially accounts for the term's less prevalent use in Canada, compared to the consensus "African American" south of the border.
"Caribbean Canadian" is often used to refer to Afro Canadians of Caribbean heritage, although this usage can also be controversial because the Caribbean is not populated only by people of African origin, but also includes large groups of Indo-Caribbeans, Chinese Caribbeans, European Caribbeans, Syrian or Lebanese Caribbeans, Latinos and Amerindians. The term "West Indian" is often used by those of Caribbean ancestry, although the term is more of a cultural description than a racial one, and can equally be applied to groups of many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The term "Afro-Caribbean-Canadian" is occasionally used in response to this controversy, although as of 2012, this term is still not widely seen in common usage.
More specific national terms such as "Jamaican Canadian", "Haitian Canadian" or "Ghanaian Canadian" are also used. As of 2012, however, there is no widely-used alternative to "Black Canadian" that is accepted by the Afro-Caribbean population, those of more recent African extraction, and descendants of immigrants from the United States as an umbrella term for the whole group.[6]
One increasingly common practice, seen in academic usage and in the names and mission statements of some Black Canadian cultural and social organizations but not yet in universal nationwide usage, is to always make reference to both the African and Caribbean communities.[15] For example, one key health organization dedicated to HIV/AIDS education and prevention in the Black Canadian community is now named the African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario, the Toronto publication Pride bills itself as an "African-Canadian and Caribbean-Canadian news magazine", and a Black-oriented community radio station in Toronto is branded as Caribbean African Radio Network.[16]
One of the more noted aspects of Black Canadian history is that while the majority of African Americans trace their presence in the United States through the history of slavery, the Black presence in Canada is rooted almost entirely in voluntary immigration.[17] Despite the various dynamics that may complicate the personal and cultural interrelationships between descendents of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, descendents of former American slaves who viewed Canada as the promise of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad, and more recent immigrants from the United States, the Caribbean or Africa, one common element that unites all of these groups is that they're in Canada because they or their ancestors actively chose of their own free will to settle there.[5]
The first recorded black person to set foot on land now known as Canada was a free man named Mathieu de Costa, who travelled with explorer Samuel de Champlain, and arrived in Nova Scotia some time between 1603 and 1608 as a translator for the French explorer Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts. The first known black person to live in Canada was a slave from Madagascar named Olivier Le Jeune, who may have been of partial Malay ancestry. As a group, black people arrived in Canada in several waves. The first of these came as free persons serving in the French Army and Navy; some were enslaved. Later, some were indentured servants, as were some white immigrants.
At the time of the American Revolution, inhabitants of the United States had to decide where their future lay. Those loyal to the British Crown were called United Empire Loyalists, and came north. White American Loyalists brought their African American slaves with them, while formerly enslaved Black Americans, about 10% of the total,[18] also made their way to the colonies of British North America, settling predominantly in Nova Scotia.[19] This latter group was largely made up of tradespeople and labourers, and many set up home in Birchtown near Shelburne. Some settled in New Brunswick, where they received discriminatory treatment; prominent leaders there held slaves. Many of the Black Loyalists were free people of color who had never been slaves, but relied on British promises of equality. They too had to leave the United States after the Revolution, and settled in Nova Scotia. The charter of the city of Saint John was amended in 1785 specifically to exclude blacks from practising a trade, selling goods, fishing in the harbour, or becoming freemen; these provisions stood until 1870.[20]
In 1782, the first race riot in North America took place in Shelburne with white soldiers attacking the African American settlers who were getting work that the soldiers thought they should have. Due to the unkept promises of the British government and discrimination on the part of white colonists, 1,192 African American men, women and children left Nova Scotia for West Africa on January 15, 1792 and settled in what is now Sierra Leone, where they became the original settlers of Freetown. They, along with other groups of free transplanted people such as the Black Poor from England, became what is now the Sierra Leone Creole people, also known as the Krio.
In 1796, a group of fiercely independent rebels known as the Trelawney Maroons were moved from Jamaica to Nova Scotia, following their long battle against colonization. While there, these Jamaican Maroons deterred an attack by Napoleon and constructed parts of the Halifax Citadel and all of Government House. After only a few winters, the British government decided it would be cheaper to send them to Sierra Leone than to try to persuade them to farm in a cold country. Upon their arrival in West Africa in 1800, they were used to quell an uprising among the previous settlers mentioned above, who after eight years were unhappy with their treatment by the Sierra Leone Company.
The Canadian climate made it uneconomic to keep slaves year-round,[21] unlike the plantation agriculture practised in the southern United States and Caribbean, and slavery within the colonial economy became increasingly rare. Not all owners were white. For example, the powerful Mohawk leader Joseph Brant bought an African American named Sophia Burthen Pooley, whom he kept for about 12 years before selling her for $100.[22][23] In 1793 John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, attempted to abolish slavery. That same year, the new Legislative Assembly there became the first entity in the British Empire to restrict slavery, confirming existing ownership but allowing for anyone born to a female slave after that date to be freed at the age of 25.[24] Slavery was all but abolished throughout the other British North American colonies by 1800, and was illegal throughout the British Empire by 1834. This made Canada an attractive destination for those fleeing slavery in the United States, such as minister Boston King. Furthermore, on March 24, 1837, black men in Canada were given the right to vote.[25]
The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada estimated in its first report in 1852 that the "colored population of Upper Canada" was about 30,000, of whom almost all adults were "fugitive slaves".[26] St. Catharines had a population of 6,000 at that time; 800 of them were "of African descent".[27]
The next major migration of blacks occurred between 1813 and 1815. Refugees from the War of 1812 fled the United States to settle in Hammonds Plains, Beechville, Lucasville, North Preston, East Preston, and Africville. A Black Loyalist named Richard Pierpoint, who was born about 1744 in Senegal and who had settled near present-day St. Catharines, Ontario, offered to organize a Corps of Men of Colour; this was refused but a white officer raised a small black corps.[18] This "Coloured Corps" fought at Queenston Heights and the siege of Fort George, defending what would become Canada from the invading American army.[18]
There is a sizable community of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia[19] and Southern Ontario who trace their ancestry to African American slaves who used the Underground Railroad to flee from the United States, seeking refuge and freedom in Canada. From the late 1820s until the American Civil War began in 1861, the Underground Railroad brought tens of thousands of fugitive slaves to Canada. While many of these returned to the United States after emancipation, a significant population remained, largely in Southern Ontario, widely scattered in both rural and urban locations, including Toronto.[28][29][30]
In 1858, James Douglas, the governor of the British colony of Vancouver Island, replied to an inquiry from a group of blacks in San Francisco about the possibilities of settling in his jurisdiction. Governor Douglas, whose mother had been a Creole, replied favourably, and, at the outbreak of the Cariboo Gold Rush, several dozen of these African American migrants travelled to Victoria. Two of them, Peter Lester and Mifflin Gibbs, became successful merchants there, and Gibbs was elected to the City Council in the 1860s.
In the late nineteenth century, there was an unofficial policy of restricting blacks from immigration. The huge influx of immigrants from Europe and the United States in the period before World War I included only very small numbers of black arrivals. This was formalised in 1911 by Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier: "His excellency in Council, in virtue of the provisions of Sub-section (c) of Section 38 of the Immigration Act, is pleased to Order and it is hereby Ordered as follows: For a period of one year from and after the date hereof the landing in Canada shall be and the same is prohibited of any immigrants belonging to the Negro race, which race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada."[22] (Compare with the White Australia policy.)
The flow between the United States and Canada continued in the twentieth century. A wave of immigration occurred in the 1920s, with blacks from the Caribbean coming to work in the steel mills of Cape Breton, replacing those who had come from Alabama in 1899.[31] Some Black Canadians trace their ancestry to people who fled racism in Oklahoma, Texas, and other American Great Plains states in the early 1900s to move north to Alberta and Saskatchewan.[32] (See for example those buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery in Saskatchewan.)[33] Many of them encountered racism when they arrived in Canada, which they had regarded as the Promised Land.[34] Many of Canada's railway porters came from the U.S. as well, with many coming from the South, New York City and Washington, D.C., and mainly settling in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.[35] A noted cause célèbre in the 1920s was the case of Matthew Bullock who fled to Canada to avoid a potential lynching in North Carolina and fought extradition.[36]
The restrictions on immigration remained until 1962, when racial rules were eliminated from the immigration laws. This coincided with the dissolution of the British Empire in the Caribbean, and over the next decades several hundred thousand blacks came from that region to Canada. Since then, an increasing number of immigrants from Africa have been coming to Canada,[13] as is also the case in the United States and Europe. This includes large numbers of refugees, but also many skilled workers pursuing better economic conditions. Today's Black Canadians are largely of Caribbean origin, with some of recent African origin, and smaller numbers from Latin American countries.
However, a sizable number of Black Canadians who descended from freed American slaves can still be found in Nova Scotia and parts of Southwestern Ontario. Some descendants of the freed American black slaves have mixed into the white Canadian community and have mostly lost their ethnic identity. Some of the descendants went back to the United States. Bangor, Maine, for example, received quite a few Black Canadians from the Maritime provinces.[37]
In 1975, a museum honouring Black Canadians, as well as African Americans, was established in Amherstburg, Ontario, entitled the North American Black Historical Museum. Though closed for several years, it re-opened in 2001. In Atlantic Canada there is the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, a similar establishment located in Cherrybrook, Nova Scotia.
Although many Black Canadians live in integrated communities, there have also been a number of notable Black communities, both as unique settlements and as Black-dominated neighbourhoods in urban centres.
The most famous and historically documented Black settlement in Canadian history is the community of Africville, a small village in Nova Scotia which was demolished in the 1960s to facilitate the urban expansion of Halifax. Similarly, the Hogan's Alley neighbourhood in Vancouver was largely demolished in 1970, with only a single small laneway in Strathcona remaining.
The Wilberforce Colony in Ontario was also a historically Black settlement, which evolved demographically as Black settlers moved away and eventually became the Irish-dominated village of Lucan. A small group of Black settlers were also the original inhabitants of Saltspring Island.
Other notable Black settlements include North Preston in Nova Scotia, Priceville, Shanty Bay and parts of Chatham-Kent in Ontario such as South Buxton and Dresden, the Maidstone/Eldon area in Saskatchewan[38] and Amber Valley in Alberta. North Preston currently has the highest concentration of Black Canadians in Canada, many of whom are descendants of Africville residents.
One of the most famous Black-dominated urban neighbourhoods in Canada is Montreal's Little Burgundy, regarded as the spiritual home of Canadian jazz due to its association with many of Canada's most influential early jazz musicians. In Toronto, many Blacks settled in St. John's Ward,[39][40] a district which was located in the city's core. Others preferred to live in York Township, on the outskirts of the city. By 1850, there were more than a dozen Black businesses along King Street.[39]
Several urban neighbourhoods in Toronto, including Jane and Finch, Rexdale, Malvern, St. James Town, and Lawrence Heights, are popularly associated with Black Canadians, although all are much more racially diverse than is commonly believed. The Toronto suburbs of Brampton and Ajax also have sizeable black populations, which have migrated outward from Toronto over the last five to seven years. The Toronto area is home to a highly educated middle to upper middle class black population who continue to migrate out of the city limits into surrounding suburbs throughout the Greater Toronto Area.[41]
Below is a list of provinces by the number of Black Canadians in each province with percentages.[42]
| Province | Blacks by number | Blacks by % |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario | 473,765 | 3.9% |
| Quebec | 188,070 | 2.5% |
| Alberta | 47,075 | 1.4% |
| British Columbia | 28,315 | 0.7% |
| Nova Scotia | 19,230 | 2.1% |
| Manitoba | 15,660 | 1.4% |
| Saskatchewan | 5,090 | 0.5% |
| New Brunswick | 4,455 | 0.6% |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | 905 | 0.2% |
| Prince Edward Island | 640 | 0.5% |
| Northwest Territories | 375 | 0.9% |
| Yukon | 125 | 0.4% |
| Nunavut | 100 | 0.3% |
| Canada | 783,795 | 2.5% |
Media representation of Blacks in Canada has increased significantly in recent years, with television series such as Drop the Beat, Lord Have Mercy! and Da Kink in My Hair focusing principally on Black characters and communities.
The films of Clement Virgo, Sudz Sutherland and Charles Officer have been among the most prominent depictions of Black Canadians on the big screen. Notable films have included Sutherland's Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, Officer's Nurse.Fighter.Boy and Virgo's Rude.
In literature, the most prominent and famous Black Canadian writers have been Josiah Henson, George Elliott Clarke, Austin Clarke, Lawrence Hill, Dionne Brand and Dany Laferrière, although numerous emerging writers have gained attention in the 1990s and 2000s.
The largest and most famous Black Canadian cultural event is the Scotiabank Toronto Caribbean Carnival (formerly known as Caribana), an annual festival of Caribbean Canadian culture in Toronto which typically attracts at least a million participants each year.[43] The festival incorporates the diversities that exist among the Canadians of African and Caribbean descent. This fusion has made it one of the most electrifying events in North America, resulting in a lot of celebrities enjoying the city the multitude of festivities. Toronto's Afro Festival continues to grow and reach new heights year after year.
Black Canadians have had a major influence on Canadian music, helping pioneer many genres including Canadian hip hop, Canadian blues, Canadian jazz, R&B, pop music and classical music.[44] The large influx of immigration in the 1990s gave rise to Caribbean music in Canada. Some of the earliest musical influences include Robert Nathaniel Dett, Portia White, Oscar Peterson and Charlie Biddle. Some Black Canadian musicians have enjoyed mainstream worldwide appeal in various genres such as Dan Hill, Drake, Glenn Lewis, Deborah Cox, Melanie Fiona, Little X, and Kardinal Offishall.
While African American culture is a significant influence on its Canadian counterpart, many African and Caribbean Canadians reject the suggestion that their own culture is not distinctive.[5] In his first major hit single "BaKardi Slang", rapper Kardinal Offishall performed a lyric about Toronto's distinctive Black Canadian slang:
| “ | We don't say 'you know what I'm sayin', T dot says 'ya dun know' We don't say 'hey that's the breaks', we say 'yo, a so it go' We don't say 'you get one chance', We say 'you better rip the show'... Y'all talking about 'cuttin and hittin skins', We talkin bout 'beat dat face'... You cats is steady saying 'word', My cats is steady yellin 'zeen'... So when we singin about the girls we singin about the 'gyal dem' Y'all talkin about 'say that one more time', We talkin about 'yo, come again' Y'all talkin about 'that nigga's a punk', We talkin about 'that yout's a fosse'... A shoe is called a 'crep', A big party is a 'fete' Ya'll takin about 'watch where you goin!', We talkin about 'mind where you step!' |
” |
Because the visibility of distinctively Black Canadian cultural output is still a relatively recent phenomenon, academic, critical and sociological analysis of Black Canadian literature, music, television and film tends to focus on the ways in which cultural creators are actively engaging the process of creating a cultural space for themselves which is distinct from both mainstream Canadian culture and African American culture.[5] For example, virtually all of the Black-themed television series which have been produced in Canada to date have been ensemble cast comedy or drama series centred around the creation and/or expansion of a Black-oriented cultural or community institution.[5]
According to Statistics Canada's Ethnic Diversity Survey, released in September 2003, when asked about the five year period from 1998 to 2002 nearly one-third (32%) of respondents who identified as black reported that they had been subjected to some form of racial discrimination or unfair treatment 'sometimes' or 'often'.[45]
Throughout the years, many high profile cases of racism against Black Canadians have occurred in Nova Scotia giving it the title of "The Mississippi of the North".[46][47] The province in Atlantic Canada continues to battle racism with an annual march to end racism against people of African descent.[48][49]
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