Description
Thousands of black people sought refuge in Canada before the U.S. Civil War. Whilst most refugees encountered a minimum of some racism among Canadian citizens, many of those self same refugees also thrived under the auspices of the Canadian government, which worked to give protection to blacks from the U.S. slaveowners who sought to re-enslave them. This work brings to light the life stories of a few nineteenth-century black refugees who managed to live on of their new country by gaining work as barbers, postal carriers, washerwomen, waiters, cab owners, ministers, newspaper editors, and physicians. The book begins with a short historical account of blacks in Canada from 1629 until the early 1800s, when the first groups of escaped slaves started to go into the rustic.