In every speech Nova Scotia Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard makes for Emancipation Day this year, she’ll ask the same question: what’s next?
It’s a question she’s posing to federal and provincial governments, as well as individual Canadians, as the country marks the day slavery was abolished in the British Empire.
Federal politicians voted unanimously last year to recognize Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day in Canada. It was on that day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect, freeing about 800,000 enslaved people in most British colonies.
Nope. Canada is not the racist shithole its critics claim & did not even exist in 1834. If you must slander your home you had better ask yourself why it is you never condemn African and Aboriginal slavers Ms. Virtue. Do you think white people invented slavery? Are you a racist?
… Slavery in the Pacific Northwest developed at some point between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, long before European contact, and at contact, slaves were clearly set apart from the existing tribal ranking system and prestige-seeking in the region. Early indigenous peoples also possessed other practices that predated contact with the British and Europeans: cannibalism and the killing of slaves, the latter of which also occurred and for a variety of reasons: funeral feasts, the building of a new home, a new title, the erection of a totem pole, or as part of the ceremony at potlatches. A Russian Orthodox priest recounted how in one Sitka ceremony where a new clan chief was appointed, four slaves were strangled as part of the ritual.
