And before we Canadians go overboard patting ourselves on the back for coming to the rescue of fugitive slaves, a University of Winnipeg prof reminds us slaves once escaped from British North American colonies into the United States. While Canadians often pride themselves on their historical support of the more progressive anti-slavery Union, British support for the North was never a given. Though scholars warn that tales of the Underground Railroad have been exaggerated in popular history (between 60,000 and 75,000), an estimated 30,000 slaves made it to Canada in this way. In the mid-1800s, a hidden network of men and women, white and black, worked with escaped slaves to help them to freedom in the northern U.S. Citizens of what soon became Canada were long involved in aiding fugitive slaves escape slave-holding southern states via the Underground Railroad. Canada's History Youth Committee MembersĪpril 2011 marked the 150 th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, a conflict enmeshed with the issue of slavery.The John Bragg Award for Atlantic Canada.Historical Thinking Community of Practice.
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