Emancipation, Carnival and Independence coalesce into a fun weekend

Emancipation

By Neil Armstrong

One hundred and ninety years ago, August 1, 1834, African Canadians celebrated the first Emancipation Day after the British Parliament had passed the Act a year earlier to free all the enslaved Africans in the overseas slave colonies.

Historian, Natasha Henry-Dixon, in her book, Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada, notes that, “Canada was part of the British Empire, and though it was not a slave society as we understand it, it was a society with slaves. Africans had been enslaved in Canada since 1628 and though the institution declined significantly by the 1820s, there were still enslaved people in the colonies who were freed by the Emancipation Act.”

Henry-Dixon underscored that the creators of August First — known also as West Indian Emancipation Day — celebrations were African Americans who had migrated to Canada during the first part of the nineteenth century in their quest for a free life.

In another book written for teen readers, Talking About Freedom: Celebrating Emancipation Day in Canada, the historian said West Indians were coming from countries where thousands of enslaved Africans were freed by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and commemorated Emancipation Day.

Carnival

“The incoming residents carried on the tradition in the customary way, but also brought with them a manner of celebration new to Canadians. Caribana was established in 1967 by a group of West Indian immigrants who settled in Toronto. With its beginnings in the carnival of Trinidad, the forty-three-year-old festival includes a big, colourful street parade and illustrates a Caribbean style of celebrating Emancipation Day.”

Rhythms & Resistance: Caribbean Music in Toronto captures some of the visual representations of the early celebrations Caribana.

Co-curated by Nicholas Jennings and Klive Walker, and produced by Mark Garner of the Downtown Yonge BIA at the Friar’s Music Museum (inside Shoppers Drug Mart) near Yonge-Dundas Square, the exhibition includes rare and wide-ranging artefacts of “hundreds of photographs, posters, handbills, recordings, videos, instruments, costumes, clothing and assorted ephemera related to calypso, reggae, soul, funk and hip-hop musicians in Toronto, dating back to the first arrival of Caribbean immigrants in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.”

CCPAC: Beyond the Carnival 6,a photographic exhibition brings together a group of seven photographers of the Canadian Caribbean Photographic Arts Collective (CCPAC) whose mission is to capture and present images that focus on the Pan-Caribbean culture and to create a legacy that highlights the excellent work of Canadian Caribbean photographers.

It runs until August 25 at Station Gallery in Whitby, Ontario, and features the work of Benjamin Alunyo, Jenny Baboolal, Anthony Berot, Lisa Faure, Ian P. Grant, David Lewis and Gilbert Medina.

Blackness Yes!, organizer of the annual “Blockorama” held at the Wellesley parking lot during Pride Toronto’s Festival Weekend is presenting Blockobana at Stackt Market, 28 Bathurst Street on August 4, noon to 11:00 p.m.

Blockobana is “an LGBTTI2SQQ affirming space to share food, lime and jump up,” notes the Facebook page of Blockorama and Blackness Yes!

The first weekend in August is also when flag raising ceremonies and church services are held to mark Jamaica’s independence. August 6 celebrates the 62nd anniversary and there will be a flag raising ceremony held outside the Brampton City Hall on August 3 at 2:00 p.m. and a thanksgiving service at the West Toronto Church of God on August 4 at 3:00 p.m.

The Jamaica Independence Day and Jamaican Canadian Association 62nd anniversary gala will be held on August 10 at 6:00 p.m. with Chris Campbell, president of the Carpenters’ Union as the keynote speaker.

The exhibit, A History Exposed: The Enslavement of Black People in Canada, will also open on August 1 at the Pier 21 Museum at 1:00 p.m. “This is the first time that an exhibit of this nature will open in Canada,” said Afua Cooper who is the guest curator. She is also the principal investigator for A Black People’s History of Canada, a past visiting scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, and a member of the International Scientific Committee of Routes of Enslaved Peoples, UNESCO.

On March 24, 2021, the House of Commons voted unanimously to officially designate August 1, Emancipation Day. It marks the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect across the British Empire.