Slavery in Canada

Slavery in Canada includes both slavery practised by First Nations before European colonization in land now in Canada, as well as slavery under European colonization, the latter of which legally existed into the 1830s. Forms of slavery, such as human trafficking, still occur within Canadian borders.

Some slaves were of African descent, but most were Aboriginal (typically called panis, likely a corruption of Pawnee). Slavery within Canada's current borders was practised primarily by Aboriginal groups. While there was never significant Canadian trade in African slaves, native nations frequently enslaved their rivals and a very modest number (sometimes none in a number of years) were purchased by colonial administrators (rarely by settlers) until 1833, when the British Parliament abolished slavery across the British Empire. (There is often confusion over the date at which this occurred; Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, but did not abolish slavery itself until 1833, in an Act that did not begin to take effect until the following year.) Prior to this, however, courts had to varying degrees rendered slavery unenforceable: for example, in Lower Canada after court decisions in the late 1790s, the "slave could not be compelled to serve longer than he would, and ... might leave his master at will."

A small number of African slaves were forcibly brought as chattel by Europeans to New France, Acadia and the later British North America (see chattel slavery) during the 17th century. Those in Canada came from the American colonies, as no shiploads of human chattel went to Canada directly from Africa. The number of slaves in New France is believed to have been in the hundreds. They were house servants and farm workers. There were no large-scale plantations in Canada, and therefore no large-scale plantation slave work forces of the sort that existed in most European colonies in the southerly Americas, from Virginia to the West Indies to Brazil.

Because early Canada's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade was so minor, the history of slavery in Canada is often overshadowed by the more tumultuous slavery practised elsewhere in the Americas, particularly in the American South and colonial Caribbean. Afua Cooper states that slavery is "Canada's best kept secret, locked within the National closet".

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