This is part 4 of our annual Black History Month blog series. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

It’s an exciting story that helps us feel connected to the great and sweeping narrative of the Underground Railroad: that (seemingly, any and all) tunnels, cellars, attics, barns, etc. of a certain age, throughout the city were purpose-built for hiding Freedom Seekers after their arrival on the Underground Railroad.

It’s a common misconception that is often repeated through family lore. I hear it often shared as a family’s connection to an important narrative in our city.

As exciting as those stories are, there is no historical evidence to support the widespread hiding of Freedom Seekers in the basements, cellars, attics, etc. of St. Catharines.

In this four-part series, I’ll examine the many historical layers that perpetuate this myth. I’ll also examine the low number of ultimately unsuccessful legal and illegal attempts at removing Freedom Seekers from Canada and returning them to enslavement through the 1830s-1860s. That meant that Freedom Seekers were confident enough in their legal and socio-political protections that they lived openly.

Why? This local lore distracts from the meaningful lives and contributions led by Freedom Seekers in our community. It detracts from and even tries to excuse the racism and prejudice faced and endured by Freedom Seekers when they arrived in St. Catharines. And it does a disservice to the thousands of Freedom Seekers, and the millions left behind in enslavement to misuse a varied and complex 30-year political and societal struggle for good storytelling.

Part 4: Hiding Our History

Before anti-discrimination legislation was passed in Ontario in 1961, the Charles Summers case was brought before St. Catharines City Council. About to be evicted because of their race, the Summers family petitioned the Council for a stay in their decision, but their petition was denied since laws concerning rentals are under provincial jurisdiction. During the proceedings, however, Councilors denied and ignored the core of the case: that the family was being evicted due to their race; and that racism was central to this experience and their daily lives in St. Catharines.

This is only one local example of the intentional denial of racism in Canada. It was central to discussions of Freedom Seekers arriving in Canada in the 1800s and it remains so today.

In her paper Benjamin Drew and Samuel Gridley Howe on Race Relations in Early Ontario: Mythologizing and Debunking Canada West’s “Moral Superiority,” Donna Palmateer Pennee argues that Canadian identity, with regards to Black History, is founded in being on the northern end of the Underground Railroad as a place of Freedom, in binary contrast to the United States as a place of enslavement.

Modern historians, especially Natasha Henry-Dixon, have worked tirelessly to draw attention to the presence of enslavement in Upper Canada. Others have worked diligently to draw attention to the racial prejudice faced by Freedom Seekers in Canada. Others still have tried to move the underlying nationalist sentiments of the Underground Railroad into the light, so that focus instead can be placed on the experiences and contributions of individual Freedom Seekers, rather than Canadian’s “moral superiority”¹ to the United States, an argument which ebbs and flows depending on our relationship with our neighbour to the South.

That moral superiority stems from the denial of racial prejudice in our community: “Canadians hold fast to the image of their homeland as the place where, as a contemporary song put it, ‘coloured men are free.’”² The images are strong (thanks to Hollywood, certainly) and exciting. The hiding of enslaved peoples, one of the strongest representations of Underground Railroad activity (and extremely risky for abolitionist and enslaved under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act) is so easy for our imaginations to connect with. Since they help us to feel good, they easily – and over a long time – become part of the national story. Those narratives have become sacred to our identity, so much so that I experience discomfort writing this, as you are probably experiencing discomfort reading it. But, even in “well-intentioned hands and, systemically, across institutions, [the narratives are] core to building and sustaining the myth that white Canada is better than the white United States in its relations with Black people.”³

It’s much clearer then, why the myths of the Underground Railroad persist. There is ample historical evidence supplied, yet it remains invisible in our education systems, which often prioritize nationalistic approaches to history. Certainly, Black History has been poorly shared in both quantity and quality that ignorance abounds. Yet, the persistence with which we are distracted by myth for the sake of national feelings keeps us from understanding the historical and modern injustices experienced by the Black community, because those stories are “much more palatable to modern tastes, and so the legends of the Underground Railroad comfort people on the Canadian side of the border just as much as they console their counterparts in the United States.”⁴

Hanging on to the persistent myths about the lives of Freedom Seekers in St. Catharines helps them to persist nationally. It also shadows the real, fulsome and challenging lives they lived, not to mention the real and measurable contributions these individuals made to our community and our story.

Most of all, our obsession with the secret hiding places of the Freedom Seekers in a place where they lived free denies them the badge of courage they rightly earned through their arduous journeys out of enslavement, and instead rewards white paternalism in their place.

Part 4 Footnotes and Series Bibliography

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1. Donna Palmateer Pennee. Benjamin Drew and Samuel Gridley Howe on Race Relations in Early Ontario: Mythologizing and Debunking Canada West’s “Moral Superiority.” University of Toronto, Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 56 No. 1 Winter 2022, pp. 102. ↩︎
2. Ibid, 101. Quoted as used by Pennee from Karolyn Smardz Frost and Veta Smith Tucker. A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016. ↩︎
3. Ibid, 102. ↩︎
4. Ibid, 120. ↩︎

Books and Peer Reviewed Articles

Butler, Nancy and Michael Power. Slavery and Freedom in Niagara. Niagara-on-the-Lake: Niagara Historical Society, 1993.

Dunlop, R. G., et al. “Records Illustrating the Condition of Refugees from Slavery in Upper Canada before 1860.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 13, No 2. April 1928, pp. 199-207.

Drew, Benjamin. A North Side View of Slavery – The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (1856). Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008.

Halty, Nina. From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System. Florida Atlantic University, 2017.

Howe, Samuel Gridley. Report to the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 1864: The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969.

Howe, Samuel Gridley. “Howe Commission Report Testimony 1863, St. Catharines Section and 1 Suspension Bridge Interviews.” As transcribed by Donna Ford. St. Catharines: St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, 2014.

Pennee, Donna Palmateer. “Benjamin Drew and Samuel Gridley Howe on Race Relations in Early Ontario: Mythologizing and Debunking Canada West’s “Moral Superiority.” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 56, No 1. Winter 2022, pp. 99-123.

Murray, Alexander L. “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-evaluation.” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 43 No. 3. December 1962, pp. 298-314.

Silverman, Jesse H. Kentucky, Canada, and Extradition: The Jesse Happy Case. Louisville: Filson Club, 1980.

Winks, Robin W. The Blacks in Canada: a History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997.

Newspapers

St. Catharines Constitutional, 1861-1867.

St. Catharines Journal, 1826-1860.

The Provincial Freeman, 1855.