FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW * The first known Canadian of African descent was Matthew da Costa, a linguist and explorer, who travelled to Canada as an interpreter during the early 1600's * The practice of slavery was extensive throughout Canada during most of our nation's early history. There were nearly 300 slaves in Louisbourg during the 1740s, for example, and many of these served as domestic slaves in the households of middle class as well as wealthy families. * Slaves at Louisbourg worked in a variety of skilled and unskilled trades. Female slaves like Marie Marguerite Rose helped with domestic chores including child rearing. Marie Marguerite Rose served the family of Jean Lippinot, an officer in the French forces, and after being their domestic slave for eighteen years, she eventually gained her freedom at the age of 39. Marie then married Jean Laurent, a local Mi'kmaq, and togther they ran a tavern next door to the Lippinot home. * Over 3,500 Black Loyalists came to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the end of the American Revolution in 1783-1785. Although many left for Sierra Leone because of the hardships they experienced and because of the unfulfilled promises of receiving suitable land for farming, the majority of these Black Loyalists stayed in Canada. The Black Loyalists and their descendants contributed substantially to the culture, economy and history of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. * At the end of the eighteenth century, Birchtown, Nova Scotia, with a population of 2,500, was the largest metropolitan concentration of free blacks outside of Africa. Although, today, Birchtown is no longer an urban center, it is the site of important ongoing archaeological and historical research. * Although Canada did not adopt an extensive nation wide system of Jim Crow laws like the United States, it did allow for voluntary de facto racial segregation. Many communities across Canada followed the example of Dresden, Ontario, where racial segregation was practiced in virtually all public places. * Nova Scotia and the province of Ontario allowed public schools to be segregated along racial lines until the 1960s. Schools for blacks had few of the resources of other schools and, not surprisingly, the students often received far from adequate education. *The civil rights movement in Canada paralleled and, in some respects, predated that of the United States. One of the first major challenges to racial segregation in Canada occurred in 1946 when Viola Desmond, a black business woman, refused to sit in the balcony of a New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, theater but instead sat downstairs, an area designated exclusively for whites. Viola Desmond's action occurred nine years before Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. * Africville was a black settlement located on the north end of Halifax along the Bedford Basin. It was founded by black refugees of the War of 1812 and it survived until the Nova Scotia government expropriated the land and relocated the residents in the mid 1960s. Today, Africville stands as a symbol of the vitality of black culture and spirit of community in the struggle for justice and equality. * For students and teachers of Canadian history, every month should be Black History Month. For more information about Black History and the facts listed above, explore the following links: Birchtown Archaeology The Black Loyalist Heritage Society Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People Remembering Black Loyalists, Black Communities in Nova Scotia The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record This project has been supported by the Canadian Studies Program, Canadian Heritage. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Canada.