July 30, 2010
Robert Benzie
It marks John Graves Simcoe’s greatest accomplishment.
Not the civic holiday Monday that honours the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, now known as Ontario — but Emancipation Day, which will be celebrated Sunday for only the second time.
In 1793, Simcoe passed what was “the first global human rights legislation,” said Rosemary Sadlier, president of the Ontario Black History Society.
The landmark abolitionist legislation — known as the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada — helped eventually end the slave trade and set in motion the eventual outlawing of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.
Sadlier, who was instrumental in getting the Legislature to recognize each Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day, noted Ontario was the final destination in the Underground Railroad of freed American slaves.
At a Queen’s Park ceremony on Friday, Premier Dalton McGuinty said it is one of the province’s greatest achievements.
“Ontario is so much better, so much stronger because of our black history. This is our story,” McGuinty told leaders of the black community.
Source: http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/842545
“Ontario is always showing the way — all the way back to 1793 when John Graves Simcoe passed the anti-slavery act, making Ontario the first British colony to limit slavery,” he said.
McGuinty said it was a testament to the importance of Simcoe’s measure that the Emancipation Day bill in 2008 — moved by Progressive Conservative MPP Ted Arnott (Wellington-Halton Hills) and Liberal MPP Maria Van Bommel (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex) — was the first such bi-partisan legislation in the history of Ontario.
