Commentary
As Trump’s trade wars continue, we’ve seen more Canadian flags flying than during the Trudeau years, when flags on federal buildings flew at half-mast amid self-flagellation over “our country’s historical failures.”
But few Canadians are aware that four years ago, Parliament voted unanimously to designate Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day to commemorate Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1834, which ended human bondage in the British Empire (which at the time included Upper and Lower Canada). This happened three decades before the United States ended slavery, at the cost of a devastating Civil War, and many decades before many African states such as Mauritania (1901) and Ethiopia (1942) officially—but often not effectively—declared the practice illegal….