Many Canadians have a holiday today and though it may have different names, the city of Toronto has declared it Simcoe Day in honour of the man who set out to abolish slavery in Canada. In 1791, John Graves Simcoe was named the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, now the province of Ontario. He was a known supporter of abolition.
A former slave named Peter Martin told Simcoe about a slave owner violently abusing a slave girl he intended to sell in the United States. The case prompted Simcoe to propose a law to abolish slavery but he had to weaken it because many members of the governing body, the legislative assembly, owned slaves of their own and objected.
The watered-down version allowed owners to maintain the workforce they already had but they were not allowed to buy any new slaves from the U.S. In addition, any children of female slaves would become free at the age of 25.
Simcoe’s anti-slavery act was the first to pass in a British colony, which Canada was at the time. The law was superceded in August 24, 1833 when Britain passed its Slavery Abolition Act ending slavery in most of the empire.
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