Laurelle Harris: Canada and Enslaved Persons. A very troubled legacy.

Stuart (host) 00:00:00
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Cree, Oji Cree, Dakota, and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis nation.

Voiceover 00:00:19
This is Humans on Rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart (host) 00:00:29
August 23 is International Day for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition. One of the great things for me about having a podcast is I get a chance to reach out and have a conversation with experts, people that really understand issues on this international level who are local and live in Winnipeg today's. No exception. My guest today has been practicing law in Winnipeg throughout Manitoba for over 19 years, primarily in the area of family law. She holds a certificate in Family Arbitration and certificate in Family Mediation from York University, and also general mediation training. She's the founding director of the Family Mediation and Arbitration Legal Institute, which is short for F-A-M-L-I. Brackets. She's combined her legal experience, training, and personal experience, as well as common sense and compassion to help her clients achieve a fair resolution to their matters during what are often difficult and emotional challenge times. She's taught at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law, that is, in the law and gender in the law, and acts as an equity and inclusion consultant through Equitable Solutions Consulting. She has worked for several nonprofit organizations both nationally and locally. She's a counselor in women's law, and in 2019 she was named an Honorary Lifetime member by Women's Health Clinic. In recognition, I should say, of those contributions. She serves as chair of Manitoba Bar Association's Equality Issues Section, the Director of the Manitoba Law Foundation, and sits on the Legal Aid Manitoba Advisory Committee. Laurel Harris, that's just a very brief of your background. I am thrilled and delighted to welcome you to Humans on Rights.

Laurelle (guest) 00:02:20
Thank you. Thanks very much.

Stuart (host) 00:02:22
Solarl let's just take it back a bit. Your amount of Tobin, I believe. Just tell me about where did you grow up, where did you go to school? What were some of the things that you learned in grade school, high school that drove you to really pursue the career that has launched something that I think is extremely important today?

Laurelle (guest) 00:02:42
Wow. So I'm a Winnipega Mantled. And born and raised. I was actually raised in a small French Canadian village, the village of my mother's people st a Jade, which is south of Winnipeg, about half an hour south of the perimeter. I was raised there until I was eleven, and then I moved into the city and spent the rest of my formative years in Winnipeg. I went to school both Afrasa and in an English speaking environment. Although I'm not fluent anymore in French, I still understand a fair bit, but I wouldn't consider myself fully fluent anymore. And I grew up without any touchstones. I grew up as one of three black people in the entire village in which I was raised until I was eleven years old, the other two people being my father and my brother. And so I grew up without any touchstones around race. I certainly experienced racism. The first time I was racially profiled, of which I have a recollection, was when I entered kindergarten.

Stuart (host) 00:03:45
Wow.

Laurelle (guest) 00:03:45
And so when I entered kindergarten, I was placed into a non process stream automatically, despite the fact that I was fluent in both languages and I could actually read in both languages, and despite the fact that my parents made it very clear that I was more than capable of functioning on France. The very first time I was streamed out and assumed that I couldn't handle the academic requirements of my schooling was kindergarten. So that being the background, I had this thirst to understand blackness beyond what existed in my own family, and there were no touchstones around me to do that. And so what was a normal interest became a voracious interest in Black history. I think I read virtually every book on my dad's shelf that I could find and was fascinated with Black history in every form. When I went to university at University of Winnipeg and then University of Manitoba, I started English major and quickly realized that Chaucer didn't speak to me. What did grab me, though, was Women's Studies. There wasn't at the time, and there isn't now, a Black Studies department anywhere in Manitoba, but Women's Studies was my first introduction to intersectional feminism into an analysis of race in an academic setting. And that grabbed me. And so I completed a degree in women's studies. I moved to Ohio and undertook graduate studies in women's studies and black studies jointly. My research was in Black Women's History, didn't finish my master's degree for a whole bunch of reasons, and then moved on and eventually moved back home, went to law school here. And then I've been practicing law and doing this type of work ever since. Race and understanding of Black History has always informed all of the work that I do, in particular with the volunteer work that I do. But it's always been a part of what I do, and it lends itself now in a good way. As you mentioned in the introduction, I'm one of the directors for the board of the Manitoba Law Foundation, which issues grants, and one of the things that we do when we issue grants to various organizations for funding, such as Legal Aid Manitoba or the Manitoba Law School and other organizations, as we look at equity and what populations are being served, who's being understirmed, et cetera. So this is a skill set that was taken on by interest, but has become really useful in a whole variety of settings.

Stuart (host) 00:06:15
So, Laurel, let's just go back to a couple of things that you mentioned in sort of your life journey there. When you realize that a very young age. You mentioned kindergarten. You sort of got a sense of anti racism. Did you have a conversation with your father? And what would that have been like for somebody who was looking at his daughter? But also, I'm sure, in his background, he had many experiences where he had been marginalized and had been a victim of racism.

Laurelle (guest) 00:06:44
Yeah. My dad wasn't unusual for his time, I don't think. So. He was an immigrant. He came from Trinidad and Tobago, which is a Commonwealth country. Came in the study. He experienced a significant amount of racial discrimination once he arrived here, and he spoke of it to a point, but he didn't speak of his experiences in a way that allowed me to make sense of how to handle racist incidents. And so when there was an Egregious incident, like somebody used the N word on the playground, both of my parents backed us up, my brother and I, if something like that happened with the school or whatever. But really the attitude was, don't call something racist unless you absolutely know that it's racist, because you can't launch accusations. That was sort of the attitude of the prevailing attitude of the time, and it was protectionistic. Right. Right. Don't make a complaint that you can't prove. And it's really hard to prove those things if you're looking for some over evidence of racism, because all you're going to do is make your life hard. And so it wasn't so much of a denial that racism existed, but it was, I think, a protectionistic mechanism to keep us from talking about something that would then end up actually causing us more harm than the original incident might have.

Stuart (host) 00:08:08
Right. And then let me just sort of just, again, advance a little bit. Laurel, as you obviously started to get into, you moved into the city, so you're now in grade school, you're in university. Did you again have that sort of sense that there was this underlying kind of racism that existed, wasn't talked about, but that you felt on an ongoing basis?

Laurelle (guest) 00:08:29
For sure. We understood that racism existed. Right. We understood that. We understood that some teachers didn't treat everybody the same. We certainly understood our own erasure in school. Right. Because there was no black content in our curriculum. I was privileged because my father was a teacher, so I didn't go into schools despite the experiences that I had in school. I didn't go into my schooling feeling as though I had no place whatsoever in the system because my father was a teacher. My grandparents were both teachers. So I came from a family that was university educated, going back to three generations in my father's family. So that wasn't a place where I felt exclusion personally, but clearly I felt exclusion in the sense that I was erased from the curriculum. I saw no one and heard of no one that looked like me.

Stuart (host) 00:09:21
Right. So no professors at all that you looked at and sort of said, oh, somebody that's teaching me that looks like me. No, not at all. What took you to the States?

Laurelle (guest) 00:09:31
A desire to do Black studies and women's studies in combination.

Stuart (host) 00:09:34
And was there like a specific program there that you sort of saw that I need to go there? And I guess the reason I want to ask that is that racism exists everywhere, and let's acknowledge that in this conversation. But when you go to the States, I think sometimes maybe it's because of what we hear in the news, Laurel. Maybe it's kind of that the population is so much larger, but did it change or did you learn anything or did it just more solidify things in your mind about sort of what you, as a human being were going to be faced with when you went to the United States?

Laurelle (guest) 00:10:06
Yes and no. So what I mean by that is that I left Canada. I left my university experience understanding that Canadians were, in the main, extremely polite about their racism. And so when I went to the States, the primary difference was that people were not as likely to hide their obvious biases, whereas Canadians certainly acted on their biases. And it was obvious that that was happening, but it wasn't done in quite so over a fashion. But I wasn't shocked by what I experienced in the United States at all. It was not that different from what I had experienced in Canada. Truthfully, if you were to name something as racism in Canada, there would be a shock and a denial that could possibly be the case. It was pretty obvious when things were happening in the US. But beyond that, many of the experiences are actually not that different.

Stuart (host) 00:11:05
Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. Let's kind of jump into the topic, and there's going to be lots of things I think that we're going to be able to unpack. But when you look at the notion that there's a date set aside for the International Day for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition, I think there's a lot of Canadians that don't have an understanding, Laurel, of how Canada was involved in the slave trade. Can you sort of take us back to that and sort of give us a sense of, well, where we are today? But how did it start in Canada and what was the founding principles, I guess, that made Canada sort of a part of this? And the reason I ask it so succinctly, Laurel, is that the naivety or the myth in Canada about the slave trade is quite amazing. Right? I mean, it's incredible that we just don't know it.

Laurelle (guest) 00:11:55
Yes. So the history is really actually well enslunced and well established. It's just that we don't talk about it and we don't teach it. So the reality is, as you know, canada is a product of two colonial powers france and England. So as early as the very early 1600s is when the first enslaved black person came to Canada. That was a young boy named Olivier Lejen, and he was enslaved and sold to a gentleman whose name was also he became Oliver the Younger. But in New France, there was enslavement, from fairly early on, a specific request from the governor of the colony to the king of France to approve the more widespread use of chattel slaves. Enslaved persons to meet a labor shortage was requested and granted. And so the reason why slavery existed as a practice, the enslavement of persons as a practice really took hold in Canada was exactly for economic reasons. It was to respond to a shortage of labor. There were indigenous folks who were enslaved, as well as African folks who were enslaved. And the French were able to procure enslaved persons from all over, including from the British. A number of enslaved persons we know came from Madagascar, for example. But the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade was very well formed and was in place and was a real system that was already present in the world. It's no surprise that the colonies would undertake this. I guess a lot of emphasis is placed on, well, we didn't have widespread enslavement like the United States because we didn't have that kind of agrarian economy, and that's true. But to suggest that we were not, as a budding nation, actively involved in the economics of the slave trade would be completely false. So, for example, over 60 slave ships were built in Canada for the British for the purpose of engaging in the trade of enslaved persons. There were folks who were deeply involved in the trade because they treated goods that were exchanged along with enslaved persons as part of the slave trade. And the reason we call it the Transatlantic Slave trade is because it forms a bit of a triangle or some goods left Europe, went down to Africa, traded for enslaved persons. Enslaved persons were then taken across the Atlantic to Brazil, into the Caribbean and into North America, and goods also made their way from North America back over to Europe and also back down into the Caribbean. So, for example, there was a trade between Canadian folks and holders of enslaved persons in the Caribbean, where we sold salt cod to folks in the Caribbean so that they could have a cheap form of protein to eat enslaved persons. And in return, we purchased rum and sugar and molasses. And those were things that we used also to make rum, right? And so our rum trade, for example, of which we are so proud, was started with the use of sugar that was produced by enslaved persons. So to suggest that our economy wasn't intrinsically intertwined with this global economy is to sort of pretend that there was no trade. And, of course, that's the whole purpose of colonization is to have access to land and resources for the purpose of trade. Right. So we were absolutely fully involved. Some of the Atlantic ports were actually ports where slave trading occurred and business people were intrinsically involved. One of the examples that I talked about recently was that of James McGill, who founded McGill University. He personally owned enslaved persons. His business interests were also intrinsically intertwined with slave trade. And so he made a lot of money from that participation. And the Gild University was founded with the monies that were left in his estate and with land that was granted from his estate. So, quite literally, McGill University was founded using wealth that was created on unfree labor from indigenous people and black people.

Stuart (host) 00:16:21
Yeah. And again, it's one of those amazing things, Laurel, that Miguel has academically a great reputation, and rightly so because of the teaching and the education that goes on in that institution. But to know the founding member with somebody who was involved in the slave trade. As a Canadian, are you aware of any education that takes place around what we just talked about? Are people in McGill aware of that? And I ask it on this basis that when we look at some of the history of some of the leadership that we've had and the colonialization in Canada. And now people are starting to whether it's through the issue of residential schools or simply what I think now is going to be deemed after the Pope has visited Canada and really deemed what took place in the residential schools as a genocide. Are you aware of any education that goes along around what James McGill did and what he stood for and maybe an understanding of what does this university really founded. On? What principles, what does it really stand for?

Laurelle (guest) 00:17:26
I don't know what's been happening recently, but I can certainly say in the last couple of years there was movement on the part of the student body at McGill University to call upon the university to start wrestling with its own legacies and its own history. Where that has gone, I don't know. But for sure there has been a pushback. But the pushback generally has come from the student body calling upon the university's administration to recognize its own history and legacy and what that means and to take steps. I haven't heard any announcements. Certainly, the last time I checked, I didn't see that Miguel University had announced anything specific in terms of initiatives that would be taking place. I can give you an example from an American university. For example, George Washington University has started. Might be Georgetown. I'll clarify that and get back to you about that. But the university has started to because there were enslaved persons that were owned by the religious order that ran that university. And there was a promise not to sell those enslaved persons. Those enslaved persons were sold to clear depths of the university. And as a result, part of the legacy of that is that every single defendant of those enslaved persons has been given free tuition at the university.

Stuart (host) 00:18:47
Right? So let me just ask you again some of the things that I've read that you have talked a little bit about Laurel, in some of your public discourse is the issue around the Klu Klux Klan. And again, I simply present that because I don't know how many movies we see burning Mississippi go on and on about the Kluk's Clan, which still is very much alive and well in the United States, and we see it on the news and with the previous president, was there just kind of magnified it and almost glorified it? But this notion if somebody and I mentioned when I was at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and somebody talked about the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, and again, it's one of those things where in Canada share what you know about Canada's role with respect to the Ku Klux Klan, please.

Laurelle (guest) 00:19:37
Yeah. So the clan was organizing on the prairies, and the following in Saskatchewan in particular, was quite significant, numbering in the tens of thousands of members. And so it was not an insignificant population of folks that had joined the clan. It included politicians, it included clergy. And going so far as to there was a hospital that was dedicated in the cornerstone, referred to the clan and the clan values. And so it was truly a part of the fabric of the culture at the time. There were some efforts to move the clan in Manitoba, and to a certain extent, that was successful. The clan and organizations like the clan effectively burned themselves out, not because more changed all of a sudden, but because their aims were achieved. One of the aims of the clan on the prairies was to halt black immigration to the prairies. While they were successful in doing that, black immigration to the prairies was halted by a number of different mechanisms, quite deliberately on the part of the Canadian government.

Stuart (host) 00:20:49
Can I just ask on that issue, my understanding was, just talking to some other people about this issue, is that a lot of the immigration came, I think was it through Oklahoma and a lot of it up into Alberta? Was that something that was sort of established a little bit?

Laurelle (guest) 00:21:06
So there were a couple of waves I mean, there was more than one wave of black American immigration into Canada, right? But as it relates specifically to the prairies, those folks were primarily from Oklahoma, primarily farmers around the turn of the century, of the last century. And that black migration occurred in response to Oklahoma actually joining the Union. And as soon as Oklahoma joined the Union, the very first thing that happened was that Jim Crow laws were instituted in the states. And then secondarily, black folks were disenfranchised. And so in response to the implementation of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement on the part of black people. There was migration. Folks have also heard about the Tulsa Massacre. There was a whole documentary on CNN about the Tulsa Massacre. Which was effectively the burning of what was called Black Wall Street. A very successful area of Tulsa. Oklahoma. Where there were successful businesses. Middle class folks working and thriving and doing well. And in response to an allegation of violence on the part of a black man. To a white person. That was used as the excuse to destroy the businesses. Burn them down. Destroy dozens upon dozens of black homes. And there was, of course, great loss of life and injuries. So all of that culminated in some folks saying, let's go up to Canada, because there were calls for immigration to Canada. Right. This is at a time where part of the colonialist vision was to populate the prairies with land that we fictitiously told folks was ripe for the taking, when in fact, of course, we know the land was not ours to give away. But that migration came up often came up on the train through Emerson, believe it or not, and then over into the prairie. So there are historical communities in Alberta and in Saskatchewan. There are folks who live in Winnipeg now who are descendants of people from those communities, both from Amber River, Alberta, and from Saskatchewan. Both of those sort of pockets of black community have folks that live here now in Winnipeg. But there was a significant effort and a significant opposition to that.

Stuart (host) 00:23:30
Right. Laurel when you look at sort of the history and where we are and this conversation we're having today, kind of as a reminder about the International Day, if you will, for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition, one of the things we talked about is the fact that the issue of enslaved persons in Canada is not taught or there's really no sense of education. I know that I could not tell you chapter in the Stab Rosa Parks, but I know a little bit about Rosa Parks. Viola Desmond why is that, from your perspective? How can we do a better job of educating people on the issue of Canada's role with respect to black Canadians or more specifically, enslaved persons?

Laurelle (guest) 00:24:13
Well, there's a couple of things that have impacted that. Firstly, it's not comfortable for people to remember the uncomfortable parts of their own history. So we simply don't think about or talk about those things. And when certain folks set the agenda, that's what happens. So it's not surprising that we haven't been taught about any aspects of black history other than perhaps to talk about the Underground Railroad and to highlight that. The Underground Railroad? Yes. There were many people who came to Canada from the United States in the southern US. Through the Underground Railroad. That period of time lasted for about 30 years, whereas the period of enslavement in Canada lasted for over 200.

Stuart (host) 00:24:54
Right.

Laurelle (guest) 00:24:54
So when we start to actually place that into its proper context. It's really quite overwhelming in comparison to what actually was occurring in Canada and what the conditions were for free people of color, free black people in Canada as well. What we don't talk about is that a lot of folks, after abolitionists of the United States, actually returned to the US. Both because of the harshness of the conditions in Canada and also presumably to try to reunite with loved ones or family, or to find folks and reunite families, if that was possible, but the great number of people left because the conditions were so difficult here. There was a fully developed system of Jim Crow in Eastern Canada. So. For example. The first mayor of St. John Brunswick instituted a number of segregationist policies. Including that a black person could not take the oath of a free person within the city limits. Could not engage in work that wasn't labor related within city limits. So couldn't own a business. Couldn't set up a profession. Would be reduced to menial labor within the city limits. And a whole other host of conditions that far outlived his tenure as the first mayor and also significantly impacted black folks'ability to earn a living and effectively created a poverty class in Canada. And that's the reality of what anti blackness means in Canada and what the legacy of enslavement actually is, is that what we did as a nation is created a poverty class and created a class of folks that were deliberately disenfranchised in a number of different ways, being denied the vote far longer than white folks, of course, along with indigenous people, et cetera. And so those circumstances led to the oppression of black people that we still have not overcome.

Stuart (host) 00:26:50
So on that basis, Laurel, when you think about August 1 being Emancipation Day, what does that mean to you?

Laurelle (guest) 00:26:57
Emancipation Day to me is important because August 1, 1834, is the date which enslavement of black persons was outlawed throughout the British Empire, right? So that's every single Commonwealth country. 1834, august 1 was the date of emancipation. What it means to me is that we're acknowledging the legacy. So I don't see Emancipation Day as something to celebrate, necessarily, but I do see it as something that we need to honor and we need to observe. And acknowledging that we actually have this legacy by acknowledging the existence of that. Emancipation Day is really important from a historical standpoint. We need to understand what that means. We need to teach it to our kids.

Stuart (host) 00:27:40
Laurel one of the things that I'm always interested in, for somebody who is so studied and you've been asked to speak many times on this issue and other issues, is there a resource or a place that you would recommend where people could go that are listening to this podcast and say, I want to learn more about this. I want to understand it. I want to be part of the discourse as difficult as it may be.

Laurelle (guest) 00:28:00
If you specifically are looking for resources around black Canadian history, there's a few great resources. The Canadian Encyclopedia Online has lots of articles about black history, including the period of enslavement, and those articles are updated regularly. Notable historians that are Canadian include Afua cooper, A-F-U-A Cooper who is a professor at Dallas University. Charmaine Nelson is another notable black historian in Canadian history. Natasha Henry is another historian who has done quite a bit of work. Robin Maynard is also an academic who's done quite a bit of work. Her text that is brilliant is entitled policing Black Lives state violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. And Robin Maynard does an excellent job of not just talking about the history of enslaved, the period of enslavement and it's aftermath, but connect exactly why systemic racism is so deeply affecting black populations in Canada in 2022 when the period of enslavement far predates. That right. And so she does an excellent job of tracing the history through. So, for example, one of the things that Robert Mayor talks about and she builds on the work of others, of course. But one of the things that she talks about is that the first malicious that were formed in Canada were to chase enslaved persons who had freed themselves by running away. Right. So the notion that the first crime is to feel oneself in a black body is a notion that is deeply ingrained in our consciousness and our subconsciousness, perhaps as a culture, whether we recognize that or not. Right. And so she does a great job of tracing how policies and practices of the government and of people on an ad hoc basis all work together to create great gaps in discrimination.

Stuart (host) 00:29:58
Yeah, so losing I'm just kind of running out of time here and there's so much to talk about. I'm going to put a lot of what you say into the episode notes so people can get a sense of where they can look at some of these references to learn. But I just need to thank you tremendously for finding time to share your wisdom and your passion about what we can be as a society. And I can't thank you enough for spending a few minutes with me on this podcast.

Laurelle (guest) 00:30:26
Thank you. I appreciate you having me very much.

Voiceover 00:30:28
Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by the Creative Creative team at Full Current in Winnipeg. Thanks also to Trixieme Bityouin. Music by Doug Edmond For more, go to humanrights hub CA 

Voiceover 00:30:28
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