ABOUT ONE TOO MANY

This website highlights my dissertation research, One Too Many: Enslaved Africans in Early Ontario, 1760 - 1834. It features some aspects of my research, biographical sketches of enslaved women, men, and children, and the first phase of my database. This website shares my multifaceted research dissemination and related secondary sources on slavery in Canada.


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PROJECT HISTORY

This website project is an extension of my dissertation research, One Too Many: The Enslavement of Africans in Early Ontario, 1760 - 1834. My research focuses on the enslavement of African men, women, and children in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) between 1760 and 1834. I examine the scale and scope of the enslavement of African people in early Ontario, contextualizing this historical reality within the global phenomenon of the Transatlantic slave trade, the French and British colonization of what is now Canada and the “New World”, and the American Revolution, which resulted in the Loyalist exile to British North American and the forced relocation of the Africans they enslaved.


My research aims to disrupt the idea that since the number of enslaved Africans overall was relatively small, the enslavement was insignificant in Canada. No matter the number, the fact that Africans were held in bondage in Canada is important historical knowledge. Gaining a deeper understanding of who these individuals were assists in unpacking the complexities of their lives and the role of enslavement and freedom in shaping them.


My hybrid dissertation includes the creation of an open-access database that will provide a comprehensive enumeration of enslaved Africans held in bondage, the first major scholarly effort to do so. My employment of Black digital humanities (BDH) involves the development of biographical narratives of a number of subjects of my research, to ensure that their humanity and contributions are honoured and their memory, often denied, is acknowledged.


Portrait of an unidentified child, Archives of Ontario. [Accessed on 14 August 2021]

CREDITS AND SUPPORT

CONTACT US

329 York Lanes, York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3

Tweets by Slavery Ontario