I had a chilling experience last week while visiting the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The museum documents the harrowing though often heroic stories of slaves escaping across the Ohio River to southern Ontario. Pursued by slave hunters, people like Harriet Tubman hid them in underground storage rooms and carried them north in false-bottomed carts.
Most disturbing is the museum’s lynching collection. Photographs and eye witness accounts paint scenes from hell. As blacks are tortured, onlookers are cheering, picnicking, taking “wish you were here” photographs. The spectators seem less human than demonic.
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About that time my Canadian self-righteousness began to kick in. “O Canada, glorious and free!” we sing. And wasn’t the war of 1812 really the first war against American slavery? When the United States invaded Canada, thousands of black volunteers, who were promised land and freedom, fought to push back the invaders. The first all-black regiment was formed: Captain Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men, who distinguished themselves at Niagara, Fort George and Stoney Creek.
I came home and checked our history. Not so glorious, not so free. In fact, by virtue of the “Code Noir,” slavery was legalized in New France in 1705 and both black and native slaves were common in manor homes, estate farms and on the frontier.
Throughout the 18th century there is plenty of evidence of slave auctions in Nova Scotia. Newspapers advertised skilled “negros” for sale, wills detailed who slaves should go to and how they should be used and sizable bounties were offered for the return of escapees.
And those brave, black, 1812 Canadian defenders? Most received freedom but any land granted was at best stony and unproductive.
The truth is, slavery in Canada and the U.S. has never been abolished, except in law. It’s called human trafficking now, but it is even more odious than its earlier forms.
The RCMP tell us that 2,100 to 3,000 people are trafficked into or through Canada each year, mostly women and children, disproportionately aboriginal, destined for the sex trade. It turns out, unfortunately for my Canadian pride, that this is about the same as the annual average that entered the U.S. over its 240 years of legal slavery, 640,000 in total.
The worldwide scope of this heinous activity is daunting: 20 million enslaved, by the count of Anti-Slavery International, with close to a million more sold or kidnapped annually. And the numbers are likely low because only a fraction of slave traders are caught.
Sadly, Africa continues to supply the largest number of slaves. UNICEF reports 200,000 children sold, mostly from Benin and Togo, each year.
But everywhere modern-day slaves can be found, labouring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child carpet slaves in India, as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, and, to our shame, as sex slaves in Canada.
Clearly there is still a powerful need for a railway to freedom. Where can we find the modern Harriet Tubmans who will help us dismantle this most immoral economy?
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
