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Under the North Star: Black Communities in Upper Canada By Donald G. Simpson. Edited by Paul E. Lovejoy. A Publication of the Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora, York University, Toronto. Trenton, NJ.: Africa World Press, Inc., 2005. x + 500 pp. US$34.95 softcover. ISBN 1592213-56-1.
During the antebellum period, fugitives from American slavery were advised to follow the North Star and navigate their way to Canada. Since then, the North Star has become synonymous with Black freedom. It is fitting, therefore, for Donald Simpson to call on this historical image for his text. By his own account, Simpson wrote Under the North Star to offer a province-wide survey of Black settlements and communities during the early days of Ontario (Upper Canada) history prior to Confederation. Through six chapters of vastly different lengths he not only uncovers the history of Ontario's Blacks during this period but also uses this history as a catalyst for examining the evolving nature of Canada-U.S. relations, relations that could be particularly strained when the protection of men, women and children of colour was on the line.
Following the foreword by Paul Lovejoy (Director of the Tubman Centre), Simpson opens with brief accounts of Black immigration to and slavery in Canada. He focuses on the Revolutionary era, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the years following the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850. Legislation initiated by lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe in Upper Canada in 1793 helped ensure that slavery, while not comprehensively abolished, would ultimately disappear. Many Blacks were indeed escaping slavery, but notable figures like the Shadds were free people who left the United States because...