Black Canadians facts for kids

Black Canadians is a designation used for people of full or partial sub-Saharan African descent, who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The majority of "Black" Canadians are of Caribbean origin, though the population also consists of African-American immigrants and their descendants (including Black Nova Scotians), as well as many native African immigrants.

"Black" Canadians often draw a distinction between those of Afro-Caribbean ancestry and those of other African roots. The term African Canadian is occasionally used by some Black Canadians who trace their heritage to the enslaved peoples brought by British and French colonists to the North American mainland. Promised freedom by the British during the American Revolutionary War, thousands of Black Loyalists were resettled by the Crown in Canada afterward, such as Thomas Peters. In addition, an estimated 10 to 30 thousand fugitive slaves reached freedom in Canada from the Southern United States during the years before the Civil War with the Northern states, aided by people along the Underground Railroad.

Many Black people of Caribbean origin in Canada reject the term African Canadian as an elision of the uniquely Caribbean aspects of their heritage, and instead identify as Caribbean Canadian. Unlike in the United States, where African American has become a widely used term, in Canada, controversies associated with distinguishing African or Caribbean heritage have resulted in the term Black Canadian being widely accepted.

Black Canadians have contributed to many areas of Canadian culture. Many of the first visible minorities to hold high public offices have been Black, including Michaëlle Jean, Donald Oliver, Stanley G. Grizzle, Rosemary Brown, and Lincoln Alexander, in turn opening the door for other minorities. Black Canadians form the third-largest visible minority group in Canada, after South Asian and Chinese Canadians.

Images for kids

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  Mathieu da Costa, the first recorded free black person to arrive in the land that would become Canada centuries later

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  The descendants of Black slaves from New France and Lower Canada are white-passing French Canadians. Their family names are Carbonneau, Charest, Johnson, Lafleur, Lemire, Lepage, Marois, Paradis, etc.

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  Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first Black Canadian to be a licensed physician, participated in the American Civil War and attended the deathbed of Abraham Lincoln.

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  Monument in Pictou, Nova Scotia dedicated to abolitionist James Drummond MacGregor, who helped free Black Nova Scotian slaves

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  Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward, c.1855. Ward had been forced to flee to Canada West in 1851 to escape charges of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by helping a run-away slave escape to Canada.

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  William Hall of Horton, Nova Scotia was the first black man to win the Victoria Cross

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  Africville Church (est. 1849), reconstructed in 2011 as part of the government's Africville Apology

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  William Peyton Hubbard was a city of Toronto alderman from 1894 to 1914

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  The Conquerors depicting the 16th Canadian Scottish Battalion from Toronto in 1918 by Eric Kennington. Note the Black man in the centre, carrying the battalion's flag and another Black man on the right in white blankets.

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  Jeremiah Jones of Truro, Nova Scotia, was recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal for capturing a German machine post at Vimy Ridge in 1917.

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  Viola Desmond. In 1946, her decision to sit in the whites-only section of a theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, led to her conviction in a controversial case, for which she was pardoned in 2010.

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  The Henry Hall computer building in 1970, a year after the student protest of 1969

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  Jean Augustine is a Grenadian-Canadian, the first Black Canadian woman elected to the House of Commons.

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  Map of Toronto census tracts by percent of population who identify as Black in 2016

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  Afro-Canadian singer Deborah Cox

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  Afro-Canadian musician Drake