On March 24th, 2021 the House of Commons voted unanimously to officially make August 1st Emancipation Day all across Canada. This means that today will be the first official Canada wide Emancipation Day. That being said, this will be far from the first time that August 1st has been celebrated as Emancipation Day in Canada. Ontario has had a long history celebrating the enactment of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which took effect on August 1, 1834, and this includes celebration by the numerous black communities in and around Waterloo Region.
White Pennsylvanian Germans settling in Waterloo Region is a well-studied area of local history, however, the communities settled by black people in the Region have not received nearly as much study in local histories. During the 19th Century, free blacks, as well as black people escaping slavery in the United States, settled all over Waterloo Region (then Waterloo County) either settling in existing towns or creating new settlements to call home. The most well-known settlement was the Queen’s Bush Settlement (1839-1865) which was near what is now present day Hawkesville, along the border of the Region of Waterloo and Wellington County. At its height in 1848, the Queen’s Bush had a population of 1500. The people from this community would have been the driving force behind one of the more well-attended and well-documented Emancipation Day Celebrations held in 1863.
The celebration of 1863 would have been an especially exciting day because the event was not only celebrating The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, as every Emancipation Day would have before it, but also US President Abraham Lincoln’s recent Emancipation Proclamation. Approximately 2,500 people descended upon the small village of Hawkesville to celebrate with food and song. The Berlin (Kitchener) Band even attended to lead a procession to the Town Hall.
Emancipation Day Celebrations were common and held all over the region throughout the 19th Century. Waterloo held a large Emancipation Day Celebration in 1894 where people attended from all over Southwestern Ontario. Elmira, Wallenstein, Waterloo, and Hawkesville would continue to hold regular Emancipation Day Celebrations into the late 1890s when they started to become less regular. Smaller celebrations would continue to be held over the years but it wouldn’t be until 2008 that the Province of Ontario officially recognized August 1st as Emancipation Day in Ontario and until this very year for that same day to be officially recognized Canada wide.
If you are interested in learning more about Emancipation Day and black history in Waterloo Region, please check out the following titles: The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black pioneers, 1839-1865 by Linda Brown-Kubisch or Waterloo you never knew: life on the margins by Joannna Rickert-Hall.
Trevor Schoch, GSR Senior Library Assistant