Chloe Cooley and the Long Years of Canadian Slavery

 

This new Heritage Minute, although it does not quite lie, gives a distorted view of Canadian history.

It begins with Chloe Cooley saying, “I don’t care what the law is. I’ll never be a slave.” This obscures the fact that slavery was not legal in Upper Canada. The issue had arisen only recently, with UE Loyalists arriving from slave-holding states. Cooley was kidnapped and rowed across into the United States because the government was about to declare slavery illegal. Her owner feared losing his investment. He had "owned" her for only a few months.

The government then brought charges against Vrooman, the “owner.” The kidnapping was a public scandal.

Slavery was prohibited in Upper Canada not in 1834, as the Heritage Minute concludes, but in 1793, the same year Cooley was kidnapped. Technically, the practice lingered here and there until 1834, but only so long as the matter never came to trial. Courts would reliably declare slavery illegal.