Canada
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834, and thus also in Canada. However, the first colony in the British Empire to actually abolish slavery was Upper Canada, now Ontario. A British army officer and later the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (1791–1796), John Graves Simcoe, passed an Act Against Slavery in 1793, which led to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was then superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
While the date of the First August Monday holiday in Canada is historically linked to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834; not all of provinces' commemorate the holiday as such.
Read more about this topic: Emancipation Day
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)