Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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Angélique was returned to her mistress and started talking back to her and making threats to burn down her home. After learning she was to be sold and separated from the man she devotionally loved, Angélique finally set fire to her owner’s house and escaped. Unfortunately, the fire got out of control and destroyed forty-six buildings, wrecking havoc and propagating horror throughout the streets of Montréal. Only two days after the fire she was interrogated and in the transcription we get to know a short account of her life. Angélique’s confession was not only transcribed but also presented as a type of slave narrative since in these recorded documents she unfolds the events that rank from her birth to her eventual confession. Once convicted and found guilty, she was paraded through the city and finally tortured. On the day of her execution, she was taken through the streets of Montréal and then made to climb a scaffold facing the ruins of the buildings destroyed by the fire she had set. She was then hanged, and her body flung into the fire, so her ashes were scattered in the wind. Marie Joseph Angélique became (and still is) a myth for Black Canadians, and her confession inaugurated, much to her dismay, the Canadian slaves narrative genre.