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

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By the time fugitive slaves arrived in Canada West, escaping from slavery and in search of an opportunity to create settlements and permanent homes, temperance became a fundamental shield of character. Mary Ann Shadd’s plea for a temperance boarding house in Chatham, Ontario, exemplifies this movement and testifies to the importance of this pivotal issue for the legitimate recognition of Black people both as humans and as Canadian citizens. As she openly harangued: “The planned black settlements in the province either required or recommended temperance. In communities throughout Canada West, local blacks formed societies, like the African Temperance Society of St. Catharines, to promote abstinence from intoxicating beverages” (qtd. in Stewart 46). Shadd is one of the members of the Black temperance movement who also sought to inculcate the anti-alcohol ideology upon the newly located African Canadians. African American leaders and members of the temperance movement in the antebellum period, among which Shadd figures prominently, recognized the problems that alcohol posed for the poor and the enslaved, and therefore they linked abstinence with abolition, that is, with freedom.