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

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In sum, temperance and anti-alcohol behavior legitimized the new African Canadians’ sense of place and also allowed them to present themselves as not only respectable but also as Canadian citizens in their own right. Eager to gain respect, advance economically and battle prejudice, ex-slaves embraced temperance as Black Canadians, whether as individuals or as voluntary members of a society. With this move, they imagined and created a more rooted version of civil society for the refugees of American chattel slavery. William Lyons’s conditioned praise of his new country is nothing but a proof of this when he intentionally avows: “there is less whiskey drinking by colored people here, than in any place I know of”.

Even if the Black fugitives’ efforts to become proper Canadians is undeniable, it also recognisable that, regardless of their intention to live by the idiosyncrasy of British North America, their testimonies in A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada remain surprisingly oblivious of the concern of political equality for the new African Canadian inhabitants. The ex-slaves eloquently voice various forms of racial discrimination, with special attention to the school segregation in Canada, but are silent over their supposed right to vote. Contrarily, there appears a great effort to expose the exslaves’ economic progress in Canada, that results in another central concern of Drew’s volume. Again, William Grose’s testimony exemplifies this view when he comments