Commentary Slavery? In Canada? How could it be? A little booklet called “Slavery and Freedom in Niagara,” by author Michael Power of Welland, Ontario, landed on my desk, and got me going on this subject. In school we learn only that Canada-the-good served as a kind of Holy Land for persecuted slaves who escaped from a barbaric U.S.A. This has created an unjustified belief in our moral superiority. For around the year 1780 there were an estimated 4,000 blacks living in the Canadian British colonies, of whom about 1,800 were slaves. Canada’s first anti-slavery law (of sorts), of July 9, 1793, did not exactly outlaw slavery. It was called “An Act to Prevent the Future Introduction of Slaves.” In other words, slavery would remain legal—but no more slaves could be imported to Canada. Now it’s easy to spring to judgement on all this, until we recall that slavery, practiced at …