Canada has been a leader in the fight against the slave trade since before Confederation. In 1793, John Graves Simcoe brought into law a measure banning the slave trade in the colony of Upper Canada. This law was the first of its kind in the British Empire, and led to the abolition of the slave trade throughout the Empire in 1807 and slavery itself starting in 1834. In the years that followed, Canada would become a safe haven for thousands of enslaved Africans escaping bondage in the United States via the Underground Railroad.

The province of Ontario already dedicated August 1st as Emancipation Day in 2008. To declare August 1st as Emancipation Day throughout Canada claims for the entire country a meaningful commemoration that both affirms and underpins our multicultural reality for ourselves and for the world. Please join the Royal Commonwealth Society of Canada in campaigning for August 1st to be declared Emancipation from coast to coast to coast!