‘The momentum has stalled’: Experts renew calls for reparations from companies with historic ties to the slave trade
The Black Lives Matter protests that began in 2020 sparked international calls for reparations, and many companies and governments responded with apologies and new programs focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. But five years on, that momentum has stalled, resulting in renewed calls to Canadian companies with historic ties to slavery to repair the resulting generational harm.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, known for shaping Canada’s economy through the fur trade, is one of them, due to its historic involvement in the slave trade. Joseph Lewis, a Black man from New England, worked for HBC as a slave in Manitoba, according to research into the company’s archives published in 2022 by Dr. Anne Lindsay, a settler scholar from the University of Manitoba.
In addition, Dr. Lindsay discovered in the University College London’s Legacies of British Slavery database that many of HBC’s early governors amassed wealth in the West Indian slave trade. In 1838, HBC governor Andrew Colvile introduced the use of indentured servitude – a form of unpaid labour for a set period – in the West Indies following the British abolition of slavery. At that time, Mr. Colvile imported 82 indentured servants from Calcutta, India, into his Bellevue plantation in British Guiana.
While other Canadian corporations, including Scotiabank and CIBC, didn’t have slaves working in Canada, research shows that the companies’ wealth is rooted in the selling of goods produced by slaves in the West Indies. And as historians and researchers make new discoveries, they are advocating for these companies to acknowledge their pasts and make reparations to Canadians of African descent, a group that still faces systemic racism.
Dr. Cheryl Thompson, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and director of the research project Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives, argues corporations must address the harm caused by their predecessors.
“These companies might be different now, but they have to atone for their pasts,” she said in an interview.
In an e-mailed statement, HBC said it “acknowledges its history, including its roles in the colonization of Canada.” Although the company didn’t address whether it would consider reparations for involvement in the slave trade specifically, it noted that, in 2021, HBC launched its Charter for Change initiative, committing $30-million over 10 years in partnerships advancing racial equality with a focus on Black Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
Like HBC, Scotiabank and CIBC’s connection to slavery goes back to the founding of the companies.
The Bank of Nova Scotia was incorporated in 1832, and its first president, William Lawson, amassed wealth in the West Indian trade, shipping goods such as timber, codfish and wheat in exchange for sugar, rum and molasses produced by enslaved people. Of the bank’s 17 founders, 13 accrued capital through trade in the West Indies, which they then reinvested into the bank, according to research by Canadian historian Dr. Afua Cooper.
The Halifax Banking Company, founded in 1825 and one of the banks that formed today’s CIBC, early on amassed wealth from trade in goods produced by slaves. Between 1813 and 1814, bank founder Samuel Cunard’s family firm imported into Canada spirits, molasses, brown sugar, and coffee from Martinique, St. Lucia, Dominica, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Trinidad, Demerara, and Suriname. Mr. Cunard mainly used his own fleet of at least 76 ships to carry the goods.
Dr. Cooper argues that while these institutions didn’t directly use slave labour, they are still implicated in the systems that supported the practice. The West Indian trade, built on the exploitation of enslaved Africans, boosted Canada’s economy during the 18th and 19th century, she said.
When asked whether it would consider making reparations for its involvement in the slave trade, Scotiabank didn’t comment on the historic record, but said in an e-mailed statement it offers funding to several programs that provide education and employment support for Black Canadians.
CIBC declined to comment.
Reparations for the impacts of slavery have taken a variety of forms in the U.K. and the United States.
In 2020, Greene King, which runs 2,600 pubs, restaurants and hotels in the U.K., and insurance firm Lloyd’s of London, apologized and agreed to make reparations after the Legacies of British Slavery database highlighted their historic roles in the slave trade. Both companies said they would make payments to charities and organizations supporting Black and racialized communities.
Even before the Black Lives Matter movement began, in 2005, the U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase apologized for its historic links to the slave trade and set up a scholarship fund for Black students in the States. It did this in response to a Chicago ordinance requiring companies to disclose past dealings with the slave trade.
Previous discussions about reparations in Canada have centred on asking the government to make reparations, but none have directly targeted companies with historic ties to the slave trade.
Reparations are necessary to address the long-term harm caused by slavery, which continues to impact Black people today through anti-Black racism and discrimination, said Dr. Natasha Henry-Dixon, a Canada historian and professor at York University.
“We have to provide some measure of justice to descendants of those who were enslaved and to Black people who have come into this space and are still being affected by those systems,” she said.
In 2017, a United Nations Working Group recommended the Canadian government “issue an apology and consider providing reparations to African Canadians for enslavement and historical injustices.”
The group reported that Black Canadians experience disproportionately high unemployment rates, have relatively limited access to health care and education, and are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, with Black inmates being more likely to be placed in maximum-security prisons.
Many Canadians have a misconception that slavery didn’t exist in this country, Dr. Cooper said.
“The idea that we have in our mind is a big sugar plantation or a big cotton plantation.” But slavery in Canada primarily took the form of domestic servitude and agricultural labour, she explained.
Between 1629 and 1834, more than 4,000 enslaved Africans were brought to Canada’s early colonial settlements, according to Parks Canada.
French colonists arrived in Canada with enslaved Africans purchased from Europe, the French West Indies and English colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Similarly, the New England planters brought their slave property with them to the Maritime colonies in the 19th century. White Loyalists in the United States migrated with at least 2,000 slaves to the Maritimes during the American Revolutionary War, according to Dr. Cooper’s research.
But while most Canadian slaveholders had less than five enslaved people, they could be as cruel as their American or Caribbean counterparts. Enslaved Africans in Canada were exploited for labour, raped, beaten and killed, Dr. Cooper said.
With enslavement ending more than a century ago and no living survivors, it would be difficult to identify the descendants of those who were enslaved, said Rhoda Howard-Hassman, professor emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University.
But, she said, collective reparations are possible and that this is, in part, “a corporate obligation.” For example, institutions can establish scholarships and special programs for Black Canadians.
Both Dr. Cooper and Dr. Thompson also called for reparations from companies to address wealth disparity tracing back to slavery. These reparative efforts could include debt forgiveness, scholarships and mortgage assistance.
“We should have all the things that would allow a group of people who have been generationally left out of wealth attainment to achieve wealth in our lifetime,” Dr. Thompson said.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
