Anti-Racism Reading List

Forced migration shaped the creation of Canada as a settler state and is a defining feature of our contemporary national and global contexts. Many people in Canada have direct or indirect experiences of refugee resettlement and protection, trafficking, and environmental displacement.

Offering a comprehensive resource in the growing field of migration studies, Forced Migration in/to Canada is a critical primer from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Researchers, practitioners, and knowledge keepers draw on documentary evidence and analysis to foreground lived experiences of displacement and migration policies at the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels. From the earliest instances of Indigenous displacement and settler colonialism, through Black enslavement, to statelessness, trafficking, and climate migration in today’s world, contributors show how migration, as a human phenomenon, is differentially shaped by intersecting identities and structures. Particularly novel are the specific insights into disability, race, class, social age, and gender identity.

Situating Canada within broader international trends, norms, and structures – both today and historically – Forced Migration in/to Canada provides the tools we need to evaluate information we encounter in the news and from government officials, colleagues, and non-governmental organizations. It also proposes new areas for enquiry, discussion, research, advocacy, and action.

Content Advisory
This exhibit of archival records offers insight into the overlooked history of slavery in Upper Canada (now Ontario). This exhibit features records that reflect racist and colonial views of slaveholding society. Some records further dehumanize those who were enslaved. These materials serve to create an accurate representation of these historical events. We interpret these materials and use them to create fuller narratives of Black life.

This website project is an extension of my dissertation research, One Too Many: The Enslavement of Africans in Early Ontario, 1760 – 1834™. My research focuses on the enslavement of African men, women, and children in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) between 1760 and 1834. I examine the scale and scope of the enslavement of African people in early Ontario, contextualizing this historical reality within the global phenomenon of the Transatlantic slave trade, the French and British colonization of what is now Canada and the "New World", and the American Revolution, which resulted in the Loyalist exile to British North American and the forced relocation of the Africans they enslaved.


My research aims to disrupt the idea that since the number of enslaved Africans overall was relatively small, the enslavement was insignificant in Canada. No matter the number, the fact that Africans were held in bondage in Canada is important historical knowledge. Gaining a deeper understanding of who these individuals were assists in unpacking the complexities of their lives and the role of enslavement and freedom in shaping them. My multimodal dissertation includes the creation of an open-access database that will provide a comprehensive enumeration of enslaved Africans held in bondage, the first major scholarly effort to do so. My employment of Black digital humanities (BDH) involves the development of biographical narratives of a number of subjects of my research, to ensure that their humanity and contributions are honoured and their memory, often denied, is acknowledged.