Mattieu Da Costa
First African in Canada
Mattieu Da Costa travelled with the French explorer, Pierre de Gua de Monts, wh founded Port Royal in 1605. Not much is known about Mattieu Da Costa’s travels, but he did speak the language of the Micmac Indians, suggesting that he had been to Canada prior to the 1605 expedition.
Harriet Tubman
“Black Moses”
In 1849, Harriet Tubman fled her slavemaster and escaped to Windsor, Ontario, using only the North Star as her guide. She returned to the South at least 19 times, and was the main “conductor” of the underground railroad for slaves fleeing from the Southern plantations to Canada. She led over 300 slaves to freedom in the mid to late 19th century.
To this day, Tubman remains the only woman to lead a military action in the United States. In 1863, she led a battalion of 300 Union troops and three gunboats to victory against Confederate forces on the Combahee River in Charleston, South Carolina. Over 750 slaves were freed as a result.
William Peyton Hubbard
Canada’s first black mayor
Hubbard grew up in the 1840’s in the Bloor-Brunswick area of Toronto. While in his 20s, he saved a man from drowning in the Don River. As it turned out, the man was George Brown of the Globe newspaper. Brown befriended Hubbard, and urged him to get into politics. Years later, in 1893, Hubbard was elected alderman of Toronto’s Ward 4: he was re-elected for the next 13 years. He also served as acting mayor during that period.
Anderson Ruffin Abbott
First Canadian-born black doctor
Born in Toronto in 1837, Abbott obtained his Bachelor of Medicine from Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1857. Abbott served as a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In 1866, he returned to Canada, where he set up a private practice in Chatham, Ontario. His resume is extensive, and included a term as president of the Wilberforce Educational Institute; coroner, county of Kent; and president of the Chatham Medical Society. He was also honoured by Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, and presented with a plain shawl that president Lincoln wore at his first inauguration.
Viola Desmond
“Canada’s Rosa Parks”
Viola Desmond is nick-named the “Rosa Parks of Canada” because of her refusal, in the late 1940s, to sit in the “colored” section of a movie theatre in News Glasgow, Nova Scotia. For her defiance, Desmond was thrown out of hte theatre, held overnight in jail and fined $20. She appealed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, but to no avail. Only one of the judges objected to the theatre’s treatment of Desmond, and the court did not consider her actions justified, even in the face of the blatantly racist seating policy.
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