Two Canadas: The Constitutional Act, Simcoe and the Fight Against Slavery in Upper Canada

A new map in 1791

In 1791 the Province of Quebec was cut in two. If you live in Ontario, this is the moment your province first appeared as its own colony, called Upper Canada. Why was it created, and who decided what kind of society it would be?

Why divide Quebec?

• Thousands of Loyalists now lived west of Montreal. They wanted British laws, an elected assembly and to own their land outright.
• The Canadiens wanted to keep the rights the Quebec Act had protected: French civil law, the seigneurial system and their Catholic institutions.
• Britain's answer was to make two provinces, divided roughly along the Ottawa River.

The terms of the Constitutional Act (1791)

• Upper Canada (today's southern Ontario) and Lower Canada (today's southern Quebec).
• Each had a governor or lieutenant governor appointed by Britain, an appointed Legislative Council, and an elected Legislative Assembly. This was the first time people in these provinces could elect representatives.
• Only property owners could vote. In Lower Canada, some women who owned property voted, until a law of 1849 took that right away.
• Upper Canada used English common law and freehold land (owned outright). Lower Canada kept French civil law and the seigneurial system.
• Clergy Reserves: one-seventh of new land was set aside to support Protestant clergy; another seventh was kept for the Crown.

The elected Assembly had limited power: the appointed Council and the governor could block its laws. That tension will matter in the next unit.

Simcoe's Upper Canada

John Graves Simcoe, a British officer, became the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada in 1792.

• The first capital was Newark (today's Niagara-on-the-Lake). In 1793 Simcoe chose York (today's Toronto) as a safer capital.
• He planned roads such as Yonge Street and encouraged settlers to come.
• His wife, Elizabeth Simcoe, kept a diary and made many sketches and watercolours of Upper Canada. They are important primary sources about the land and life at the time, seen through the eyes of a wealthy British woman.
• The new settlement depended on land obtained from the Mississauga and other First Nations through agreements that are still discussed today.

Chloe Cooley's resistance

When Upper Canada was created, slavery was legal there. In the 1790s about 500 to 700 enslaved Black people lived in Upper Canada. Enslavers included government officials, merchants and farmers, and also some First Nations leaders: Joseph Brant held enslaved Black people. One of them, Sophia Pooley, was kidnapped as a child and enslaved by Brant. As an elderly free woman, she told her story to a writer, Benjamin Drew, who published it in 1856.

On 14 March 1793, at Queenston on the Niagara River, a young Black woman named Chloe Cooley was tied up and forced into a boat by her enslaver, a man named Vrooman, who planned to sell her in the United States. She fought back and screamed. People saw it.

Two witnesses, Peter Martin, a free Black man who had served in Butler's Rangers, and William Grisley, reported it to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe. Simcoe wanted to end slavery. Officials tried to prosecute Vrooman, but the charges were dropped, because the law treated enslaved people as property.

The Act to Limit Slavery (1793)

Simcoe pushed for a law. Many members of the Legislative Assembly held enslaved people themselves, so the result was a compromise. The Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada became law on 9 July 1793.

What it did:

• No new enslaved people could be brought into Upper Canada.
• Children born to enslaved mothers after the Act would be free at age 25.

What it did not do:

• It did not free anyone who was already enslaved.
• Enslavers could still sell people within the province or across the border.

It was the beginning of gradual abolition. Slavery in all British colonies was abolished on 1 August 1834.

Richard Pierpoint

Richard Pierpoint was born around 1744 in Bondu (in today's Senegal, West Africa). Around 1760 he was captured, sold into slavery and shipped to the American colonies. During the Revolution he gained his freedom by serving with the British in Butler's Rangers.

• About 1788 he received 200 acres of land near Twelve Mile Creek in the Niagara region (in today's St. Catharines area).
• On 29 June 1794, he and 18 other free Black men signed the Petition of Free Negroes, asking Simcoe for land where Black settlers could live together and help each other. The government rejected it.
• In the War of 1812 (next unit), he offered to raise a company of Black soldiers. He served in the Coloured Corps, which fought at Queenston Heights.
• In 1821, in his late 70s, he asked to return to Africa. The request was refused. He was given land near present-day Fergus, where he died around 1838.

His life shows a Black Loyalist's contributions (defending the colony, building a farm, speaking up for his community) and the barriers (rejected petitions, never able to go home).