Slavery in Canada: A Past Denied

Independent filmmaker, Mike Barber, is currently producing/directing a film about the history of slavery in Canada that examines how 200 years of institutional slavery during Canada’s formation has been kept out of Canadian classrooms, textbooks and social consciousness.

The feature-length film, A Past, Denied: The Invisible History of Slavery in Canada will “show the connections between the practice of slavery in the past with racial disparity, tensions, and racism in the present,” according the film’s Web site. A Past Denied will discuss the early days of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which started in 1444 when Portuguese pirates kidnapped 235 Africans from a village near the Senegal River and brought them back to Portugal where they were sold as slaves.

Visit the Website for the film to read more about the project and view clips from the film. Berber is currently looking for two Producers and a Research Assistant to work on the film.

Also visit Berber’s blog, which includes a post about Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly’s apology for the evictions and razing of the African-Canadian community of Africville in Nova Scotia during the 1960s. This apology “marks a small but significant moment in the history of slavery and racism in Canada,” Barber wrote.