Law Times

Page 6 February 2, 2015 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT Give LPP more time hile the decision to offer the law practice program sparked many concerns among members of the legal profession, the Law Students' Society of Ontario has added to the debate with its recent letter to Law Soci- ety of Upper Canada Treasurer Janet Minor calling on the regulator to reconsider the issue. It's an important contribution as the concerns are no longer theo- retical. The program is now off the ground, and with reports shed- ding light on the number of unpaid work placements for students, we now have the benefit of seeing the results so far. The student group's recommendations include a single licensing stream for all candidates or, if the law practice program is to continue, requiring reasonable compensation for all work placements. In a response last week, Minor noted the LSUC continues "to strongly advocate" for paid work for those in both the law practice program and the articling stream. She also noted the law society offers a repayable al- lowance program to help those going through the licensing process with a demonstrated need. In addition, she said Ontario lawyers are provid- ing a $1-million contribution to help defray licensing costs. Further, she said, "the issue of remuneration will continue to be assessed." Both sides have fair points. The law practice program was a pilot proj- ect aimed at seeing whether it could work as an alternative to articling given the shortage of placements. We have yet to see the full results, so it's too early to pronounce on its success or failure. But the students' society rightly points out some significant issues: unpaid law practice program placements could affect the availability of paid articling positions; there A look at Canada's history of slavery he success of recent films such as Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave , as well as the current TV series based on Lawrence Hill's novel The Book of Negroes, have revealed a strong public interest in the history of slav- ery, at least when packaged in dramatic form. Canada's engagement with slavery wasn't as long-lasting or as potent as in the United States, but the institution defi- nitely existed here from aboriginal times to the 1810s. Its legacy isn't as obvious, but most scholars draw a line between histor- ic slavery and ongoing racism that sug- gests the need for more awareness about the history of Canadian slavery. Unfortunately, we'll learn little about Canadian slavery from The Book of Ne- groes series. This isn't a criticism of the author, who created a fictional character to illustrate the circulation, both coerced and voluntary, of Africans in the 18th century. The capture of Hill's heroine, Aminata Diallo, by African slavers launches her on an epic journey across the Atlantic Ocean to South Carolina and then to New York, Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, and finally London, England, where she becomes an abolitionist icon. But it's the travails of free blacks, not slaves, in Nova Scotia that are central to her story. The existence of the black Loyalists has tended to obscure the ex- istence of a black slave popula- tion in British North America. Hundreds of black slaves were brought to Halifax in the 1750s, more accompanied the New England Planters who settled the confiscated Acadian lands in the Annapolis Valley in the 1760s, and the white Loyal- ists brought about 1,200 slaves with them to the Maritimes in the 1780s. Hundreds also came with their Loyalist masters to Quebec, which then included south- ern Ontario. Under the French regime, black slavery had existed but aboriginal slavery predominated. The black Loyalists were legally free but treated as second-class citizens. Compared to white Loyalists, they received poor land or none at all and were obliged to work for a quarter of the going rate for whites. Birchtown, near Shelburne, N.S., became the largest free-black settlement in North America in the 1780s, but the coexistence of free and enslaved black populations was dangerously unstable, leading to attempts — sometimes upheld by the courts — to re-enslave free blacks. Deceived and fear- ful, half of the black Loyalists moved on to Sierra Leone in 1792. By the late 1790s, however, courts in Lower Canada and Nova Scotia ef- fectively abolished slavery by throwing procedural obstacles in the way of slave owners seek- ing to reclaim their "property." They could do so because slav- ery, resting merely on custom, had no statutory foundation in these colonies. A 1793 act of Upper Canada, modelled on laws in Connecti- cut and Pennsylvania, provided for a very gradual abolition of slavery. No new slaves could be imported into the colony, but slaves living in Upper Canada in 1793 would continue as such during their lifetimes and their children would also be slaves until age 25. Thus, a woman born in 1790, for example, would remain a slave until her hypothetical death in 1860 while a possible child of hers born in, say, 1825 would remain a slave until 1850. Fortunately, slavery was formally abolished in 1833 and had effectively died out in Upper Canada a generation before that. But this example shows that as of the 1790s, Upper Canada's leaders presumed that slavery would exist for their lifetimes and beyond. The situation in Michigan was almost identical. No new slaves could be brought into the territory, but those present there as of 1787 were to remain so for their life- times. These laws stimulated a cross-bor- der traffic in slaves seeking freedom. Thus, in 1807 a female slave of attorney James Woods of Sandwich (now Windsor, Ont.) and her four-year-old son found freedom in Detroit by rowing across the river with the help of friends on the American side in a reversal of the underground railway traffic on which Canadians tend to pride themselves. The Michigan courts refused to lend assistance to Upper Canadians seeking to reclaim fugitive slaves and our courts followed suit. As slavery wasn't critical to the econ- omy of British North America, it wasn't defended as vigorously as in the United States when black and white actors, in- side and outside the legal system, began to challenge it. But its disappearance in British North America did little to di- minish anti-black prejudice, which is still a work in progress. Witness the destruc- tion by arson of the offices of Nova Sco- tia's Birchtown museum in 2006. LT Philip Girard is a legal historian and pro- fessor at Osgoode Hall Law School. He's also associate editor at the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. His e-mail address is pgirard@osgoode.yorku.ca. ©2015 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written per- mission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate, however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Law Times disclaims any warranty as to the accuracy, com- pleteness or currency of the contents of this pub- lication and disclaims all liability in respect of the results of any action taken or not taken in reliance upon information in this publication. 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Essentially, the concerns outlined by the students' society offer useful criteria for assessing the pilot project and considering some of the alternatives the students offer up. In the meantime, those involved in the law practice program have clearly put ma- jor effort into getting a quality alternative off the ground and we should give them more time to fin- ish the job ahead of a more fulsome assessment. — Glenn Kauth T That's History Philip Girard W

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