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To Africa once again

Broadcast Date: Nov. 27, 1992

It is 1992, and 200 years have passed since the exodus of over a thousand black people from the Maritime provinces to Sierra Leone, Africa. In this 1992 CBC Television interview from Halifax, Joyce Ross describes her journey across the Atlantic to follow the route of her predecessors to Freetown. Her royal reception there shows her that what is an obscure chapter in Canadian history (now somewhat less obscure because of Lawrence Hill's novel The Book of Negroes) is a part of every child's history lessons in Sierra Leone.

To Africa once again

• On Jan. 15, 1792, 15 ships containing 1,196 freed black slaves sailed from Halifax to Sierra Leone. These Black Loyalists had become disillusioned with their harsh lives in Canada, where the winters were bitter and the land promised to them in return for supporting the British during the American Revolution was given to only a few of them.

• The chance to leave Canada behind and return to Africa as free men and women was offered to them in 1791 by John Clarkson, who represented the Sierra Leone Company.

• In the years before the freed slaves from Canada arrived, the site where Freetown was to be established had been settled, then burned, then overtaken with jungle growth. When they arrived in 1792, a small group of the Nova Scotia Black Loyalists went ashore to clear land and create roads, leaving the remaining colonists on board the ships waiting impatiently.

• Freetown is Sierra Leone's capital city. Its 2007 population (including suburbs) was 827,000.

• In 2008 the average life expectancy in Sierra Leone was 41 years.

To Africa once again

Medium: Television

Program: 1st Edition

Broadcast Date: Nov. 27, 1992

Guest(s): Joyce Ross

Host: Norma Lee MacLeod

Duration: 5:29

Last updated:
March 23, 2009