HALIFAX - As a descendant of black loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia, Ken Pinto feels it's important to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire as a "tipping point" in world history and a pivotal milestone in human relations.
"This issue of slavery comes and goes," said Pinto. "The last big public consciousness of it was during 'Roots,' the famous TV miniseries in the 1970s."
In an attempt to get people talking, Pinto is one of the driving forces behind a weeklong conference that begins Monday in Halifax to mark the bicentennial.
"It was the biggest industry in the world 200 years ago,'' said Pinto. "It (abolition) was such a super change in how people lived because slavery was seen as normal ... but that all changed over a 50-year period where the abolitionists and several slave revolts together, finally changed the whole system."
Prominent academics, filmmakers and community leaders will take part in Commemoration 2007: Slavery, Anti-Slavery and the Road to Freedom. The series of events includes public lectures, film screenings, concerts, a community town hall meeting and tours of the famous slave ship Amistad.
Pinto said Halifax is a logical location for the ambitious academic and cultural event because of Nova Scotia's historic role as a destination for thousands of freed slaves from the United States.
"Birchtown in Nova Scotia, at one time, was the largest free black community in the western hemisphere in the 1700s," Pinto said.
The transatlantic slave trade was abolished by an act of the British Parliament in 1807 and the United States Congress followed with legislation of its own in 1808. But the actual practice of owning slaves didn't come to an end until 1833 in Britain, 1865 in the U.S. and 1888 in Cuba.
Lost in this history is the fact that slavery was also practised for short periods in parts of Canada, including Quebec and Nova Scotia, where records of slave transactions date to the founding of Halifax in 1749 and the Fortress at Louisbourg in Cape Breton.
"Slaves were bought and sold here in Halifax, so slavery is part of Nova Scotia's history," said Irvine Carvery, president of the Africville Genealogy Society.
Carvery, said that aside from marking a significant date in African-Canadian history, the conference is also an opportunity to look at "where we've come in the last 200 years."
He believes that in Nova Scotia, a province that has had its share of racial strife, strides have been made to recognize its distinct black culture and to address past injustices. He pointed to initiatives such as the African education division in the Education Department and to the provincial Office of African Nova Scotia Affairs as examples.
"With all those things said ... we still find times where there is systemic racism in place through no individual fault, but just the system lends itself to that," he said.
The conference will include an opportunity for the public to air its ideas during a community town hall meeting Tuesday night at the Black Cultural Centre in nearby Dartmouth.
Another highlight will be a port visit by the Amistad, a replica of the ship taken over in a mutiny by a group of slaves from West Africa in 1839. The ship is on a tour of the so-called "middle passage" and will visit England, Portugal and West Africa.
In December it will sail to Sierra Leone, a country that Pinto noted has direct ties to Nova Scotia's black loyalists. He said a number of them who called the province home became unhappy with their treatment and decided to leave.
"A fleet of 13 ships left Halifax harbour in January 1792 ... and that population left to help establish Sierra Leone," said Pinto.
