A freedom story to inspire us today

Canadians went to extremes to stand up for a fugitive who killed slave catcher, escaped from U.S. bondage

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John Anderson, whose legal fight to avoid extradition to the United States was a popular cause with the Canadian public, is photographed in Montreal in 1861.

Canadians tend to be proud that, even in its pre-Confederation prototype phase, Canada was on the receiving end of the Underground Railroad. It is a cornerstone of Black History Month education, perhaps to a fault. But our relationship with slavery - as an imperial colony that profited from the enslavement of others as much as a place where enslaved people were used to build the elite's ill-begotten fortunes is today being critically re-examined.

The story of John Anderson enters this conversation initially as a historical curiosity but concludes with profound philosophical questions that remain essentially unanswered. Is it murder to kill your captor? Are the determinations of upper courts final? And at what point does popular protest change from mob rule to people power? What's fascinating about Anderson's case is that the overwhelming majority of Canadians today would doubtless have the exact same opinion as Canadians did 164 years ago.

Anderson's odyssey began on the Missouri tobacco farm of Moses Burton in the early 1830s, just a few years before slavery was abolished throughout much of the British Empire. Perhaps encouraged by the indefensible irony of being enslaved by a man named Moses, Anderson seemed destined to challenge the inhuman cruelty of the bondage of his birth.

Slavery made him an orphan. His father escaped shortly after his birth to eventually find freedom in South America. His mother was sold to a plantation in Louisiana when Anderson was seven - an extreme act of retribution after Anderson's mother defended herself during a heated and ultimately violent confrontation with her enslaver.