Toronto / August 2025
I sit to write this a few hours after returning home from Toronto’s symbolic ride on the freedom train- a remembering of the underground railroad- the network of ancestors and allies that brought many out of enslavement in the US to Ontario and other Canadian sites. It is symbolic of Nanny and the other grandmothers and grandfathers who led the maroons and their refusal of and resistance to enslavement.
It is a reminder of our first revolutionary resistance to our collective enslavement by our Haitian ancestors and the price for that resistance that they continue to pay to this day. And it is a teaching and remembering that this place we now call Canada was complicit in our people’s enslavement from the building of the slave ships in the shipyards of Atlantic Canada to the slave market of what is now downtown Toronto.
El Jones, Black Nova Scotian poet, activist and educator captures our history and futures as a people of African descent well in this emancipation poem.
(Performed on CBC, Emancipation Day 2021, 4:55 minutes)
(Still Not) Freedom: An Emancipation Day Poem
This ocean is spread with our bones, fed by our flesh ripped off our thrones
To be thrown to its depths, stripped with whips and our tongues
Taken out of our chest, slavery broke our family, stole our lungs from our breath from the hold of the ships to the chains on our necks
And they deemed us as property, only a check and these docks
And this city they profited, yes
No not just the south, not just in the US.
So these warehouses filled with the fruits of our deaths
As the goods came and went, our bodies was spent and the merchants saw profits go up by percents, and the sugar came in and the codfish was sent
And when they could no longer own us, they shifted to rent
But though we were indentured, they couldn’t prevent
I don’t think they imagined the way we would ascend and that’s why our culture is all over the net we’ve created from nothing again and again
But a stroke of a pen or a scent of a bill it can’t erase centuries of them taking their fill
Look at Haiti whose freedom they have punished until for centuries that blood has continued to spill for the slave revolution they’ll never forgive
We’ve been held to the ground from here to Brazil
And oh god did we build
We built citadel hill left on the rockiest land that we tended with skill
We weren’t meant to survive, they intended to kill
And we’re still only here through our faith and our will
And still we can’t rest, still treated as guests and still tested, street checked and arrested
Still slave on the farms picking fruit, unprotected
And the street names for slave owners, still uncorrected
You can’t look into our face and say we are truly accepted
And our ancestors dreams unfulfilled and deferred, but we still believe freedom is more than a word
And we won’t end our struggle on August the 1st, and we will not dry up in the sun
We won’t burn and there’s power in our steps, we’re done waiting our turn, but this still isn’t freedom
Not yet
We have made it this far but there’s further to get, while you still cross the street because you think we’re a threat
And you still send the police to kick us out of our tents, and we still live in a world where Black life is condemned
While our modern oppressors come around as if they’re friends and they offer us grants for our pressure to end
But we will not be bought and our struggle won’t sell because we know we inherit generations of strength
Our great-great grandmothers cradled their babies and wept while the milk dried up in their breasts and their shoulders were bent yet they still gave us life we are here in their debt
And what we owe each other can only be felt
And that is why when we pass on the streets we nod with our heads and that’s why when we are pressed we will always protest
Just like the moon and the waves are a timeless duet, we are pulled by our history to never relent
But what you don’t see is the love we still lend
We can’t even say our lives matter without causing offense and yet we’re not broken and we will not bend
And every concession they try to reject
Freedom was never given, we crawled and we crept for every inch we’ve progressed
There is so much still left, but emancipation still come through the pain and the theft
But this still isn’t freedom, not yet
The destruction of Africville we can’t forget, nor the graves or our bodies buried unmarked, nor our elders land titles exploited by sharks
Not while children still hate that their skin tone is dark, not while children still doubt they could ever be smart
But the hope and the dream of the slaves still burns in our hearts and the elders have carried us over this far
Until everyone is free we still follow that star just like all of our people who died unremarked
Because we are called as the spiritual said, we are not meant to be here, we are meant to be dead
And so everyday of our presence is blessed and one day we’ll be living our life at its best
But there isn’t one Black life that would ever be left
Until we all stand together we would never accept because this still isn’t freedom
Not yet
We have made it this far, there is further to get.
El Jones CBC July 30th, 2021
(Still Not) Freedom, from Abolitionist Intimacies, El Jones, 2022, Fernwood Publishing