Episode 120 of Down to Business podcast
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Toronto made headlines recently when its city council announced it would change the name of Dundas street, which cuts through the heart of the city, because of its namesake Henry Dundas’ connection to slavery.
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This week, on Down to Business, Padraic Scanlan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, who is cross-appointed to the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, explained Dundas’ role in delaying the abolition of the slave trade.
Scanlan’s new book ‘Slave Empire’, explores how the early economy of pre-federation Canada was shaped by the sugar and cotton industries in the Caribbean and the U.S. South, which used enslaved people for labour.
It’s a wide ranging interview on a sensitive topic, with a focus on this country’s economic history, but it’s especially relevant today as many Canadians reconsider the legacy of people such as Dundas and some of the unsettling chapters of this country’s past.
