The Universities Studying Slavery—USS—conference is happening outside of the United States for the first time, and it’s happening in Halifax. From Wednesday Oct. 18 to Saturday Oct. 21, keynote speakers and panel sessions will take place at the Black Cultural Centre—BCC in Cherry Brook and the Halifax Marriott Harbourfront Hotel to consider the theme: “Slavery, Reparations and Education.”

Two Halifax universities—Dalhousie and King’s—partnered with the BCC to bring the conference to a city whose own history is inextricably linked to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the history of enslaved Black people.

The Coast will be covering each day of the conference as it unfolds.

Says the USS website, “Universities Studying Slavery—USS—is a consortium of over one hundred institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Scotland, Ireland, and England. These schools are focused on sharing best practices and guiding principles as they engage in truth-telling educational projects focused on human bondage and the legacies of racism in their histories.

“Member schools are all committed to research, acknowledgment, education, and atonement regarding institutional ties to the slave trade, to enslavement on campus or abroad, and to enduring racism in school history and practice.”

Dr. Isaac Saney is a Black Studies in Cuba specialist and tenured professor at Dalhousie University. Saney is the coordinator of Dal’s Black and African Diaspora Studies program—the first of its kind in Canada—and the chair of the organizing committee for this year’s USS conference.

“Dalhousie was the first Canadian university to expose its links to slavery,” says Saney. “Then King’s followed. There is this consortium of 50 to 60 universities in the United States called Universities Studying Slavery, which looked at their roots. And it seemed only logical that both universities should join. And so [King’s president Bill Lahey] thought, ‘Why not have the first conference outside of the United States ever?’ And he considered Halifax particularly because of Halifax’s connection in Nova Scotia basically as the birthplace of Black history in a sense of the Black presence in Canada. And, of course, the fact that this history is often ignored; the existence of slavery is often ignored in Canadian historiography.”

Lord Dalhousie was committed to the enslavement of Black people. The namesake and original initial investor of the largest university in Halifax directly benefited from enslaved peoples. The university has recently gone public with this history. In 2019, Dalhousie University published their Report on Lord Dalhousie’s History of Slavery and Race, following the public presentation of the Report of the Findings of the Scholarly Panel to Examine Lord Dalhousie’s History on Slavery and Race, in 2018. Following Dal, the University of King’s College commissioned their own inquiry into King’s historical ties to the enslavement of Black people. Their findings were published in 2019, entitled King’s College, Nova Scotia: Direct Connections with Slavery.

“We learned that a substantial percentage of the funding that came to King’s over almost its first seven years came from wealth generated by enslaved Black people,” said King’s’ president Bill Lahey. “And we also learned that many people associated with Kings—founders, presidents, parents, donors—were themselves associated with slavery. And that, in some ways, King’s represented the old worldview in which slavery was thought of as being a defensible practice.”

Lahey says it’s clear that without the level of funding King’s received both directly and indirectly from 1789 to 1854 from the enslavement of Black people, King’s couldn’t have existed.

“Between 1789, and 1802. Kings received a provincial grant,” says Lahey. “That was based on a sugar tax. So that means 100% of that grant was derived from wealth generated by enslaved Black people, because the sugar was being produced in the Caribbean…. [And] from 1789 to 1854, our research shows that as much as 10% of the fees that were paid by students came from family wealth that was generated by enslaved Black people. So it’s substantial.”

Both Lahey and Saney acknowledge barriers African Nova Scotian and Black students face when entering universities, and how these are related to histories of enslaved Black people in Nova Scotia. Lahey says just under 4% of its students self-report as being African Nova Scotian or Black. “And 10 years ago, it would have been a much smaller percentage.”

Lahey and Saney say hosting the USS conference is a part of redressing these inequities, along with building representation in faculty, programming, scholarship initiatives and research within the institution. “Achieving our aspirations [for King’s] to be a place that’s truly welcoming and inclusive and supportive of Black students requires us to be ruthlessly honest about our history, and to show that we understand the accountability that comes from that history,’ says Lahey.

“It cannot be something that’s swept under the table, and then still expect people who are living with a legacy of that history to be fully trustful of you when you say you are working to be a more inclusive and welcoming university for Black students, faculty and staff.

“The purpose of this conference and the growing relationship that we have with the Black Cultural Centre is to not just have a series of distinct initiatives, but to develop a comprehensive plan and strategy that declares our objectives, the things that we’re going to do to achieve those objectives, and how we’re going to be accountable for the progress.”

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, King’s and Dal announced a new academic appointment focused on the history of slavery in Canada, called the Centennial Carnegie Appointment in the History of Slavery in Canada. This appointment was announced in connection with the USS conference.

Says the release, this tenureship will be a part of the Department of History and “will advance important scholarship worldwide and contribute to the commitments both universities have made to redress historical exclusions and chart a course for a more inclusive and diverse future. The Appointment also forms part of the universities’ responses to urgent calls asking higher education to address anti-Black racism and ensure Black flourishing, by supporting models of ‘inclusive excellence.’ To that end, the two institutions have signed onto the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education: Principles, Actions, and Accountabilities.”

Says Saney: “The Scarborough Charter was signed by our 50 universities in Canada. It actually acknowledged the existence of anti-Black racism and how critical universities were particularly in the educational sphere in combating it, right? And so there were calls for a number of things around curriculum, around diversity of student bodies, diversity of faculty and so forth. So those are things that are important, right, and so on. And we just had at Dalhousie the announcement of a million dollar scholarship, the Senator Don Oliver Scholarship for African Nova Scotians. So I think those things are important as well.”

On the responsibility of universities to hold these conversations on slavery and race, Saney says “they have to render an account that this history existed. Then they have to redress it in terms of the courses that are being offered. And also in terms of the fact that Canada has, in many ways, lagged pathetically behind the United States. So the first Black Studies program, which came out of the Black liberation struggle in the 1960s—in fact, you know, fighting for the Black Studies program was part and parcel of the liberation struggle, a very critical part of it—was in 1969, in San Francisco State University.

“We’ve waited until 2023 to have our first Black Studies degree program in Canada. So I think it’s important to understand that the Black experience is not trivial. It’s not meaningless. It’s not marginal. It’s not incidental to the Canadian story. So it needs to be emphasized in terms of courses that are offered. And I would argue in building Black Studies programs as well, in order to also to address that when we look at discrimination, marginalization and so forth, that existed in the educational sphere.

“Universities have to also admit that Black students of African descent quite often found it very difficult, if not impossible, to enter institutions of higher learning. So I think it’s also important to provide resources and scholarships and programs that reach out into the community and provide access for students. “

Sahey says he’s looking forward to the conference opening “a dialogue, a discussion, an expansion of the multifaceted way in which slavery and its consequences and legacy have continued to shape and impact in very negative ways people of African descent in the Americas. I think it will show a light on the fact that the enslavement of people of African descent and the discontents of the policies of segregation, discrimination, marginalization, disenfranchisement, that followed the many communities of people of African descent, that story unfolded here in Canada as much as it unfolded in the United States. Dr. Afua Cooper and others have referred to slavery as ‘Canada’s great secret.’ So we’re going to talk about slavery within the Canadian context, and particularly the Nova Scotian context, and show that it wasn’t marginal. It wasn’t, in a sense, accidental. It wasn’t trivial. But it marked society in very profound ways, establishing a constellation of practices, conventions, ideas and values, that had a profound effect and a profound impact on the lived trajectories of people of African descent.”

Of the conference starting Wednesday, Oct. 18, Saney says: “What often happens with scholars is they find, you know, areas of convergence, areas of commonality where we can continue to research. Where I think it’s going to be exciting is it’s going to demonstrate how exciting and fertile, from an academic and research perspective, Black Canadian Studies is as a field, and particularly studying Nova Scotia. So I think people will be able to explore this history in much greater detail and richness. And to show that it’s, you know, the complexity and meaningfulness of this history for understanding what is this thing we call Canada.”

Saney says all keynote speeches will be available to watch on Zoom.

“At the conference itself, reparations is gonna be a very big issue,” Saney says. “And what people need to understand about reparations is—there’s a sort of stereotypical notion that reparations is about money.[But really] the reparations movement is about reconciling relations between those who have suffered because of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and have endured the consequences and burden, right, of that legacy, reconciling society with them. But more importantly, transforming social relations within countries and between countries for the benefit of everybody. So reparations is not just about people of African descent; it’s about envisioning a world in which everyone can realize their full human potential. And we can only do that by addressing these historical injustices. Because these historical injustices redound for the detriment of all of us.”

The conference will bring leading reparations specialists to Halifax, such as Hilary Beckles, who is the keynote and a leading scholar on reparations. “But we also have perhaps the leading political activist on reparations, at least in the Caribbean context: H.E. David Comissiong,” says Saney.

The other keynote speakers of the conference are: Dr. Sylvia D. Hamilton, renowned filmmaker, writer, journalist and artist, and University of King’s College’s Inglis professor; Dr. Afua Cooper, distinguished historian and poet, and Killam research chair in Black and African Diaspora Studies at Dalhousie University; Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, leading historian of Black history and slavery in colonial Canada and a professor in Black North American History at the University of Calgary; and Dr. George Elliott Clarke, renowned poet and E.J. Pratt professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.

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Do you remember when, near the start of the pandemic, the government launched its national retraining scheme and everyone had a right old giggle because waiters were being told to retrain as boxers, and classical music conductors were being asked if they’d ever considered a career as a chimney sweep? Well, if I lived in Toronto and my life suddenly went down the swanny, I know what I’d retrain as. I’d retrain as a window cleaner. Hear me out.

For half the year temperatures flit between a clement 16°C and a tropical 30°C (things get a little chilly come winter, I’m told, but I figure the blizzards will do the hard work once things get properly Arctic). You’d be plying your trade at the edge of Lake Ontario, three times the size of Devon, so ocean vistas (basically) and an enlivening sea breeze. It’d keep you fit. The views would be top. And you’d get to work by yourself (the dream, right?). Mostly, though, I’d retrain as a window cleaner because in Toronto you’d never go out of work.

If you thought the march of the soul-crushing high-rise apartment block was purely a London phenomenon, think again. Cheap-looking glass towers are hot in Toronto. They’re called condominiums here, of course, but you already knew that from all those Botox-and-sunset-filtered American ‘realty’ TV shows.

The nasty glass buildings trudge all along the Queen Elizabeth Way. They peter out around Humber Bay, but not before making you wonder whether it’s all some sort of racket; whether a group of window-cleaning wiseguys, in cahoots with a bunch of mob-affiliated developers, have muscled into the city’s planning department and given everyone inside the shakedown with the threat of a squeegee up the jacksie. How else to explain how these canyons of doom towers ever get built? No one asks for them. Not in London, not in Toronto. It’s not the sort of thing you expect to see in Canada. For whatever reason, romanticised preconceptions probably, you expect Canada to be better than that. It’s not, sadly.

You can see just how filthy rich I’d be from Harriet’s. The view from the ritzy rooftop bar of 1 Hotel Toronto is one big construction site of towering green glass and how’d-they-get-those-up-there cranes. Peer beyond and you can just about make out Toronto’s lower-rise Entertainment District and historic Old Town, where buildings are made of brick and stone, and those that aren’t aimed their architectural ambitions a little higher than the bottom line.

It will cost you tens of thousands of pounds to stay in the hotel below the bar. It’s not that rooms at 1 Hotel Toronto are astronomically expensive. It’s just that once you’re home, the wife will insist on redecorating the entire house in a palette of greys and beiges. Those polished floor tiles in the hall will have to be ripped up and replaced with bleached floorboards; the living room furniture traded for tables and chairs made of reclaimed wood and carved stone; a living wall will have to be installed somewhere in the kitchen. And house plants. You’ll need to get used to watering a lot more house plants. For your impending top-to-bottom home renovation, you have David Rockwell to thank.

At the beginning of 2020, the New York-headquartered biggest-name-in-interior-design was employed to turn the ageing Thompson Hotel, famous for throwing MBA after-parties, into the first Canadian outpost of the US-based eco-luxury hospitality group, 1 Hotels.

As well as a forest of salvaged wood and a reception desk carved from a chunk of polished white stone, upon the hotel’s August 2021 opening, guests were welcomed to a lobby littered with giant granite boulders, shelves made from a dismantled barn (now bowing under a jungle of crotons, dracaenas and Madagascar dragon trees), and a stunning wall installation made from (what looks like) massive potpourri (I’ve massively undersold it there).

‘Sustainable luxury’ – buzzword klaxon – is 1 Hotels’ shtick. So, an internal courtyard that doubles as a herb and vegetable garden, an on-site composting programme, and a promise to divert at least 85 per cent of waste away from landfill. The luxury bit? Stylishly-dressed staff, bottles of Clase Azul in the lobby bar and bedrooms that offer filtered water on tap and Veuve Clicquot from the minibar.

Bedrooms pay deference to that wood-heavy, rustic-chic, mid-century-modern, Japanese-Scandi aesthetic that’s taken over interior design in the past half-decade: bleached woods, taupe walls, potted plants, stone tops, marble floor tiles, potted plants, wicker lampshades, beige sofas, potted plants, pattern rugs, hefty black taps, potted plants, pops of duck-egg blue and greyer-than-green sage and more potted plants. It’s a little overdone.

In what can be a heavy, suffocating city, 1 Hotel Toronto is a breath of fresh air. And not just because of all those snake plants. Flora, its ground-floor cocktail bar, is as sophisticated as any drinking spot in Toronto’s Financial District; the food served in its 1 Kitchen is as accomplished as it is IMMENSE; and it’s not hard to see why the hotel’s rooftop pool became the place to be among movers and shakers.

Last year, 1 Hotel Toronto was named on Condé Nast Traveller’s Hot List of the world’s best new hotels – the only digs in Canada to make the cut. The celebs are back too. We had breakfast next to a genuine Game of Thrones A-lister (clue: House of Lannister).

Back to my window cleaning ambitions. While we were in Toronto, a video of a construction worker went viral after the unlucky soul ended up dangling from a crane several hundred feet in the air. His screams somewhat put me off my career in glass maintenance. Thinking about it, I’d get into house plants. They’re big business in Toronto. And in my house too. It’s all about bringing the outside in, don’t you know.

From approx. £425 per night, 1hotels.com

Read more: In conversation with Relais & Châteaux’s Laurent Gardinier

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• An Air Canada passenger’s cats were sent from Toronto to San Francisco without him.
• Abbas Zoeb was separated from his cats, Mimi and Bubba, for more than 15 hours.
• He said Air Canada suggested he fly out to San Francisco to collect them himself.

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Abbas Zoeb had checked in for his flight with Air Canada from Toronto to San Francisco on July 6 but his travel plans were scuppered after being denied boarding due to visa issues.

He had a bigger problem, however: his two cats, Mimi and Bubba, got sent to San Francisco anyway.

Zoeb told Insider Air Canada that “under no circumstances” would his cats fly without him, but his luggage might.

Yet after hours of waiting, he was then told the cats had indeed been sent to the US without him.

To make matters even worse, Zoeb said Air Canada then suggested he try to get to San Francisco himself, or ask someone in the city to collect the cats for him. “I said this is absurd and I don’t have anyone to collect them,” he said.

Abbas’s cats, Mimi and Bubba, were in a kennel for more than 15 hours.

Abbas Zoeb

Close to midnight and more than 15 hours after being separated from his pets, Zoeb was finally reunited with the two cats at Toronto airport.

“My pets were being treated like throwaway luggage and I was in anxiety all this time since no one could tell me where they were,” Zoeb said. “Once I collected my pets they were visibly tired and feeling sick. Both were sneezing.”

Air Canada is no longer allowing pets to be checked into the baggage compartments where Zoeb said his cats were placed, according to an update posted on the airline’s website. The airline cited “longer than usual airport delays” for the new rules that are in effect until September 12.

Passengers who want to fly with their pets must now take them on board as hand luggage or ship them via Air Canada Cargo, the update says. The airline confirmed the policy in an email to Insider.

“I am glad they won’t be taking pets in cargo anywhere because I don’t want any pet parent to go through what I did,” Zoeb added.

It is not the first time pets have got swept up in baggage chaos at Toronto Pearson airport.

Earlier this month, a dog was left “traumatized” after being left among lost luggage in Canada’s busiest airport for about 21 hours, Insider reported. The lost dog’s owner, Jena Butts, told CTV News that airport staff advised her to go home after her dog, Winston, did not arrive with her other bags.

Air Canada has faced a flurry of lost luggage complaints over the last month, with one passenger even accusing the airline of losing a bag containing her dead parents’ ashes.

An Air Canada ramp agent working at Toronto airport told Insider that this summer’s travel chaos was “hands down the worst” he’d seen in his six years working for the airline.

Air Canada told Insider: “The global air transport industry is currently challenged due to issues with airport capacity issues, airport-managed baggage systems and third-party providers of such services as passenger screening, customs, and air navigation. We are working hard with these partners and governments to resolve these issues as they are affecting the performance of airlines.”

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American immigration laws have been gathering dust for decades. The reform efforts have stalled in a partisan bickering. Companies warn that it will cost the country talent.

And that’s why some US politicians cast an envious look north on Tuesday.

A group of lawmakers held a congressional hearing titled “Oh Canada! How Outdated US Immigration Policies Are Pushing Top Talent Out” in a misspelled reference to the national anthem.

It was an event ostensibly intended to learn lessons from Canada’s experience, but in the end it highlighted factors that are hindering US immigration reform.

Democratic politicians who organized the hearing warned of a reverse brain drain. You said the US needs to make it easier to attract skilled workers.

A California MP, MP Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes Silicon Valley, shared a news article saying tech employment in her area is growing more slowly than in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton.

California MP Zoe Lofgren, seen here at a 2019 hearing, warned Tuesday that tech employment is growing faster in Canadian cities than in her district’s Silicon Valley. (Tom Brenner / Reuters)

She blamed a confusing American immigration system – defined by lotteries, annual visa caps, and corporate sponsorship of candidates.

“Is it any wonder talented workers are moving to Canada?” asked Lofgren.

“We’re stuck in a time warp. It’s like driving around with a 30-year-old paper map while others easily navigate the road with turn-by-turn directions from their smartphones. And we fall behind as a result. ”

She told a story about a classmate of her alma mater, Stanford University, with rare computer skills; he spent years as a temporary worker in the USA; he paid $ 4 million in US taxes; Nevertheless, he never managed to get a permanent residence permit.

Eventually he moved to Canada.

Another Democrat resented that some of the ideas Canada uses to attract educated workers were actually American ideas – ones that the US never implemented.

US President George W. Bush, seen here at a 2007 immigration reform event. His efforts stalled, as did the efforts of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. (Larry Downing / Reuters)

New York MP Jerry Nadler made specific reference to Canada’s startup visa program, modeled on part of a decade-old US law that stalled in Congress.

He also alluded to Canada’s express entry visa and two-week visas for sought-after workers and its Global Talent Stream program for businesses.

A glimpse into a deadlocked debate

“Those who failed because of the US immigration system are now turning to Canada,” said Nadler.

“The results are paying off – Toronto has earned the nickname ‘the Silicon Valley of the North’.”

The hearing provided evidence of why American reform efforts have still stalled – even now. This was evident in questions raised by the various parties at the meeting of the House Judiciary Committee.

The country’s political parties have conflicting priorities.

Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, said the focus of the meeting was a mistake. He also suggested that Canada’s economy had little to teach the US (Andrew Harnik / The Associated Press).

Republican politicians face pressure from their electorate to tighten the southern border and control migration as the primary target. The Democrats, on the other hand, are keen to give former migrants access to citizenship.

As a result, the parties have been unable to reach an agreement on a plan that could obtain the majority required to pass both houses of Congress.

Donald Trump also spoke about imitating Canada’s immigration point system. It wasn’t going anywhere. Just like under Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

With sweeping reform efforts seemingly stuck again, Democrats are hoping a draft budget will allow some limited changes to be passed and perhaps status to the young migrants known as dreamers.

At the hearing, Republicans suggested that the Democrats lower their priorities.

Several complained about the focus: instead of Canada, lawmakers should talk about Mexico and what the Republicans call a migration crisis on the southern border.

House Justice Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, seen here last year, says it is frustrating that the US visa proposals have not passed but Canada has implemented them. (Susan Walsh / Pool via Reuters)

Copy Canada? Why?

A California Republican said the majority party had the wrong ideas.

Tom McClintock said Democrats are focusing on the immigration changes coveted by the business community – the chance to hire more foreign workers to hire at low wages, he said.

“This Congress … puts the Americans last,” said McClintock. “And it puts foreign workers and the big corporations … first.”

He also touched on the notion that the United States should rely on Canada for economic lessons: He said the US had higher economic growth than Canada before the pandemic, much higher worker salaries and a much lower unemployment rate.

“Comparing their economy to ours for some reason doesn’t seem particularly attractive to me,” said McClintock. “But that can only be up to me.”

In addition, the immigration rate in the US is actually far higher in absolute terms than it is in Canada. The US attracts slightly more immigrants from Canada than Canada from the US

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to technology workers in San Francisco in 2018 about immigration to Canada. His administration, like Stephen Harper’s, introduced reforms to speed up the immigration of skilled workers. (Jeff Chiu / The Associated Press)

On the other side of the ledger, the US immigration rate has slowed significantly in recent years, and the country is attracting a far lower proportion of immigrants than Canada when measured against the total population.

This trend accelerated during the Trump years, when Canada saw the largest surge in skilled immigration in decades.

What witnesses said

Witnesses at the hearing expressed concern about the current flight path.

Stuart Anderson, a former George W. Bush administration official and executive director of a think tank on trade and immigration in the Washington area, said the number of Indian students had plummeted in US universities and increased in Canada.

“Canada regards immigration as essential to economic growth,” states the prepared text of Anderson’s remarks.

“The world has changed since then [the last major U.S. immigration reform in] 1990. US immigration policy did not do this. “

He warned of possible long-term consequences. He said his own research shows that immigrants created more than half of the multi-billion dollar startups in the United States.

And all of the key players who helped develop Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine are immigrants to the United States – including Harvard University’s Canadian-born Derrick Rossi.

Another witness complained that the United States of all people is still using a paper-based system instead of computers to process immigration applications. She said it was causing delays.

The US system mentality is often based on spotting scams rather than looking for talent, said Jennifer Grundy Young, the head of a technology trading organization.

She provided a written testimony that included the story of a colleague and her husband. They spent 18 years in the US on work visas, never managed to get permanent residency, and moved to Toronto where they are recruiting others to come to Canada.

“Make no mistake, the Canadians have come to compete,” states the filing from Grundy Young, CEO of the Technology Council of North America.

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