The administrator who ran York while enslaving people within it
Peter Russell
Peter Russell governed Upper Canada as administrator after Simcoe's departure, expanding early York while personally enslaving people even as the province's own new anti-slavery law was meant to be phasing the practice out.
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Peter Russell served as administrator of Upper Canada following John Graves Simcoe's departure in 1796, effectively running the young province, including the town of York, for several years afterward. He expanded York's land grants and settlement during his administration, and the neighbourhood of Russell Hill in midtown Toronto still carries his family name, tied to land he once held in the area.
A troubling part of his legacy
Russell personally enslaved Black people during his time in York, a fact that sits uncomfortably alongside the 1793 Act Against Slavery that Simcoe had signed shortly before Russell took over, a law that phased out slavery gradually rather than abolishing it outright and left existing enslaved people, including those Russell held, without immediate freedom. Historians studying early York increasingly treat Russell's record on slavery as an important, if uncomfortable, part of understanding the young town's actual social conditions, distinct from the more sanitized founding narrative often associated with Simcoe's own anti-slavery legislation.
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