February is Black History Month and, with Barack Obama’s inauguration as the U.S.’s first Black President, it’s time to ponder what that means for Canada.

We Canadians like to think we’re a tolerant people – even though we have a checkered history with Aboriginals, Jews, and Japanese-Canadians. Still, we can be smug about our history when we compare it to the southern U.S.’s slavery and segregation because much of our history is different.

In 1793, Governor John Simcoe passed the Anti-slavery Act, which made it illegal to bring slaves to Upper Canada, so it became a safe haven for slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad. About 20,000 Blacks fled here between 1800 and 1865.

During this time, figures like Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave from Maryland who led 300 slaves to freedom, guided fugitives to Canada after the U.S. enacted its Fugitive Law in 1850. When angry slave owners offered rewards for her capture, she moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, from where she continued her work for six years. Rev. Josiah Henson another Maryland slave, fled to Dresden, Ontario after his master swindled him out of buying his freedom. He started the British American Institute, a school and refuge for former slaves. His biography, The Life of Josiah Henson (1849), inspired American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe to write her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

While we can celebrate Canada’s anti-slavery heritage, we also need to remember our darker legacy. Africville was a Nova Scotia community of 400 Blacks, which was settled after the War of 1812. But, when the City of Halifax began to encroach on it in the late 1960s, the residents were evicted and community ordered destroyed so a highway interchange could be built for a bridge. Residents’ protests continued until the 1990s.

Black youth in many communities now feel alienated from the mainstream. When I recently interviewed a young Black man who organized a young adults’ leadership training circle, he said the Black and Aboriginal youth found they had more in common with each other than the Whites because of the racism and barriers they’d experienced.

So, while Black History Month provides us with the chance to reflect on our heritage, it also allows us to consider what we can do better.

As Obama said in his inauguration speech: “The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

In electing Obama, Americans have shown they can strive for a better future. But, do we share his hope that “Yes we can” make everyone’s life better? If so, now is a good time to reflect on how to build on our legacy of being a country that truly welcomes all.