Skip to main content
Go back

Black Porters, 1920s

Black and white archival photograph of 5 Black men sitting on a railway track. They are dressed in white railway uniforms.

Source: The Provincial Archives of Alberta, A9167

Date: c. 1920

Sleeping Car Porters were introduced to Canada in the 1870s. Privately owned Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) began hiring emancipated Black Americans for cheap labour. Soon after, other Canadian railways followed, hiring from the Southern United States and the Caribbean. 

The identities of these CPR sleeping car porters are unknown.