Black Canadians, numbering 198,610, make up 11.3% of Montreal's population, as of 2021, and are the largest visible minority group in the city.
[1] The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and of continental African origin, though the population also includes African American immigrants and their descendants (including Black Nova Scotians)[2] List of census subdivisions in the Montreal area with Black populations higher than the national average Source: Canada 2016 Census[3] One of the most famous Black-dominated urban neighbourhoods in Montreal is Little Burgundy, regarded as the spiritual home of Canadian jazz due to its association with many of Canada's most influential early jazz musicians.
The first recorded black person to set foot on land now known as Canada was a free man named Mathieu de Costa.
The first known black person to live in what would become Canada was a slave from Madagascar named Olivier Le Jeune, who may have been of partial Malay ancestry.
Marie-Joseph Angélique, a black slave from the Madeira islands who arrived in New France in 1725, was accused of setting the fire that burned down most of Montreal on 10 April 1734, for which she was executed.
[4][5] Angélique confessed under torture to setting fire to the home of her owner, a Mme Francois Poulin de Francheville, as a way of creating a diversion so she could escape as she did not wish to be separated from her lover, a white servant named Claude Thibault.
West Indian women, from both the Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean, came to Montreal after the Domestic Immigration Program of 1955 was established.
In 1977, between 1,200 and 2,400 Black Nova Scotians lived in Montreal.Though dispersed throughout the city, many settled among African-Americans and English-speaking West Indians in Little Burgundy.
Those with the means often relocated to NDG and Côte-des-Neiges, creating a diverse Anglophone community in those respective boroughs, while poorer residents were often scattered in nearby areas.
Smaller groups include Jamaicans, Dominicans, Brazilians, other Caribbeans and students and migrants from mostly French-speaking African countries.
A large number of Montreal's English-speaking Black community still lives in the Cote-des-Neiges and NDG, however the middle class has also moved to La Salle, the West Island and the South Shore.