The end of slavery

Editor responds: Fowler's Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition, 1965, states, "'You and I' is a piece of false grammar which, though often heard, is not sanctioned. But it has distinguished ancestry. Shakespeare wrote…"
According to the Canadian Press Stylebook, 'was' is "simple past tense" but 'were' is to be used "when expressing a wish or a condition contrary to fact."
In the February Record, Celebrating Black History Month stated that slavery was abolished in Canada in 1883. I thought surely that was a misprint. But in the next sentence it stated that slavery was abolished in Upper Canada (Ontario) 90 years earlier.
Indeed, in 1793 Lieutenant Governor Simcoe had the legislature pass a law stating that slave children would be free on reaching the age of 25. It did not abolish slavery immediately, but it dealt it a deathblow.
Courts in Lower Canada (Quebec) refused to recognize the ownership of slaves. Nova Scotia Courts said slavery did not exist there. In P.E.I., New Brunswick and Newfoundland the situation was similar.
Then in 1833 the British parliament passed a law abolishing slavery in the British Empire, which obviously included the colonies of British North America from which Canada was formed. A sum of £20M was provided to compensate the slave-owners. Slaves were to be free after a period of apprenticeship. But the apprenticeship system proved so unfair and unmanageable that slavery was ended completely in 1838, two years before the apprenticeship period was to end.