What I meant to say is that Canadians picked their own damned cotton.
You now owe me a keyboard ;)
You’re close to the truth there; in terms of productivity chattel slavery has always been a false economy. The shorter the growing season, the more likely it is that abolition was never a serious issue because farmers had to feed and house slaves who had no work to do until springtime. That’s why the northern states and Canada were the first to either ban slavery or phase it out with minimal controversy.
Here in the Province Formerly Known as Upper Canada (Ontario), the business model was paid itinerant labour from planting to harvest, supplemented by children who were off school for July & August. After harvest, the labourers went off to the logging camps up north where the logging companies depended on snow-covered ground to move their harvest to the nearest available waterway. By the time the snow was melting, the labourers went south in time for spring planting.