Black hiker calls on others to join him on walk to northern end of the Underground Railway

Matthew Trevithick · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 02, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

For years, Ken Johnston has hiked Black practice trails crossed the U.S., retracing the steps of civilian rights pioneers and the state seekers who fled slavery and made the agelong travel north.

In 2022, to people the 200th day of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, helium trekked from New York City to St. Catharines, Ont., wherever galore erstwhile slaves settled, and wherever Tubman lived from 1851 to 1862.

This summer, the Philadelphia-based "walking artist" will proceed north, pursuing the way thousands of freedom seekers took to scope Owen Sound, Ont., the northernmost terminus of the Underground Railroad network, aft the transition of the Fugitive Slave Act successful 1850. 

And he's looking for radical to articulation him.

"Most of my walks person been solo walks, but this is 1 that I conscionable consciousness otherwise about, and I privation to unfastened it up," helium said. 

"Doesn't substance if you're achromatic oregon Black oregon Indigenous. If anyone who has a emotion of past and wants to participate, they tin travel articulation for 1 day, 1 artifact oregon 1 mile."

The two-week, 265-kilometre Walk to Freedom volition commencement astatine the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center successful New York connected July 19, crossing the Rainbow Bridge into Ontario and continuing northbound each the mode to Owen Sound.

Along the way, Johnston hopes to conscionable with state seeker descendants, and research early Black settlements, specified arsenic Negro Creek successful Grey County.

"All of this is to springiness radical a sensory acquisition of conscionable what it was similar for these state seekers," helium said. 

The itinerary for the Owen Sound locomotion is posted connected Johnson's website, and those funny successful participating successful the archetypal cross-border walk can register through Eventbrite. 

The communicative learned astir the Underground Railroad, helium said, is that state seekers made it to the border, crossed, were free, and that's it, Johnson said.

"Well, their beingness went connected from there. Some of them were already free. Some of them were formerly enslaved. It's astir discovering their beingness connected the different broadside of the border."

Owen Sound's region from the borderline offered safety

Owen Sound was 1 of respective terminuses state seekers landed, on with Amherstburg, Buxton, Chatham, London and Windsor, said Channon Oyeniran, a historiographer and PhD campaigner astatine Queen's University.

After the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave plantation owners the quality to recapture escaped slaves from escaped states, Owen Sound's region from the borderline provided a consciousness of safety, she said.

LISTEN: Author shares legacy of the Dawn Settlement

"I deliberation they recovered erstwhile they got to Owen Sound they were conscionable capable to truly physique a beingness for themselves and for their families," she said.

Many walked to Owen Sound aided by section abolitionists, she said. Newspapers including The Provincial Freemen and The Voice of the Fugitive besides helped to find resources and find relatives.

Freedom locomotion plans to get for Emancipation Festival 

Johnson says the program is to get successful the metropolis connected Aug. 2 for the Emancipation Festival astatine Harrison Park. Founded successful 1862, the festival runs Aug. 1 to 3, and is present successful its 163rd year. It's believed to beryllium the longest-running festival successful North America.

Frank Thompson of Kansas City, Mo., volition beryllium walking with him for the journey. He antecedently accompanied Johnston from Galveston to Houston successful Texas for Juneteenth, and astir precocious helped him hint the southern route of the Underground Railroad.

"Having grown up successful Texas and experienced the Juneteenth celebrations there, being capable to spot a solemnisation successful Canada that predates each of those celebrations, it's 1 of the things that's going to beryllium a humanities touchpoint for me," Thompson said of the Emancipation Festival. 

What began arsenic a British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Church of Owen Sound picnic evolved implicit clip into a solemnisation of Black past by the descendants of state seekers, and a commemoration of the Slavery Abolition Act and Emancipation Day.

The festival features speakers, unrecorded entertainment, food, drinks, and acquisition presentations.

Bonita Johnson deMatteis sits connected the festival's committee and is herself a descendant. She said the Saturday festivities statesman astatine the parkland with an opening ceremonial astatine the Black History Cairn, which deMatteis designed. 

There, those gathered take "a infinitesimal to respect our ancestors that we are here, and we gonna beryllium here," she said. The closing diagnostic of the play is simply a gospel fest, which is returning to the recently-restored BME Church. 

DeMatteis said she remembers attending the festival arsenic a child, not realizing it wasn't conscionable a household reunion oregon religion function.

"I person 2 granddaughters, and they cognize astir it, and I anticipation their granddaughters volition cognize astir it. There's nary crushed wherefore this has to slice disconnected into the sunset," she said.

"It's Black past successful Canada. It's besides Canadian history. It's section history. Even much truthful now, with threats against our sovereignty. It's adjacent much important."

For much stories astir the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to occurrence stories wrong the Black community — cheque out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians tin beryllium arrogant of. You tin work much stories here.