A portal in time
Chris Lackner, The Ottawa CitizenPublished: Saturday, September 02, 2006
NORTH BUXTON, Ont. -- After following the Underground Railroad's history over 470 miles, I found a place where the 19th-century stories truly became flesh and blood.
For 12 weeks, I'd walked an approximate route taken by fugitive slaves from Kentucky to Canada. Throughout that odyssey, I often felt like I was chasing phantoms -- catching glimpses of the past in the corner of my eye or hearing them in barely audible whispers.
I explored the crumbling ruins of structures where fugitives hid, slept in nearly 200-year-old "safe houses" and visited time-ravaged slave plantations. But my final destination brought history back to life unlike any other.
As my weary feet touched down in North Buxton, my journey had come full-circle -- from the slave-holding south to a place of sanctuary. After all, the Underground Railroad's legacy was waiting for me in front of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum.
I was greeted by the community's modern-day inhabitants -- nearly all of whom were the descendants of fugitive slaves and free American blacks that settled the land. After tracing the Underground's folklore, myths and heroic personalities for almost 90 days, I was truly in the Promised Land -- the only modern, independent, North American community rooted in the 19th-century anti-slavery movement.
"This settlement allowed blacks to establish themselves in an area where threats and discrimination were largely eliminated," Keenan Thomas, president of the Buxton Historical Society, would later tell me.
Buxton was once the site of the Elgin Settlement, a thriving black community established in Upper Canada in 1849. Located 10 kilometres southwest of Chatham, Buxton's population swelled to more than 1,200 people by the 1860s.
The settlement was the brainchild of William King, a white, Presbyterian minister who purchased roughly 9,000 acres of land to establish the refugee community. King brought 15 of his own former slaves to Elgin, which soon attracted blacks from the United States and Canada. After the U.S. Civil War, many refugees returned south, but a core group stayed in the settlement.
While other black settlements were established in Upper Canada, Buxton is the only one that thrived and survived. Today it offers a mecca to the descendants of African Americans who sought refuge on Canadian soil. Every Labour Day weekend, more than 3,000 people -- most with ancestral links to the community -- descend on the area for a parade, historic re-enactments and other festivities.
Bryan Prince is one of organizers of the North Buxton Homecoming and a community historian and author. With short, greying black hair and moustache and a nearly constant, contagious chuckle, Mr. Prince immediately put me at ease. Francis Rouse, Mr. Prince's great-great-great- grandmother, journeyed to Upper Canada in the 1850s from Abbeville, South Carolina.
"Canada was a dream, a distant land, a magical Canaan -- it was almost mythical," Mr. Prince said.
"In some ways, it didn't live up to expectations.