Thornton & Lucie Blackburn

arrived in Toronto in 1834. They had fled slavery, Kentucky to be precise, through the Underground Railroad, staying in Detroit for a couple of years and eventually imprisoned there as well. They escaped Detroit with the help of disguises and 400 men who stormed the jail and they fled further north to Canada. Michigan requested that they be extradited back to the states and the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada at the time, refused, "noting that a person could not steal himself." [www.lostrivers.ca/points/blackburn.htm]

Residing in Toronto, the Blackburns built a house her, outside this school but much before it even existed. Thornton Blackburn started the first taxi cab company in Upper Canada. He call his first one-horse cab the City. It was painted none other than yellow and black. During their lives in Toronto they continued to stay involved in antislavery movements.

This is outside the Inglenook Community School, where Colleen Ayoup, a soon to be MFA graduate at Ryerson, exhibited her project, wired to learn, for the first time this weekend.

It's a beautiful thing when history surprises with a reminder of the paths taken on the lands beneath our feet.

love and health to all...