Underground Freedom Train to Emancipation Day in Toronto

The Underground Freedom Train Ride is the annual event that takes place on a Toronto subway train, transformed for a night of remembering and honouring the struggle of the generations who survived the horror of slavery in North America.

Abolitionists, worked with the Black community, many of whom had escaped the United States by what became known as the Underground Railroad. This was the series of safe houses and support, on routes north from the United States to the relative safety and freedom in what was then Upper Canada.

On August 1st, 1834, before Canadian confederation, the British Parliament abolished slavery in the the British Empire.

In 2008 Ontario declared August 1st, Emancipation Day in that province, It often coincides with the provincial civic holiday, the first Monday in August.

Many in Ontario’s Black community are descendants of one of the founding communities of Ontario and Canada, established for more than 300 years.

Etah Sadu is one of the founding members of the “Emancipation Day Underground Railroad Freedom Train Ride”.

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She told me the idea began on the subway platform when she overheard a little boy ask his mother if this was the Underground Railroad?

Immediately Sadu’s imagination was at work. It was the centenary of Harriet Tubman’s death, and what better way to honour the woman widely recognised as the “conductor” of the pathway to freedom for so many.

Black History not just in February

The TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, saw what Sadu describes “as the little spark of creativity” and responded to the aspirations of the group, and the first event was a success.

2017 is also the 50th anniversary of Toronto’s Carnival festival, when the diverse Black communities come out to celebrate their cultures in a series of events that culminate in the parade downtown next weekend.

“The thing that inspires us most of all, is that it speaks to diaspora. So here people of African descent whether they’re from the continent, when they’re francophone speaking, whether they’re of Caribbean ancestry, but even more particular, people who have been in Canada for many generations, at one point some of these people knew each other all by first names because at that point in time in the history of Toronto the city, there were few people of African descent.” Sadu says.

Sadu describes this Emancipation Day event as an “opportunity to bring the tradition of African-Canadians and those indigenous people together with the Carribbean people, who in 1967 brought the Carnival, and to have an event that all Canadians could participate in, and all Canadians too can be involved in, when we talk about this thing called Emancipation Day.”

The Underground Freedom Train Ride leaves Union Station at 11:30 p.m. tonight, and goes north with non-stop service to Downsview Station.

The ride ends at midnight, marking the official start of Emancipation Day, which is now the joyous beginning of Carnival season.

This year the honourary conductor is Zanana Akande. She was the first Black woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the first Black woman to serve as a cabinet minister in Canada.

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