Josiah Henson’s 1830 journey to Canada commemorated October 28

Josiah Henson’s historic journey to Canada will be retraced 196 years after he escaped slavery and stepped ashore a free man at what is now Fort Erie’s Freedom Park.

The U.S./Canadian International Underground Railroad Month Committee will lead a walk from Buffalo and across the Peace Bridge to Niagara Parkway on October 28. The walk honours the courage of freedom seekers like Henson and the historic relationship between Western New York and Southern Ontario.

Caretakers of Our Culture, the group behind the committee, said on Instagram that specifics of the walk are available only to people who ask or who are invited by a conductor.

Henson’s third great-grandson, historian Saladin Quanaah Allah, will serve as a conductor–the Underground Railroad term for a guide–on this year’s walk.

Allah told Fort Erie Radio in 2024 that he takes part to teach people what Henson and other freedom seekers endured to reach Canada. Other Henson descendants, some of whom live in the region, have joined the walk in past years.

The walk brings the commemoration back across the border after last year’s event stayed in Fort Erie, with a small ceremony at Freedom Park and a presentation at the Fort Erie Public Library’s Centennial branch.

The walk comes weeks after the third CanAm Freedom Ride on October 10, when more than 300 cyclists retraced Henson’s crossing over the Peace Bridge, nearly double the 170 who registered last year.

Henson was born into slavery in Maryland in 1789. After 41 years enslaved in the United States, he fled north with his family and reached Buffalo, where they boarded the ferry across the Niagara River on October 28, 1830.

The family landed at the old Bertie Street ferry dock, where thousands of people fleeing slavery came ashore. Dewitt Lee III, founder of Caretakers of Our Culture, said at last year’s ceremony that the plaque at Freedom Park recognizes Henson and “those who were never able to make it to this side of freedom.”

Henson later led the Dawn Settlement, a model community for people who escaped slavery, and served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Beecher Stowe said his 1849 memoirs supplied ideas and incidents for her novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ Henson’s fame spread word around the world of Canada as a haven for people escaping slavery, according to Parks Canada.

Fort Erie council voted unanimously last year to recognize September as International Underground Railroad Month after a presentation from Lee, whose group runs the committee.

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