OH CANADA!
"Oh,Canada!" Indeed !
Having just safely returned from six (6) spirited and inspirited days in the mythical yet actual, "North," land of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where we were blessed to attend the annual 2017 National Bar Association Convention, July 29-August 5, Mrs . Coleman and I enjoy abiding appreciation for the hospitable warmth of its people.
Our bilingual northern neighbors are as kind, considerate, gracious internally, as they are vastly diverse phenotypically: being all kinds of whites, blacks, Asians, Oceanics, Middle Easterners, global. What characterized each person with whom we had occasion to meet was the breadth and the depth of their human souls, "like the rivers'."
Having completed my reading of the little-known, 19th century classic, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FUGITIVE NEGRO, by Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward (1855, 1970), while there in Toronto , I am now more versed, more fully able to understand the infectious freedom zeal that sent 50,000 black people, slave and free, flying to Canada, the land of the "North Star" for rescue, respite, and for needy refreshment from American fears .
Commencing with the War of 1812, when colonial Negro sailors, slave and free, brought their first-hand knowledge of Canada, back home to enthralled brethren, after having won 1813's "Battle of Lake Erie," the geographical knowledge that British Canada was a haven for black freedom, spread like mercury among slaves in the American colonies about Canada. This certain , definite knowledge of a land of refuge and a bright star brightly glowing, directing, which way to go to find freedom, flowed like a river from then on in culture.
The escapees, all being at first fugitive slaves, became so numerous (being so valuable, worth more, monetarily, than land they had worked producing tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton, lumber, sugar cane) that Congress acted more forcefully than in had before in its first 1793, fugitive slave law, with one that was many times more draconian in 1851. It deputized every white man to hunt down black men for a reward; or if they did not do so, for prison and fines!

Especially after enactment of the monstrous Fugitive Slave Act of 1851, that made all black people practically, yes, potentially chattel slaves, including those like Samuel R. Ward who escaped to freedom from the Eastern Shore of Maryland as a babe in arms with his parents; especially then, did the floodgates open and creative means to flee became legendary and archived!
The marvelous contrasts between our two peoples and two countries, from a black man's point of view, was inspiring and uplifting. It let me know that there is a "balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole," still!

