Lucie and Thornton Blackburn inspire naming campaign of college’s first residence building
Handout photo
TORONTO (CUP)—For the past few weeks, students have been going around the campuses of George Brown College collecting signatures for the naming of the school’s first residence.
The building is scheduled for completion in 2015, and will be available for students to take up residence after the Pan Am Games Village is finished hosting athletes.
Students are welcome to submit a potential name, but the college’s student association is pushing to name the housing facility Blackburn Residence, after Lucie and Thornton Blackburn.
The Blackburns were escaped slaves from Kentucky who made their way up to Toronto, where they became very active abolitionists and opened the city’s first taxi business.
From the 1830s to 1850s, Thornton Blackburn and George Brown worked tirelessly to create employment opportunities for refugee slaves in Toronto.
“The Blackburns were very important to Toronto’s community as well as Ontario’s past,” said Cynthia Wilkey, chair of the West Don Lands Committee and a leading advocate for naming a visible monument after the couple.
“They are recognized by Heritage Canada. Fugitive slaves that escaped jail to establish the important principle that slaves could not be extradited. Among the first five to have a law about extradition interpreted in Canada, setting a legal precedent for the underground railway. They gave back to community through self-help investment and organizations for fugitive slave families,” she said.
“These heroes deserve to be celebrated.”
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The freedom-seeking power couple built a small house on the east side of Toronto’s downtown core, where they lived for almost five decades. The house was secretly used as a stop on the historic Underground Railroad.
There are plaques at Inglenook High School and articles online to commemorate the couple, but no building named after them.
“Where the residence is being built, you can overlook where the Blackburns stayed during the 1800s,” said Geneve Gray, the student association’s director of finance and operations.
“It would be one of the few honours in the African-Canadian community if this residence is named the Blackburn Residence.”
