I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad.

Nanette Morton teaches English at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Under the grounds of the old Sackville Street School in Toronto, archaeologist Karolyn Smardz Frost and her colleagues found what records confirmed to be the modest home of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn. Thornton Blackburn, an escaped slave, was the owner of Toronto’s first taxi service and a relatively wealthy man by the time he died in 1890. Intrigued, Smardz Frost spent 20 years researching the Blackburns and found that one of the most thrilling stories in Canadian history had been completely forgotten.

In 1831, Thornton and Lucie Blackburn presented forged free papers to a Kentucky ferry captain on the first leg of their journey to the free states. When it was discovered that the steamboat had borne away two fugitives, the ferry’s crew faced fines and imprisonment. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Discovered two years later by a relative of Thornton’s owners, the Blackburns were recaptured and imprisoned in Detroit. The community’s black citizens rallied around: Lucie Blackburn exchanged clothing with a visitor and was spirited to safety, while Thornton was freed by an armed mob. The Blackburns settled in Canada, and their escape became an international incident as American authorities sought to extradite the couple. The extradition was denied: According to Upper Canada’s new Fugitive Offenders Act, the Blackburns had committed no crime. Slaves could not steal themselves where slavery was not legal, and in their escape, the Blackburns had not committed a capital crime. The ruling meant that from then on, fugitive slaves who crossed the border would be legally safe from recapture.

Smardz Frost has done her work well: while loaded with historical background, the book is a well-paced, interesting read. Although her information on the Blackburns is sometimes scarce—the two, who were both illiterate, left neither diaries nor descendants—Smardz Frost admirably fills in the gaps with historical context while rescuing a significant piece of Canadian history from oblivion.