Tubman Tours Canada

24/01/2025

FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre - St. Catharines
Black History Month Events

February marks Black History Month, an opportunity to celebrate and honour the rich cultural heritage, achievements and contributions of Black/ Afro Caribbean communities to Canada’s diverse cultural landscape.

The FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre is proud to partner with various departments at Brock University, BlackOwned905, Future Black Female, Matter of Black, the St. Catharines Downtown Association and SOFIFRAN to bring performances, community film screenings, a vendor market and a visual arts exhibition to the PAC throughout February. Visit us online for details and to see all the events and film screenings.

22/01/2025

Black History Month 2025 - St. Catharines

🎉 February is Black History Month!

Join us in as we celebrate the heritage, achievements, and contributions of Black and Afro-Caribbean communities with programming by Future Black Female, BlackOwned905, the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, City of St. Catharines, Public Library, and various community partners.

This year’s theme Reclaiming Narratives: A Black Resistance highlights Black voices, Black stories of resilience, resistance, success, and cultural pride, and aims to reclaim stolen legacies, ensuring Black voices are heard and honoured.

➡️ Head to MyDowntown.ca/BHM for a full line-up of events happening !

A few key dates to keep in mind:

▪️ February 1st - Tubman Tours Canada Open House at Salem Chapel BME Church
▪️February 3rd - Official Launch and Flag Raising at City Hall + Art Exhibitions at the Library, City Hall, and PAC open
▪️February 4th - PAC Film Screening: We Were Here
▪️February 8th - The 3rd Annual Onstage Variety Show hosted at the PAC along with a BlackOwned905 Vendors Market + the SOFIFRAN Exhibit opens
▪️February 12th - Jully Black performs at the PAC
▪️February 14th - The Future Black Female: Black Girls Youth Conference in NOTL
▪️February 15th - New Paths, Old Stories: Bringing Together Newcomer Stories and Black History at The Robby
▪️February 17th - Matter of Black: Celebrating Black Stories at PAC's Family Day
▪️February 18th - PAC presents imPACt PLUS Film of: Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad
▪️February 22nd: Youth Film Screening: "Sister Act"
▪️February 25th: PAC presents Step Afrika!

21/01/2025

It's Lincoln Alexander Day!

Born in Toronto in 1922, Lincoln Alexander excelled in school, received a law degree, and in 1968 became the first Black Canadian Member of Parliament. He also became a Cabinet Minister in 1979 and began serving as Ontario’s Lieutenant – Governor in 1985.

As a lifelong Human Rights advocate, Lincoln Alexander made significant contributions to Canada.

Lincoln Alexander was well known and loved by the Black community in St. Catharines/Niagara as he was throughout Ontario.

Learn more about Lincoln Alexander here: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lincoln-maccauley-alexander

20/01/2025

MLK Day!
January 20 2025

18/01/2025

Happening Saturday February 1st, 2025

12/01/2025

The start of the 2025 tourism season is about 12 weeks out. Yeah!

Discover Niagara`s Freedom Trail with Tubman Tours Canada.
Book your visitor group tour today!

08/01/2025

Niagara Regional Police Service Site Visit

Today we hosted our first visitor group for 2025 at the Salem Chapel.

The NRPS new recruits toured the church. In addition to learning about early Black history and the Underground Railroad, they learned more about the mighty icon figure, Harriet Tubman.

It was a good tour, and it was a pleasure to meet them.

07/01/2025

Maryland!

We love the picture the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway posted and info about Tubman's winter rescues.

The Harriet Tubman sculpture, "Beacon of Hope," in yesterday's snowstorm in Cambridge, Maryland – at Stop #3 along the road trip known as the Harriet Tubman Byway. Did you know that Tubman led most of her journeys to freedom in the wintertime? That way, the nights, when they did most of their traveling, were longer. And the marshes were less buggy.
>> Read more about how weather played a part in Tubman's Underground Railroad work: accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/the-role-weather-played-in-the-underground-railroad/688283

03/01/2025

Celebrating Salem Chapel!

Beginning as an African Methodist Episcopal Church, the third church's structure will turn 170 years old this November.

The first church was constructed in the Queenston Street area between 1814-1820. the Second church, which held about 70 people, was built on North Street around 1835. Eighteen years later, due to the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in the USA, construction of the third church began on the corner of Geneva and North Streets to accommodate the growing congregation.

Image: Salem Chapel c.1913

31/12/2024

25/12/2024

Christmas 1854!

one hundred and seventy years ago, the legendary Underground Railroad conductor known as Moses was in Maryland collecting her three brothers and seven other freedom seekers.

Earlier in the month, Harriet Tubman had a premonition that her enslaved brothers were in great danger. She decided to travel to Maryland to check on them.

Arriving on Christmas Eve, Tubman learned that her three brothers would be sold the day after Christmas. She secretly put out the call to escape and arranged two rendezvous points: one near her brother's location and the second, 40 miles away near her parents' home.

On Christmas night, Tubman and a group of ten that included her brothers headed for St. Catharines where they arrived at the start of the New Year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

22/12/2024

With a few days to go,
the Salem Chapel
wishes all of you a
Happy Ho Ho Ho!

20/12/2024

December 1858

one hundred and sixty-six years ago, Harriet Tubman entered the St. Catharines Courthouse.

The former Lincoln County Courthouse was built between 1848 and 1849 at the corner of King and James Streets. Known locally as the “old courthouse” this municipal historic site once housed the town council offices, a fire station and the police station.

Tubman appeared before the towns council and informed them that "she had taken a child off the streets” and asked for financial assistance.

Council deferred the matter for ten days.

The unnamed child resided with Tubman, and her elderly parents, Ben and Rit Ross at Tubman’s North Street boarding house.

18/12/2024

Tis the Season!

10/12/2024

Tubman Guides Eleven to St. Catharines

In December 1851, Harriet Tubman extended her Underground Railroad route to St. Catharines.

Tubman travelled to Maryland and collected eleven freedom seekers to guide to Canada. The identities of the group members remain unknown.

Scholars believe that Fredrick Douglass, most likely sheltered Tubman and the eleven freedom seekers at his Rochester, NY home.

In 1881, Douglass wrote, “On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, and it was necessary for them to remain with me until I could collect sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter, but, as may well be imagined, they were not very fastidious in either direction, and were well content with very plain food, and a strip of carpet on the floor for a bed, or a place on the straw in the barn-loft.”

For the next decade, the Town of St. Catharines would serve as Tubman’s last stop on the Underground Railroad and her base of operations.

Harriet Tubman guided her elderly parents, three brothers and scores of other loved ones to St. Catharines.

Image: Tubman guiding freedom seekers to Canada, by artist Jerry Pinkney

05/12/2024

December 1850

Harriet Tubman was living in Philadelphia in December 1850 when she learned that her enslaved niece Kessiah Bowley and her two enslaved children, James Alfred and Araminta, were going to be sold on the Cambridge, Maryland auction block.

Tubman made her way to Baltimore and devised a successful rescue plan with Kessiah’s free Black husband, John Bowley.

On the day of the auction, John Bowley successfully bid on his enslaved wife and children.

The sale would be finalized when the auctioneer and seller returned from their lunch break. During the wait, when no one was watching, Kessiah and her kids were secreted to a nearby safe house.

In the evening, John Bowley placed his family in a small boat and sailed 60 miles (97 kilometers) up the Chesapeake to Baltimore where they met Tubman. From there, Tubman guided her family to Philadelphia.

The Bowley family lived in Philadelphia for several months before moving to St. Catharines. They eventually moved to Chatham, Ontario where they remained for over a decade.

When the Civil War ended, the Bowley’s left Canada and moved back to Dorchester County, Maryland.

The account of Kessiah and her children is recorded as Harriet Tubman’s first rescue.

Image: 1849 auction advertisement for the sale of Kessiah Bowley, which was postponed until December 1850.

26/11/2024

A Beacon of Hope

Earlier this month we viewed the Harriet Tubman “Beacon of Hope” statue that is on display at the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center on the US side.

The spectacular 13-foot bronze travelling statue of Tubman was created by Academy and Emmy Award-winning artist Wesley Wofford Sculpture Studio. It will be on display until January 2025.

Check it out if you can!