To celebrate Black History month, please join us as Dr. Karolyn Smardz Frost discusses her 1985 discovery of the first Underground Railroad site ever dug in Canada. Remains of the home of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, fugitive slaves from Kentucky who started Toronto's first taxi business, lay buried under the pavement of the old Sackville Street School, just north of the Distillery District. The TDSB's new Archaeological Resource Centre was founded in the spring of 1985, and Director Karolyn Smardz and her team were looking for a dig site on which to teach children about history, archaeology, and community. More than 3,000 schoolchildren would take part in the Blackburn site excavation, sponsored by the TDSB, Ministry of Culture and the Ontario Black History Society.

Dr. Frost's discovery inspired her to devote her career to uncovering the elusive clues to our rich African Canadian heritage. Her 2007 volume, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, is the first book on African Canadian history to receive the prestigious Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.