A man retracing historic Underground Railroad routes will be making his way through Chatham-Kent over the next few days.
Ken Johnston is doing an 8-day, 90-mile Walk to Freedom.
"He's actually following kind of an underground railroad tour, per se," said Michelle Robbins, Curator of the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum. "So he's starting in Detroit, and he's going to walk from Detroit to Dresden with a few stops in between. So he'll be stopping in Windsor-Essex area, Amherstburg, Sandwich, and then he'll be stopping in Buxton, December the 31."
Johnston will do a special Q&A at noon on New Year's Eve in Buxton, then walk to the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society & Black Mecca Museum in Chatham on January 1, before making his way to the Josiah Henson Museum of African-Canadian History in Dresden on the 2.
Robbins added that they're honoured to host Johnston.
"He's an amazing person. This is about the fourth walk he's done, but he's never done it in the winter, so I'm really interested to see how this goes," said Robbins, who will be joining Johnston on his walk from Tilbury to Buxton, which will take about four-and-a-half hours.
"It's going to be interesting to see how people and how all of our ancestors made it to Buxton. Especially in the winter months, because that was where the influx of formerly enslaved individuals came to Canada, in the winter."
The Q&A at the Buxton Museum is open to everyone.
Johnston will be in LaSalle on December 27, walking from the Tower of Freedom to the Historical Sandwich First Baptist Church. On the 28, he'll walk to the Amherstburg Freedom Museum, and on the 29, he'll head to Harrow before crossing into Chatham-Kent.
The stops honour the communities that welcomed thousands of Freedom Seekers between 1830 and 1865.
