Owen Sound Emancipation Celebration since 1862

The Owen Sound Emancipation Celebration Festival will be celebrating their 145th concurrent picnic/festival this summer - August 3 - August 5 in Owen Sound, Ontario.
"Individuals interested in: history, family, culture and community have been congregating every August 1st weekend since 1862 in Owen Sound, "the most northerly retreat of the Underground Railroad journey in Canada". Descendants of blacks, who came via the Underground Railroad to settle in freedom, gather to reminisce and enjoy a time of fellowship
This is an especial ceremony for all of us as we celebrate family, fellowship, oral history, documented history, community, culture and roots of our amazing integrated community. Meet historians, educators, diplomats, relatives and contributors to the freedom struggle. Enjoy the integration of congeniality, pride, inquiry, knowledge, spirit and future.

This event is acknowledged as being the longest consistently running in Grey and Bruce counties .
situated within the valley of Owen Sound resplendid with charm, warmth, camaraderie and purpose, home of the Owen Sound Salmon Spectacular and the Owen Sound Rainbow Derby, Tom Thompson, Billy Bishop, and John "Daddy" Hall (The first Black person to settle at Sydenham Village near
Owen Sound who arrived about 1843.Owen Sound's First Town Crier).

"Owen Sound" : neighbours to Hanover's Tommy Burns who fought Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope and renowned for how he stood up against prejudice which deterred his notoriety. "Owen Sound" - neighbours to Markdale's William Luke who preached at the Methodist Church (in Markdale) before leaving for Alabama to work with newly freed slaves there. In 1870, the Ku Klux Klan lynched him and six of his black students..William Luke was the only white person lynched in the Underground Railroad Movement.
The Owen Sound Emancipation Celebration Picnic commemorates the British Commonwealth Emancipation Act of August 1, 1834. Owen Sound and area residents have been celebrating this occasion since 1862 and have incorporated celebrating the United States Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. This year we will be paying homage to 200th anniversary of the March 25, 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.