New plaque will commemorate 160th anniversary of Emancipation Day Picnic in Hawkesville

A new plaque is set to be unveiled in Hawkesville, Ont. to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Day picnic held on Aug. 1, 1863.

The plaque recognizes the Emancipation Day picnic that took place on August 1, 1863, in which 2,500 people gathered in Hawkesville to celebrate the end of slavery in 1834 in the British Empire.

Queen's Bush, Ont. was an unsettled area in between Waterloo County and Lake Huron, where enslaved and free Black Americans established farms and communities along the Mapleton and Wellesley Township border.

In 1853, members of African Methodist Episcopalian congregations began discussion to commemorate the British emancipation.

During the picnic, a number of dignitaries offered speeches and there was a procession led by the Berlin Band.

At the end of the celebration they served 1,500 meals on Temperance Island.

'A good crowd' is expected

The plaque commemorating the event will be located at the corner of Broadway Street and Temperance Road starting at 2 p.m.

"I expect a good crowd," said Peter van der Maas, the vice chair of the Wellesley Heritage and Historical Society. 

"We've got some dignitaries coming, the mayor from Wellesley and a member of parliament in Louis will be there," he said. 

They also have a couple of relatives from the original Black settlers — one coming all the way from California. 

"He came before to have a tour of the area and where his ancestors farmed," said van der Maas.

"There may be more. It'll be a surprise for us as well."

Van der Maas was inspired to create a commemoration plaque after reading Linda Brown-Kubisch's book The Queen's Bush Settlement and Geoff Martin's essay Slave Days in the Queen's Bush.

In Martin's essay, van der Maas says the author discovers the ignored history of black settlers in what he assumed was the Mennonite History of the Region of Waterloo. 

Van der Maas felt moved by the essay, as it showed him "black settlers have fallen through the cracks and we can't really say we know our history or our selves until we recognize their place in it."