Owen Sound’s 161st emancipation festival & picnic is set to be held this weekend.
Festival vice chair Bruce Johnson says there will be a speaker’s event from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday evening at Grey Roots Museum and Archives as part of the longest running Emancipation Day festival in North America. It’s the lone ticketed event of the weekend that requires payment to attend. Former MP Ovid Jackson, local immigration partnership manager Dr. Deepikaa Gupta and artist Rob Green are among the speakers.
The annual emancipation festival and picnic will go Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Harrison Park. Johnson says there will be music, food and other activities. It’s free and everyone is welcome.
During Saturday’s event there will be an address by Bonita Johnson deMatteis at the Black History Cairn. She was the designer of the memorial at Harrison Park, which was first unveiled in 2004 during the emancipation festival. Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy will offer opening remarks, and the crier of the emancipation Bruce Kruger will perform a ringing-in ceremony to start the festival.
“More importantly, it’s a time for everyone to share and talk,” says Johnson. “I like to think about the emancipation festival as an opportunity to bring different cultures and communities together.”
There will also be a “gospel Sunday” event held to wrap up the emancipation festival in Owen Sound. It is at Grey Roots Museum from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday and will feature rhythm, blues and jazz music.
Emancipation day is officially recognized in Canada on Aug. 1, after the passage of Bill M-36 in the House of Commons in 2021.
The emancipation festival in Owen Sound was originally known as the emancipation day picnic, which started in 1862 and brought together descendants of those who escaped slavery and found freedom in Canada. Owen Sound was the northernmost terminus of the underground railroad.
