Downtown Toronto Business : From Enslavement to Freedom

James Mink Life

Source : Toronto Public Library


Adelaide Street, 1860

Adelaide Street is a main west-east artery in Toronto. In 1844, Newgate Street, Duke Street, Little Adelaide Street, and Adelaide Street were amalgamated to form Adelaide Street.

Source: Toronto Public Library


James Mink Plaque

James Mink was recognized with a plaque in 2022. 

Source: Heritage Toronto


Ad for George Mink Omnibus Service, 1858

An omnibus was a horse-bus or horse-drawn carriage that was large and enclosed. It was used to transport passengers in cities.

Source: The Globe June 18, 1858 

Text version of the audio

James Mink owned a hotel in the York and Richmond street area and a livery stable on King Street West between Bay and Yonge Streets. By 1850, he brought both businesses together under the name “the Mansion House Inn and Livery Stable” at 21 Adelaide Street East. He and his brother George also operated a coach company delivering mail and passengers, including prisoners, to and from Toronto and Kingston. 

Mink brothers

The two Mink brothers had contracts with the city and with the provincial prison system. James and his brother George were likely born into slavery in Kingston, Ontario in the late 1790s/early 1800s. They were the sons of a couple enslaved by white Loyalists in Kingston, Ontario name Johan Jost Herkimer. James became one of the wealthiest men in the city, of Black or white. In the 1850s he led Emancipation Day parades in a carriage drawn by eight well-groomed horses. 

Active member of Toronto’s Black community

From his vantage point, as a long-time Toronto resident, James witnessed the influx of freedom seekers and freed Black men and women who settled into the emerging city centre, and was an active member of Toronto’s growing Black community. Mink retired to his home in Richmond Hill, and was buried in the Necropolis Cemetery when he died in 1868.

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Tracing Mary Ann Shadd Cary's Footsteps in Mid-19th C. Black Toronto

Tracing Mary Ann Shadd Cary's Footsteps in Mid-19th C. Black Toronto image circuit

Présenté par : Dr. Natasha Henry-Dixon, York University
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