Built in 1850, the St. Lawrence Hall was considered one of the City's finest buildings. St. Lawrence Hall was a major cultural centre, and hosted a wide range of Toronto's cultural activities. The Black community used the facility for a range of functions from lavish balls, Emancipation Day celebrations, to meetings of anti-slavery groups. On September 11th through to the 13th in 1851, Black community leaders Henry Bibb, Josiah Henson and J.T. Fisher organized the three-day North American Convention of Coloured Freemen.
A safe distance from the American border
Toronto was chosen over other towns like Windsor and Chatham for its safe distance from the American border, as well as for its progressive racial climate. Held in the brand new St. Lawrence Hall, the Convention attracted dozens of Black people from the United States, England, and in Canada. It was at this Convention that 53 delegates resolved to actively encourage informally enslaved Black people to leave America for Canada.
The delegates convened in response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that was passed the year before in the United States. It was the second of that country’s two Fugitive Slave Acts, which allowed slave owners to recapture escaped enslaved persons in states where slavery had been abolished. This was the first time the Colored Convention was held outside of the United States.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary attended the convention where she met Henry Bibb, who was an abolitionist and publisher of the Voice of the Fugitive newspaper, which was the first Black newspaper in Canada West as well as his wife Mary Bibb. The Bibbs encouraged her to moved to Canada West to take on a teaching position in the town of Sandwich near Windsor. She did emigrate, but chose to live in Windsor.
It is estimated that 30,000 freedom seekers exercised their choice, given the circumstances, to migrate to Canada and make it their temporary or permanent homes.
1854
In January 1854, William Lyon Mackenzie’s newspaper the Weekly Message advertised that a concert would be held at the St. Lawrence Hall in support of ‘Destitute Coloured Fugitives’ - “The Editor of the newspaper…sympathizes with the coloured people who came here, as to a place of refuge from slavery, personal and political, and hopes the public will patronize tomorrow’s concert at the St. Lawrence Hall.”
On June 29, 1853, an anti-slavery fundraising event was held for the Provincial Freeman at the St. Lawrence Hall. It was organized and hosted by a number of Black men in the city including Thomas Smallwood, George Cary, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and William H. Edwoods.