An Outing to
the Niagara Frontier of New York State:
Welland Canal Museum at Lock 3,
Lunch at the historic Clarkson House in Lewiston,
Guided tour of Fort Niagara
Article by Brigitta Gamm & Joan
Moses,
with photos by Brigitta Gamm
For this well organized event, our Events
Coordinator surely packed the day with a variety of sites, themes and
history. We left Toronto at 8:30 a.m. on April 26, 2005 and picked up six
more guides at the Holiday Inn in Oakville. Our Can-Ar driver, Ian smoothly
drove a total of 39 of us to our first stop at Lock 3 of the Welland Canal
which not only has an excellent viewing bridge of the Canal, but a
well-documented museum of its history as well as its Heritage Galleries
depicting a special exhibit called “Journey to the North Star”.
We were greeted by our volunteer guides, Jerry and Donna. After a short
video we were led in two groups through the Museum’s exhibit area with
emphasis on the freedom trail known as “the underground railroad”. It was
depicted with an icon of the North Star. In very interesting graphs,
pictures and stories the fate of the slaves and their flight for freedom was
extremely well presented and explained. Even their lives after they gained
freedom were not always smooth due to prejudices in the surrounding
communities. But they persevered and integrated themselves into the greater
St. Catharine’s community and as far inland as Toronto. Their many
achievements were brought together in the exhibit. We were all impressed and
lingered so long over the exhibits that Pam finally had to rush us away so
we could get to the border crossing at Queenston. We were given brochures
that had all this information well documented including maps and locations
on “the underground railroad”. They could be ordered through
www.africanhertour.org.
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