07 February 2025

Henry Box Brown in depth at the CBC (including Toronto laneway named in remembrance)

Updated February 12th to add:

 

Learn more about the CBC Ideas Podcast about Henry Box Brown at the bottom of the post.  
[with thanks to Jeff Evason for letting us know!]

 

From the February 4th article "How Henry Box Brown escaped slavery in a box and became a subversive magician" by Lisa Godfrey in the CBC:

Henry Box Brown eventually returned to the United States, more than a decade after abolition in 1865. He brought his second wife and children, who joined him onstage, and sang with him.

He made his home base in Canada: briefly in London, Ontario, and then settling in Toronto. It was here, Cutter discovered, that he died and was buried in 1897.

Three Toronto residents — history advocates Coralina Lemos, Adam Wynne, and Pancheta Barnett — recently worked together to have a laneway named for him, behind a house he lived in on Bright Street in the Corktown neighbourhood east of downtown. 

Read more.

 

 

From the February 3rd CBC Listen Ideas episode "The Amazing Henry Box Brown: From Fugitive Slave to Ingenious Entertainer" with Nahlah Ayed:

Enslaved in 1840s Virginia, Henry Brown has himself nailed into a postal crate and mailed to a free state. But that’s less than half his story. In freedom, he becomes Henry Box Brown, and uses his escape box as the basis for a subversive magic act that sees him tour the stages of the UK and Canada — his final home. 

Read more and listen to the podcast.

 

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