June 23, 2014 What a difference a season can make

I’m happy to announce that we got our first bit of funding, a small grant that really helped us get off the ground and collect some materials and pictures for the documentary... and arrange some more interviews.

                The grind of documentary making, especially one such as this where the story is “revealed” to us through more and more research, is always more rewarding when you find a piece of the puzzle that fits so many other seemingly random details together. That’s been starting to happen, and as each piece comes together, the story surrounding these people’s lives becomes more focussed.

                We’ve also be quite fortunate to find enthusiastic historians that are going out of their way to help us obtain more information – that’s really been a blessing for us, as for a long time it was just the two of us working away – and while that’s still mostly true, now there’s others that are frequently sending us their findings, as well.

                But enough talk for one blog, right? It’s time to share a few scans of things we’ve found. And while we’re only scratching the surface for visuals, particularly after we found an archive with immense amounts of historical photos from the 1860’s-1880’s of the area, I’ve got a feeling that there’s so much more to be found out there...

This image is really one of the first “views” of London that was created – at least with an attempt at building accuracy – and was produced in 1848 as part of a map that outlined the streets of London. But what’s great about this image is not only the Middlesex county building (the castle-looking one in the background), but also a factory smokestack which comes into play in Sullivan’s story. And of course, one of the discreet little buildings near the river just happens to be a newly built Escaped Slave Chapel, in its first year of existence at the time.

We scanned this headline off the London Advertiser’s April  19th, 1873 paper. An enormous explosion had just ripped through the city that day – one that made international news and sparked a phenomenal response from the city’s citizens itself... and just so happens to feature Mr. Sullivan’s heroism...

                Here’s a partial scan of one of the classic maps at the time – this one created at shortly after confederation (as the map refers to the area as “formerly Upper Canada”). Here you can see Middlesex county highlighted in green, where most of our stories take place – but the region down to the Detroit border and across to underneath Lake Ontario play a huge role in the migration of escaped slaves... and at the time, this would have been the type of map that had the most up-to-date information. Strange to see how things have changed (or haven’t, in some cases) in 150 years...

 

                So there’s a few to wet your appetite and hopefully get you hungry for more. It’s worth noting we’re working on another trailer that incorporates more of our newfound knowledge...

-          Mark