Escaped U.S. slave Joshua Glover loved Etobicoke and 166-years-later the City of Toronto is moving closer to honouring him.

Mayor John Tory will be hosting a press conference at Montgomery’s Inn on August 13 at 10:30 a.m. to announce the winner of a public art competition.

​The City of Toronto’s Arts and Culture Services, working with the Etobicoke Historical Society, had invited proposals for the creation of a public heritage memorial to be dedicated to Glover. The process was slowed down due to the COVID-19.

Glover escaped slavery in 1852, and made his way from St. Louis, Missouri into Canada assisted by the Underground Railroad. In 1854 he found work and shelter in the community of Etobicoke. His story was important to the abolitionist movement, and in general to Canada as well.

Fittingly, the project is to be located in the new Joshua Glover Park in Etobicoke in the Lambton Mills area where Glover settled after arriving in Canada.

Naming the small park after Glover was decided by participants of a 2015 survey organized by the City’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division in consultation with the local Councillor out of three possible names that were shortlisted.

For much of his life Glover lived in a small house in Lambton Mills, owned by Thomas Montgomery the proprietor of Montgomery’s Inn where Glover found employment.

He married twice, both times to Irish women, which marked two of the earliest inter-racial marriages in Etobicoke. Glover died in a seniors’ home in Newmarket at the age of 74, after having been embraced by the community of Etobicoke during his life here.

Glover’s story resonates with the citizens of Racine and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Milwaukee at the intersection of Glover Ave. and Booth St., there is a large plaque that recounts the dramatic “Rescue of Joshua Glover.”

After escaping St. Louis, Glover was recaptured and incarcerated in a jail in Milwaukee. Led by local newspaper owner and anti-slavery activist Sherman Booth, some 5,000 people stormed the jail, set Glover free and facilitated his journey through safe houses along the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada.

The public outcry surrounding the Glover case and the legal prosecution of Booth after the rescue advanced the cause of the abolition of slavery in the U.S.

Glover’s story has been kept alive in newspaper articles, books, a play, an opera and a one man show which had its debut at the Montgomery’s Inn.