ng
collected from the parents. The school he found was also used for the
church services, though the spirituality of the people seemed low.[13]

The record of Henry Bibb's activities in Canada show that he took a
broad view of the refugee question. He associated himself actively
with the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada at its formation in 1851 and
at the first annual meeting held in Toronto in 1852 was elected one of
the vice-presidents. In the reports of this organization will be found
several references to his work. He was also the first president of the
Windsor branch of the Anti-Slavery Society and made several tours
through the western end of Upper Canada visiting the Negro communities
and speaking on the slavery issue. In his newspaper, _The Voice of the
Fugitive_, he chronicled every movement that would aid in the uplift
of his people and set forth their needs in an admirable way. Its
columns give a large amount of information concerning the fugitives in
Canada after 1850.

Bibb's colonization plan was a well-meant effort to improve the status
of the Negro in Canada. While it lacked the permanence of the Elgin
settlement, which even today preserves its character, it opened the
way for a certain number of the refugees to provide for their own
needs and it lessened to some extent the congestion of refugees in
border towns like Windsor and Sandwich. It is a debatable question
whether segregation of these people was wise or not. At that time it
seemed almost the only solution of the very pressing problem. After
the Civil war many of the Negroes in Canada returned to the United
States and those who remained found conditions easier. There was
usually work for any man who was willing to labor and it is a
well-recorded fact that many of the fugitives, entering the country
under the most adverse of circumstances, succeeded in getting ahead
and gathering together property. Benjamin Drew's picture of the
Canadian Negroes as he found them in the middle of the fifties is
favorable and when Dr. Samuel G. Howe investigated the Canadian
situation on behalf of the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission in 1863[14]
he was able to report:

"The refugees in Canada earn a living, and gather property; they
marry and respect women; they build churches and send their
children to schools; they improve in manners and morals--not
because they are picked men but simply because they are free men.
Each of them may say, as m