Karolyn Smardz Frost is a Canadian archaeologist, historian, and author whose work brings archival research and material history to narratives of enslavement, freedom seeking, and Black life across the Canada–United States border. Her official website identifies her as the recipient of the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Her catalogued book, I've Got a Home in Glory Land, recovers the history of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, freedom seekers who reached Canada and later established Toronto’s first taxi business. The book places their lives within the international antislavery movement and the legal and political tensions surrounding cross-border flight from slavery. It was published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Smardz Frost later wrote Steal Away Home: One Woman’s Epic Flight to Freedom – And Her Long Road Back to the South, about Cecelia Reynolds and her efforts to reunite her family after escaping slavery. The Ontario Historical Society awarded the book its J. J. Talman Award in 2017–18. Her honours include the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction for I've Got a Home in Glory Land and the J. J. Talman Award for Steal Away Home: One Woman’s Epic Flight to Freedom – And Her Long Road Back to the South.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
