{"id":481822,"date":"2026-02-18T00:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/481822\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T00:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:27:08","slug":"black-history-month-train-porter-called-mississauga-home-modern-mississauga-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/481822\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History Month &#8211; Train Porter called Mississauga Home \u2014 Modern Mississauga Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">A wonderful thing about history is that there\u2019s constantly more to discover. While Heritage Mississauga did extensive research on early <a href=\"https:\/\/heritagemississauga.com\/black-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Black residents<\/a> in the past (available online, and even as <a href=\"https:\/\/heritagemississauga.com\/comic-books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">comics<\/a>), the recent release of the 1931 census has unlocked an additional name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Along with mentioning the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.modernmississauga.com\/main\/2021\/2\/24\/remembering-mississaugas-victor-vignale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Vignale family in Lakeview<\/a>, it brought the story of a train porter to the attention of Mississauga\u2019s heritage community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">John Gilbert Bush was born in Oro Township, just north of Barrie. This area of Simcoe County was home to a longstanding Black farming community. Why?<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.modernmississauga.com\/main\/2025\/9\/3\/connecting-mississauga-and-1812\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Veterans of the War of 1812<\/a> received land grants for their service in defending Canadian sovereignty against an American president bent on expansionism. A militia known as The Coloured Corps fought at the Battle of Queenston Heights and the Battle of Fort George and helped build Fort Mississauga at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Their land grants were in Oro Township, just north of Barrie, Ontario. As a result, the area developed a strong, continuous Black community over multiple generations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">John\u2019s father, Mark Bush, was the last person to lead services at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oro-medonte.ca\/living-here\/culture-heritage\/oro-african-methodist-episcopal-church\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Oro African Methodist Episcopal Church<\/a>, now a National Historic Site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A wonderful thing about history is that there\u2019s constantly more to discover. While Heritage Mississauga did extensive research&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194297],"tags":[49,48,55405],"class_list":{"0":"post-481822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mississauga","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mississauga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}