Dr. Karolyn Smardz-Frost

Karolyn Smardz Frost is a professional archaeologist and historian who specializes in engaging members of the public in the discovery and conservation of their own heritage.  She is the founder of Toronto's internationally renowned Archaeological Resource Centre. This unique facility provided, between 1985 and 1994, hands-on excavation and educational opportunities for more than 100,000 schoolchildren, tourists and volunteers.  Karolyn has served on local, national and international committees to further the cause of heritage education, but her  greatest honour has been presenting Canada’s Underground Railroad story on behalf of UNESCO at the World Archaeological Congress at Robbin Island, Capetown, South Africa in 1998.

In 1985, Karolyn conducted Toronto’s only major Underground Railroad archaeology project at the Thornton and Lucie Blackburn Site.  Her discoveries sent her on a multi-year research project into the couple’s experiences as slaves in Kentucky and fugitives in Michigan and Southern Ontario.  This resulted, in 2002, in the first bi-national commemoration of a single flight to freedom between Canada and the United States.  Her biography of the Blackburns, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of  the Underground Railroad, is scheduled for release by Farrar Straus Giroux of New York and Thomas Allen Books of Toronto in 2006.

With Shelley Smith of the US Bureau of Land Management, Karolyn Smardz Frost edited the popular textbook, The Archaeology Education Handbook, Sharing the Past With Kids (Altamira Press, 1999).  In 2002, Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost co-authored the first book on Toronto’s African Canadian past, The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! (Natural Heritage Books).  It is based on their research for Parks Canada's experiential theatre and traveling exhibit, “The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Freedom!”  

Karolyn is presently working with Afua Cooper and Adrienne Shadd on a series of projects to enhance public knowledge of and appreciation for African Canadian history. She is also producing a new documentary history entitled Voices from the Promised Land: Canada and the Underground Railroad.