Words matter to Tony Cohen.
That’s why the 62-year-old native of Montgomery County, Maryland, refers to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as a time of commemoration, not celebration.
“We don’t use the term ‘celebration’ because we can’t celebrate something we haven’t achieved,” he said of the United States. “The framers (of the Constitution) had some great ideas and they were able to implement a few of them, but it’s for Americans to implement the rest, and we haven’t gotten there yet.”
Cohen walked from his home to Niagara Falls, N.Y. and then through Southwestern Ontario, accompanied by a truck hauling a nine-foot, 2,200-lb. bronze sculpture of abolitionist icon Harriet Tubman leading her niece to freedom.
Billed as the Tony Cohen Freedom Walk 2026, the event marks the 30th anniversary of his effort in retracing one of the routes taken by slaves seeking freedom through the Underground Railroad.
His trip brought him to the Josiah Henson Museum of African-Canadian History in Dresden as part of the Ontario Heritage Trust.
“I was born in the same area that Josiah Henson was, so to realize that he came here to gain is freedom about 200 years ago has quite a bit of significance to me,” he said.
“There is a movement in our country to rewrite history, to eliminate stories about what it took for millions of us to become free,” he said. “That story is uncomfortable, and it doesn’t match what they like to call the American narrative. We are commemorating the 250th anniversary through truth-telling. Any nation can’t claim to be great if it can’t confront the truth.”
During his travels, he asks those he encounters for a word or phrase that represents what they want to see during the next 250 years.
”We’ve been asking that question, and no one has said ‘empire,’ no one has said ‘capitalism.’ One 10-year-old said ‘no AI,’ and another 10-year-old said ‘more robots.’
What people have been saying they want is justice, equality, clean water, jobs, I mean everything that is forward-looking and not about beating up someone else, so maybe we can be as honest as we need to be.”
