James Mink

James Mink was a black man who became a respected businessman in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the 1850s. He owned a hotel and livery on Adelaide Street near Toronto's St. Lawrence market, where many farmers would stay while in town selling their produce.

In Toronto, he operated the city’s largest livery stable and several coach lines. He operated a hotel called the Mansion House. There was a myth that Mary Mink married a white Yorkshire cabman who sold her to slavery. However, this fictional story was created by a Scottish novelist who published his article in Blackwoods Magazine in 1860, which was reprinted many times. Instead, she married a well-respected Black man, William Johnson. They moved to Niagara Falls, New York because he worked at the Cataract Hotel, then later to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the fictional movie, Mink pretended to be his wife's slave, traveled to the American South and successfully rescued Mary and several other slaves, but that is not true. Archives reveal that it is more likely that he got the British government officials to buy her back and return her home, where the census reveals lived at his home on the Don and Danforth Road between Pape and Carlaw Streets.

Mink's story was told in the movie Captive Heart: The James Mink Story, starring Lou Gossett, Jr. as James Mink and Kate Nelligan as his wife.