Fight to make the Detroit River a UNESCO world heritage site picking up support

A Detroit-based historian’s 15-year battle to see the Detroit River become a UNESCO world heritage site is getting more aggressive.

The president of the Detroit River Project, Kimberly Simmons, believes efforts to recognize the historic river between Windsor and Detroit are gaining momentum as officials prepare a formal bid for when the tentative list opens in 2027. 

“To make a story so complete that when presented to the UNESCO International Scientific Committee, they can't say no,” Simmons said. “We are going to have to kind of all learn to row in the same boat, because we've got four years to get our goal done, 2027.”

Simmons said the river deserves recognition for its role in the Underground Railroad network and the achievement of freedom for thousands of escaped slaves, saying it’s a joint initiative between both countries to get the designation.

“This is a world story,” Simmons explained. “The Detroit River region is the story of freedom and resistance. Economic, human rights, civil rights, it is the story. So why not? That's my question. Why not? For 15 plus years I've been asking ‘why not?’”

Simmons’ persistent research efforts gained the attention of Ottawa earlier this month when she attended Parliament for Black History Month events.

“It was unbelievable,” Simmons said, explaining she discussed the matter with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “There was a lot of energy in the air and I hope to take that energy that I picked up in Ottawa for a couple of days, spending it up on the hill, on parliament and take it, bring it home here and try to engage our story on a bigger scale.”

There are more than 1,100 locations on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites, only 20 of which are in Canada.

Historian Kimberly Simmons is working to get the Detroit River to become a designated UNESCO Heritage site. Pictured in Windsor, Ont. on Wednesday, February 15, 2023. (Chris Campbell/CTV News Windsor)

Simmons told CTV News cultural heritage tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, suggesting the designation could bring millions of tourist dollars to the Windsor-Detroit region.

“Organized resistance has happened at our river not just since the Underground Railroad but for other centuries. Consider the fact that the unions were founded here. The International UAW headquarters is on our river,” she said. “Of course, Detroit put the world on wheels as they say. It gave us freedom, physical freedom beyond the Underground Railroad, and Ford, in his mastery, actually created the African American middle class by coming to work and the first plant was on the river.”

“There is so much about our river that we probably take for granted. We come to the river to play and to take in solitude, but our river is special, and we hope that UNESCO finds it as compelling to tell the story on a worldwide basis.”

“It absolutely should be on that list,” exclaimed Irene Davis Moore, president of the Essex County Black Historical Research Society. “The Underground Railroad story is so incredible and the Detroit River and the Detroit River frontier make up such an important piece of that narrative. And that alone, aside from all of the other reasons why the Detroit River is special, really should be noticed on a world stage.” https://echrs.ca

Moore said, “It's nice to see the pieces finally coming together in the right way. And we feel as though this is going to be the moment for this to move forward in a substantive way.”

“The Underground Railroad story is told very well by a number of sites, plaques, monuments, murals, sculptures, things of that nature. But this is something that would really shine a light on that story in a bigger way. Certainly drive more people to the region to experience all of our amazing rich heritage of African Canadian presence, but also, I think, expand the focus for locals so that they too are aware of these stories.”