Black Eyed Peas & Races: A Love Story of Memories and Recipes of the Emancipation PicnicCollected by Bonita Johnson deMatteis Every year for most of her life, author Bonita Johnson deMatteis has attended the Emancipation Picnic in Owen Sound. To her it was a family picnic, a chance to catch up with many of the cousins, aunts and uncles in her extended family. As she grew older, she learned about the history of this longest running emancipation event in North America which began in 1862. Since that time, descendants of former slaves who