A few of the Nova Scotians who signed up to settle on the banks of the Sierra Leone River did so despite the fact that it was from that river that they had been sold into slavery. One of them, John Gordon, who had been held captive in Bunce Island, after several years settled in Freetown accidentally encountered the man who had kidnapped and sold him. Having become a Methodist preacher in North America, Gordon forgave the slave-trader as he had come to regard his own enslavement as a necessary part of a divine plan that had led to both his conversion and his return to his motherland.
