On a grey November Sunday afternoon in Toronto, it was a pleasure to venture inside Spadina Museum, one of the 10 City of Toronto Museums. My visit began with this video, Spadina and Toronto in the 1920s: An Introduction, which was very helpful in setting the home and Austin family in context. I enjoyed an …
There are four things about the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre and Cliffs Exhibition that made an early-morning visit especially interesting for me. 1) The Geology Look at those layers. That’s 300 million years of bands of sediment upon sediment, of sandstones, siltstone, mudstone, and shale. Stunning. Consider the fossils. I love how the visitor …
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the joys of this 100 Museums Challenge is discovering new places I hadn’t known about before. One such is The Japan Foundation in Toronto at Yonge & Bloor. The Foundation’s facilities include a wonderful library and a gallery with changing exhibits, the current one being Fans Onstage. The exhibit …
I learned a most astonishing thing at the Clare County Museum in Ennis, Ireland. In September 1588, following its defeat by English naval forces and attempting to return home, up to 24 of the 130 vessels of the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked … off the western coast of Ireland. Public Domain, Link Perhaps 5,000 men …
My first night in Ireland, after 18 years away, I had a hotel room in Ennis, County Clare, with a window facing directly onto Ennis Friary. The sight of this 13th century Franciscan friary that had seen so much history was a perfect introduction to how Ireland’s preserved heritage structures are OLD old, compared to …
The Art Gallery of Northumberland, a non-profit organziation, is located on the third floor of Victoria Hall in Cobourg, Ontario. Last year at this time, just before Remembrance Day, I visited their exhibition of the intriguing paintings of Canadian contemporary artist Charles Pachter (perhaps most famous for his 1972 portrait of Queen Elizabeth astride a moose). …
For five years in the early ’90s I lived in Kingston, Ontario, and must have gone by Kingston Penitentiary hundreds of times. It was a fully functioning maximum security prison for men then, housing many of Canada’s most dangerous criminals, including sex offenders. This was a forbidding place to look on with dread and pass …
I expect I’ll be reflecting on the powerful Mandela exhibition at Meridian Arts Centre Gallery for quite some time. In Toronto through January 5, 2020, the traveling exhibition is a collaboration between the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg (which I have yet to visit) and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa (ditto). Here …
Is Toronto’s Mackenzie House haunted? One of the ten City of Toronto museums, Mackenzie House (built c. 1858) is the former home of William Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto’s first mayor, and has a reputation for being one of the most haunted buildings in Toronto. As a fan of Victorian funerary practices, I couldn’t pass up this …
I was very impressed by The 48th Highlanders Museum, located in St. Andrew’s Church at King St. W & Simcoe St. in Toronto (next to Roy Thompson Hall). Upon hearing “it’s a small museum in a church basement,” you’d be forgiven for raising an eyebrow. However, the museum, staffed by knowledgeable volunteers, presents and interprets …
