Mackenzie House

Yesterday we were downtown and we stopped by Mackenzie House.

It was the home of Toronto's First Mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie.

The flowers are looking very pretty!

I liked these tiny flowers called Bleeding Hearts.

When I went on the tour of the house, I got to use the stereoscope. 

You can see the picture of ostriches in this one. It would have been a good way to learn about far away places in 1800s unless they we able to visit.

 I was able to take a close look at the Tea Set that was in the parlour. You could keep hot water in the silver piece in the middle so you could pour it into the kettle.

I really like what they have done with the Dining Table. They've set it up like how they think Mackenzie would have used it. It's like how we use our dining table. :-)

We went looking for old pictures of the dining table and we found these.

Christmas 2011

May 2013

Hogmanay 2013

In the back of the dining room, you can see an Invalid Chair. It's like a recliner. Mackenzie might have used one when he was older.

We saw the daughters' bedroom. Hanging on the mirror you can see the whalebone hoops that would have been used in a hoop skirt.

They have a new carpet in the Master Bedroom!

Here is a closer picture of the carpet.
They found a specialist who could weave the carpet on a loom and it took 3 years to make.

I really like this Sampler that is in the Master Bedroom.

And we noticed this picture of Les Invalides. (Maybe it's because we just went there last week.)

We saw this special cup that they would use to give teas and medicines to people sick in bed.

We found out a little bit more about Pearlash.
It was used to make "Quick Bread". It could be used instead of yeast to make the dough rise.

We found out ways of preserving food could include dehydrating, pickling or turning it into a jam.
When they make jams, you have to boil it and add lots of sugar which the bacteria doesn't like.

Before we left we printed a souvenir in the Print Shop. 

This time we printed something very different.
Instead of typesetting my name I got to print pictures of 3 of the City of Toronto Museums.
We had to make sure that they were the same height.

Here is what it looks like.

When we were looking through the old pictures we came across the "Cholera Man". They used to have this display up in 2011 (before I started my blog). It's really the Cholera Preventative Costume.
In 1834 when Mackenzie became Mayor of Toronto, they didn't know what caused cholera and there was an outbreak going on. Mackenzie banned people from building shanties on the waterfront because he thought it was a breeding ground for cholera. He was pretty smart!

It was in 1854 that John Snow found out that cholera was spread by infected drinking water.