Ukulele at Scarborough Museum

Mom and I went to Scarborough Museum yesterday.
They have music on Tuesdays this Summer so we decided to check it out.

They have free ukulele lessons at 4pm and I have always wanted to try it out.
Mattie was our teacher. She is doing a degree in Music Education at the University of Toronto and she's already very good at teaching!

Mom and I have very different ways of learning and Mattie was able to help both of us.
I can pick up an instrument and fiddle with it and figure a lot out on my own. Mom likes it when she has step by step oral instructions with additional information so she can see what to do.
Mattie was able to help both of us.
 

We tried out playing Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

It was our first time with ukuleles so Mom didn't get very far and I wasn't able to switch chords fast enough, but it was fun.

It rained a little so we went into the Parlour of the Cornell House to continue the lesson but it cleared back up and we were able to go back outside.

We also got to have scones with blackcurrant jam made by volunteers at the Museum.
It was delicious!
They even gave me the recipe. :-)

Thank you so much Mattie and to everyone at the Scarborough Museum for a wonderful afternoon!

Spadina House and Gardens

We're trying to visit all of the City of Toronto Museums.
On May 19th, we went to Spadina House.

James Austin was an apprentice of William Lyon Mackenzie before the 1837 rebellion! Even though James Austin had his own print shop at the time of the rebellion, he went to the United States because people knew he was associated with Mackenzie. When he came back to Canada in 1843 he had enough money to start a grocery store with a partner. They were so successful that they were able to start lending money to others within a few years.

James Austin bought the land that Spadina House is on in 1886. 

Three generations of Austins lived in Spadina House.
The Austin family donated the house to the City of Toronto and it's now a museum. 

There is some archeological excavations in the basement of Spadina House and you can still see where they dug. They found out more of the history of the property. It was owned by the Baldwins before.

Spadina House is set up as it was in the 1920s.
At the front door they have 2 wolves. Here's a picture of one of them. Don't you think it's strange?

They had an inside garden!
There was a trap door so that the servants could go into the room to take care of the plants without being seen.  (I wonder if they'll open up those secret passages for tours.)

Here's a picture of the dining room. Do you see the curtain at the right? The servants would put the food out onto the table from behind the curtain. That way, you would only see their hands. 

I liked this painting the most because it shows Mary Austin holding a music score. She used to play organ for her church before she got married, but back then it wasn't 'proper' for a rich, married woman to play for a church.

This is a picture of the Drawing Room.

The 1888 Steinway piano was a wedding gift for Mary Austin from her husband.  

Mom tried to get a close up picture of the gas light chandelier or would you call it a gasolier?

Here's a picture of the billiard room. Since the Austins were wealthy, they were able to have time to unwind. They had a golf course (which is where Casa Loma is now) and indoors they had a billiard table. 

You can see that they used to travel. Here's a picture of them in Egypt.

You can also see that they liked to hunt.

Next to the billiards room was a small washroom. The water tank is above the toilet and you have to flush it by pulling the string.

We got to see the kitchen.

I noticed that some of the brands are still with us today. Christie's, Mazola, Quaker Oats, Kraft, Del Monte, Clover Leaf, and Carnation are brands I recognize.

They had 2 stoves. One is a little more modern with gas burners and the other one looks like a wood burning stove.

Here's a picture of the ice box. The ice would be put on top to keep the food and drinks inside of it cold. When the ice melted, they would collect the water and use it in the garden or around the house.

Upstairs, we got to see the Austin's master bedroom.

There was a perfume sampler on the dresser. 

I wonder what it would have smelt like?

Here's a picture of the master bathroom. There's a little tub behind the bathtub that they would use for  water therapy when they were sick.

Here's the other wolf that's at the front door. 

After the tour we went into the gardens for a little.
I really liked these white flowers.

Here's a picture of me and Dad. :-)

Colborne Lodge and High Park

Today, May 7th, turns out to be John and Jemima Howard's anniversary. They got married in 1827. We didn't plan on coming today, but it turned out to be a good day to visit. 

It took him and his wife 11 weeks to come to Canada from England by ship. He thought there would be a lot of work because it was a growing city. They called it "Muddy York".

John Howard built Colbourne Lodge in 1837. He was the first professional architect in Toronto, an engineer and a City Surveyor. He also taught at Upper Canada College. 

They were buried in High Park.

John Howard built his own water filter in the 1860s with sand and charcoal. They grew their own food and they were healthier than the people living in the city. He lived until he was 86.

Here is a picture (of a painting) of John Howard. 

John Howard kept journals about his life. They use his journals now to grow the same plants he had in his gardens.

In the winter they collected their own ice from Grenadier pond (which was on his land) and put it in an ice house in the ravine. It would last throughout the year and they had their own icebox in the kitchen. They didn't have to get ice delivery like most people in the city.

Here is a picture that he painted of people collecting the ice.

This was the bed in the master bedroom. You can see the chamber pots for when they needed to use the bathroom in the night.

Here you can see the dumb stove which carries heat up from the basement.

I think it's cool they still have the tooth paste can from back then. At least he didn't have to use charcoal and honey!

Here is a bath and a toilet that were in the lodge. They were added in the 1860s. They had a tank of water that would feed the water to the bath using gravity.

When Mrs. Howard got sick with breast cancer, she spent most of her time in a sick room.

They had 2 kitchens. One for the summer and one for the winter.
In the winter kitchen they had a brick oven. It would take 2 hours for the oven to heat up.

They had this cool thing which would turn chickens so that it would cook evenly by the fire. (I don't remember what it's called.)

Here's a picture of the stove from the summer kitchen. It has a wood burning stove.

After we left Colbourne Lodge, we checked out the Cherry Blossoms outside.

And of course, I went to the playground that Mike Holmes rebuilt after it was set on fire last year.

Jane's Walk: En Masse: Conflict and Change in 19th Century Toronto

Today, Dad and I went on Jane's Walk: En Masse: Conflict and Change in 19th Century Toronto. It was guided by the staff of Mackenzie House.
We went on this walk because we wanted to learn about Toronto in the Victorian Era.

It was a large group at the beginning but by the end there were only 8 of us because the walk finished a little late.

We started out at Queen's Park.

At Queen's Park they talked about the Typographical Workers (Newspaper Workers) strike in 1872. They wanted a 9 hour work day instead of the really long days that they had. When they went on strike, the newspapers stopped printing. Then they had a march which started with 2,000 people. But by the time they got to Queens Park they had 10,000!

George Brown had 24 people from the march arrested the next day. It was illegal to have 12 or more people at a gathering.

John A. MacDonald passed a bill that made unions legal and had the 24 people set free.

The workers won the right to have 9 hour work days.

At King's College they talked about the Student Strikes at University of Toronto in 1895. The students were upset because an event they organized was cancelled and a popular professor was fired. The students didn't go to class until the government agreed to investigate. At the end of the strike there was a 'conversazione' where dancing was banned. The students decided to dance anyway and they danced in whichever room the President of the University wasn't in.
William Lyon MacKenzie King was involved in the strike and he made political contacts. It helped him get into politics. He became Prime Minister in 1921.

At George Brown House they talked about abolitionists. George Brown wrote articles in the Globe newspaper about slavery in the United States. He helped slaves escape to Canada. The case of John Anderson was very important. The Americans wanted John Anderson to go back to the U.S. but when he was arrested in Canada, Britain tried to intervene. After that, Britain didn't try to intervene in court cases in the British Empire any more.

At the Grange they talked about the Orange Order. They were very influential. They were from Ireland. The person who built the Grange, William Henry Boulton, was an Orangeman.
In 1841 there was a parade to celebrate the election of a couple members of parliament who were not Orangemen. There were shots fired and some bagpipers were attacked. Shots were fired from a pub that Orangemen went to and someone in the parade was killed. People thought that the Mayor and other Orangemen knew there would be trouble.
They were also involved in the Jubilee Riots of 1875. The Catholics were being attacked on their journeys between churches. The mayor asked them to stop attacking the Catholics and he apologized to them that he couldn't legally stop the Catholics from doing their processions.

At Campbell House, they talked about the Family Compact. It was criticized in William Lyon Mackenzie's Newspaper a lot. The sons and nephews of the Family Compact members broke into Mackenzie's print shop and they destroyed his printing plates. Officials watched when this was happening.
Mackenzie sued.
Judge Campbell, who was a member of the Family Compact, sided with Mackenzie and awarded damages of £600. He was able to restart his newspaper. Before the men did that to Mackenzie, he was facing debtor's prison! But after he was able to stay in business.

(By the way, William Lyon Mackenzie King - the Prime Minister was the grandson of William Lyon Mackenzie - Toronto's First Mayor)


I talk about Mackenzie House in another blog post.