Mackenzie House

August 7, 2022

Daniel and Elizabeth Stong settled on the property on the south-east corner of Jane Street and Steeles Avenue in 1816 when it was virgin forest. They cut down the trees and created a farm that was operated by four generations of the family until 1952. The Toronto Region Conservation Authority purchased the property in 1958 and created Black Creek Pioneer Village which opened in 1960. The village was developed by moving 40 endangered or abandoned buildings from other sites in Ontario to display life in the 1860’s. We visited the village to look at some of the other buildings and the exhibits located within them.

The doctor’s house was originally built in 1830 as a two generation farm house near Brampton. It has two separate entrances and the upstairs is fully divided so that two families could live here in relative privacy. A door on the main floor allowed them to pass between the two halves to join in family activities. The design is perfect to showcase a small town doctor’s house where the one side could serve as an office. An herb garden in the back yard would be cultivated to provide remedies that were learned from the indigenous peoples who had lived on the land for centuries.

Inside the doctor’s house is a display of the tools that were in common use in the mid-1800s. Drills, tooth extractors and saws were basic implements. Because people had to pay for the doctor’s services they often waited until they were in severe distress hoping to get better on their own. A house call would cost 50 cents, or roughly a half days wages and then every service would be charged separately on top of that.

Mackenzie House was built in 1830 as a small log cabin. As the family grew the home became too small and so a kitchen wing was added as well as an upstairs area making it into a story and a half home. The house was originally located in Woodbridge and was built by Major Addison Alexander Mackenzie after whom Major Mackenzie Drive is named. The house is set up to display the historical home industries of clock making/repair and dress making.

The Manse was built in 1835 and is typical of four room cottages built in rural Upper Canada (Ontario) in the 1830s. It served as the manse for Reverend James Dick who was pastor of Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church from 1849-1885. In those times it was not very common to hold weddings in the church and many of them were conducted in the front room of this house. The building was also used as a store, a residence and a Sunday School before being moved to the village in 1978 where it compliments the Fisherville Presbyterian Church.

Burwick House was built in 1844 for Rowland Burr in the town of Burrwick which later became Woodbridge. This house represents the lifestyle of the middle class in this era. This is an example of the well proportioned and symmetrical Georgian style of architecture and was moved to the village in 1958.

The Halfway House was built in 1849 by Alexander Thompson to provide a resting stop for stagecoach passengers and horses. It was originally located at Kingston Road and Midland Avenue along the road from Pickering to Toronto. It also served as a hotel, an apartment and also a store before being moved to the village in 1966.

The apple storage cellar was built around 1850 in Edgely. It was built into the ground to provide storage to preserve apples, fruit and root vegetables. The storage bins would be layered with straw and produce using its 8 feet by 7 feet interior to keep food for winter and spring consumption. The field stone and brick structure was disassembled and moved to the village over a 65 day period.

Charles Irwin’s weaving shop was located in the Kettleby Temperance Hall which was built in 1850. The same building also housed the town print shop when it was no longer used as a temperance hall. Weaving provided a wide range of textiles for household use and at one time there were over 600 weavers in Ontario.

The harness shop was built in 1855 just two lots south of the future black Creek Pioneer Village. The harness and saddle trade were essential to the early farming and transportation industries as they allowed for the efficient use of animal strength for labour. The shop was moved to the village in 1961 and has been open to the public since 1963.

Dominion Carriage Works was built in 1860 in Sebringville as a blacksmith shop and wheelwright. As it grew in the 1870s it was expanded to a full carriage works with an upholsterer and a cabinet maker. When cars became more popular, the business declined but it carried on until 1972. The following year it was moved to Black Creek Pioneer Village with all of its patterns and tools. It has been restored and opened to the public in 1976.

The village school was built in 1861 as Dickson’s Hill School in Markham on concession 7 and was known as School Section #17 Markham. Using local, hand made bricks, it was constructed for a total cost of just $1,078.79. The two separate entrances allowed boys to come through one door while the girls entered through the other one. Most one room schools in Ontario were closed by the 1950s and this one was vacant in 1960. At that time it was dismantled brick by brick and was then moved to Pioneer Village and reassembled.

Inside, the school is set up like a typical one room school of the 1860s. The younger students would have sat closer to the front of the room while the older ones were at the back. The desks and fixed seating are not from this school but are from the same time period. A box stove at the back provided heat which was carried by the pipe near the ceiling to the front of the room where the chimney stood. Many of the buildings in the village were heated in this manner. The large windows on either side provided light and also opened for ventilation.

Our cover photo features the Fire House which was built as a storage or work shed in 1850. It houses an 1837 wooden fire engine that was used in Toronto for over 4 decades. Beyond the fire house in the photo is Henry Snider’s Cider Mill which was built in 1840 in the community of Elia at Keele Street and Finch Avenue. It could produce 500 gallons of apple cider per day.

Several buildings in the village have been featured in previous blogs. The Stong log cabin and second house as well as several of their outbuildings were featured in Black Creek Pioneer Village: Elizabeth Stong. Roblin’s Mill had it’s own blog called Roblin’s Mill. Laskay Emporium was featured in the story Laskay: Ghost Towns of the GTA. The Presbyterian Church was featured in our story Fisherville: Ghost Towns of the GTA.

Google maps link: Black Creek Pioneer Village

Like us at http://www.facebook.com/hikingthegta

Also, look for us in Instagram

Sunday, October 22, 2017

William Lyon Mackenzie was a politician, publisher and rebel who became the first mayor of Toronto when the city was incorporated in 1834. He had already been publishing his controversial Reform newspaper, The Colonial Advocate, for ten years at this time. Frustrated, he concluded that the political process had failed him and so in December 1837, he led a rebellion to overthrow Upper Canada’s colonial rule, locally known as the Family Compact. The rebellion failed and Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head placed a one thousand pound price on Mackenzie’s head. William took his family and fled to the United States where he lived in exile until 1850. Mackenzie was re-elected to the Legislature in 1851 where he served until 1858 when he retired from politics, but not from controversy or publishing. His paper was then known as Mackenzie’s Toronto Weekly Message. The picture below shows the July 16, 1859, issue.

The picture below shows a carving of Mackenzie delivering his famous Seventh Report on Grievances to the Assembly. This was his manifesto of all the changes he was demanding of the government. It included three levels of government, all elected by the people, the abolishing of a state church and clergy reserves as well as giving the vote to women.

Mackenzie House, seen in the cover photo was built in 1858 as the middle of three such townhomes. It was given to Mackenzie in 1859 and he lived here until he died in 1861. The house has been serving as a museum since 1950 and has been decorated in the time period of the 1850’s to reflect what it would have been like when Mackenzie lived here. Adults pay an entrance fee of $7.00 and more information can be found on their website. The irons below are typical laundry tools of the period. They were heated in the fire and then used to press the clothes after they had been hung to dry.

In the winter the family would have spent much of its time in the basement as this was the warmest part of the house. Both the kitchen and the dayroom had fireplaces in them and, naturally, only the rooms in use would have been heated.

The master bedroom faces Bond Street and, unlike Colborne Lodge (built in the rebellion year of 1837), it had its own fireplace in the bedrooms. Colborne Lodge, on the other hand, had an indoor washroom and so there was no need for the chamber pot under the bed, seen below. There would have been an outhouse in the backyard of the Mackenzie house, likely about where the printing shop is located now.

The house was built in an era when insulation was unheard of, with the possible exception of old newspapers stuffed in the walls. Winter nights would have been very cold and the bed was heated up before you dared to slip into it. The copper coloured pan on the long handle was warmed in the fire and slid between the sheets just before you crawled into bed.

The second floor has two bedrooms and a box room which would have been used to store hat boxes and boxes of William’s printed materials and newspaper clippings. This room had no fireplace but was likely used as a bedroom when their son George was living here. The girls shared the bedroom at the back of the house, pictured below. One of their daughters, Isabel, lived in this room until she married into the King family. Her son William Lyon Mackenzie King was Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister. His actions during World War Two helped move Canada out of the shadow of Great Britain, something his grandfather was trying to do with his rebellion.

One of the antiques in the print shop is known to have belonged to William and that is this case of printing type. On June 8th, 1826 a group of young men who represented the Family Compact broke into Mackenzie’s print shop and smashed his printing press. They took his cases of type and carted them down to the bay where they summarily deposited them. This attempt to silence the constant criticism of the government that was printed in The Colonial Advocate became known as the Type Riots. Mackenzie used this incident as a focal point to create anger over the abuses of those in power as he gathered support for his rebellion.

Mackenzie didn’t usually set his own type, one of his apprentices would have done that. The type that was used on his early newspapers was made from lead and print journeymen tended to have a very short lifespan due to lead poisoning. The letters were laid out in the case so that letters that occur frequently beside each other are placed together in the tray. Originally, capital letters were stored in the upper case and small letters were kept in the lower case. From this practice, we derive the terms upper and lower case letters. A good typesetter would be capable of 22 words per minute.

This press is similar to the one that Mackenzie would have used during the later years of publishing.

Mackenzie House is open 7 days a week as a museum and if you take the print shop tour you can operate the printing press yourself.

Google Maps Link: Mackenzie House

Like us at http://www.facebook.com/hikingthegta

	hikingthegta on Bond Lake
	Nav on Bond Lake
	hikingthegta on St. Alban the Martyr Cathedral…
	David Berry on St. Alban the Martyr Cathedral…
	Mississauga’s… on Toronto’s Model T F…

Hiking the GTA

Places to hike and things to see in and around the Greater Toronto Area

Tag Archives: Mackenzie House

Black Creek Pioneer Village