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PHOTOS: IRIS WINSTON
Historic Places
Living history is about places and buildings, as well as people.
This series highlights some of those special places.
Cumberland Heritage
Village Museum
BY IRIS WINSTON
Electricity and a music room featuring a player piano, a wind-up gramophone
and a console radio speak to the wealth of the original inhabitants of Foubert
House. Today, the residence is part of the Cumberland Heritage Village
Museum’s re-creation of life in rural Ontario in the 1920s and 1930s.
Originally located at the foot of Foubert Street in Cumberland Village, this
1915 building was moved to the 25-hectare (62-acre) museum site in 1978 and
furnished as an example of middle-class family life. The Foubert House is a
sharp contrast to the 1820 Dupuis House, the oldest structure on the property.
Originally located in Orleans, it was moved to the museum in 1984 and now
houses the seamstress exhibit.
There are 26 more buildings in the heritage village, in which costumed
interpreters present oral histories and demonstrate trades and other
activities of village and rural life in the lower Ottawa Valley between 1890 and
1930.
The emphasis of the collection is on the changes wrought by industrialization.
But, alongside gas engines, tractors, cars, and trucks are hand tools
and non-mechanized ways of doing business. For instance, in the village dairy,
one butter churner works by dog power rather than gas, electricity, or even
human power. (A dog is strapped to a large wooden circle above a massive
spoon. As the dog rotates the wood, the movement turns milk into butter.) A
long list of events and educational programs through the year — trying to do
the laundry 1920s-style or hearing the Temperance ladies complain about a
beer parlour — give this social history its special edge.
The collection of houses and public buildings includes the oldest Imperial
gas station in Canada, a functioning sawmill, a blacksmith shop, and a oneroom
schoolhouse. No village would be complete without a church or a fire
hall. The 1904 Knox Presbyterian Church, brought to the village from Vars in
1980, is often used for present-day weddings. The fire hall, which is a replica of
a 1930s fire hall, was built by the Cumberland Township Fire Department in
1999. It is home to an antique fire engine and several examples of period firefighting
equipment.
Most of the buildings, including the 1908 Vars Train Station — the first
building moved to the museum site — are original structures. Some, such as
the fire hall, the bandshell, and the three-bay drive shed, are reproductions,
but all are set up to contribute to the sense of living history as part of a village
at work — enhanced by a regular schedule of events.
For more information on activities at the Cumberland Heritage Village
Museum, visit www.ottawa.ca/museums or call 613 833-3059.
Iris Winston writes and lives in Almonte.
Due West/Due East Magazine • Spring 2008 Ottawa Page 28