While all the nice national museums are in Ottawa, the nice provincial museums are up to just as high a standard in Toronto. The ROM is the biggest brother of the provincial museums in the city. Spanning three maze-like floors, the museum tells the story of Earth from the age Read more
Anyone who has loved the Corning Museum of Glass in New York has to pop up to Toronto for the Gardiner Museum of ceramics. It displays ceramicware from all over the world throughout all periods of human history. Porcelain was a luxury item during the 17th and 18th centuries and Read more
Just down the street from the Royal Ontario Museum and the Gardiner Museum, the Bata Shoe Museum is one of of the few free museums on Sundays in Toronto. Its story is basically the history of shoes and how different periods of western history show through European fashion. The exhibitions Read more
Kingston was an important defensive position on the St. Lawrence River facing rebellious America. Fort Henry is the largest fortification along the St. Lawrence waterway west of Quebec City. It was built.in response to the War of 1812 and the limestone citadel was built in the 1830s. It was never Read more
The telephone was conceived and invented in this house in Brantford, Ontario. Alexander Graham Bell lived here with his parents after they moved over from Edinburgh. Bell had a handwritten note detailing where he was during each stage of development to allay any future concerns about where the telephone was Read more
The largest maritime museum on the Great Lakes isn’t the museum in Toledo, it’s in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Valley Camp is a 550-foot long Great Lakes freighter. Although modern ships of the Great Lakes are twice as long, this was one of the largest of its time when it Read more
The River of History Museum in the Michigan side of Sault Ste. Marie is a history museum on the St. Mary’s River. It shows how Natives lived before European arrival and their interactions with Europeans in the centuries that followed. Its interpretation of the violent history between the US and Read more
This small city in Ontario has a surprisingly large three-story museum. There’s an exhibition on the contributions people in the region have made to war efforts, but I didn’t get to see it because it was being rearranged. Upstairs on the second floor, there’s a gallery on the history of Read more
Parliament Hill in Ottawa has been under renovation since 2019 and there’s about a decade of work left. While the Senate was moved to the old Union Station, the House of Commons stayed in the same building. It moved its chamber from inside the building to the courtyard and covered Read more
Right below the more iconic Neuschwanstein Castle, this little brother is never jealous because it’s got a storied history of its own. Sitting next to the border with modern day Austria this was the home where King Ludwig II grew up, who later built the more architecturally majestic Neuschwanstein Castle. Hochenschwangau Read more