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…
It’s a quirky Dallas museum with three focal points: Jewish history, the Holocaust and biblical arts. Anyone with a firm grasp of Christian history should have an easy time following along. There are plenty of ancient oil lamps, ancient maps and ancient ceramics. The giant 10-meter mural of the resurrection 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…
I’ve been to the Canadian side of Sault Ste. Marie before I visited the American side because COVID-19 meant that the borders were closed. The Soo Locks on the American side are more difficult to access, so head up the Tower of History to see it after visiting the largest 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…
The Senate of Canada was founded in 1867 with its confederation, but it is currently held in an old train station in Ottawa built in 1912 opposite the senate’s original purpose-built building. Funnily enough, the former train station is older than the 1920 Parliament Centre Block, which has been undergoing Read more…