Museum Month Living History 2025!

“Welcome to Museum Month!“

Welcome to Museum Month: Ontario’s annual, province-wide invitation to step out of the everyday and walk straight into the past.

Each May, more than 700 galleries, historic sites, and cultural centres celebrate Museum Month with pop-up programs, behind-the-scenes tours, and a flurry of passport challenges that culminate on International Museum Day (May 18). It’s thirty-one days set aside to remind us that museums aren’t just rooms full of glass cases; they’re interactive storybooks that let us taste, smell, and feel the lives of people who came before us. (Museum Month Living History)

Among the most immersive of these storybooks are living museums, often called living-history or heritage villages. Instead of static artifacts, these sites are built environments where costumed interpreters churn butter, build barrels, hammer hot iron, and invite visitors to pitch in. Buildings are furnished exactly as they would have been, kitchen gardens grow heirloom seeds, and waterwheels or steam engines rumble back to life on a daily schedule. A living museum is part theatre, part time machine: you don’t just learn history, you inhabit it. (Museum Month Living History)

This month-long celebration is the perfect backdrop for our story of one adventurous Ontario family who decide to collect seven fresh passport stamps, one at each of the province’s most beloved living museums: (Museum Month Living History)

• Upper Canada Village
• Fanshawe Pioneer Village
• Lang Pioneer Village Museum
• Kawartha Settlers’ Village
• Fort William Historical Park
• Moreston Heritage Village
• Village at Black Creek

Buckle up for barn smells, bonnet selfies, and surprise lessons in 19th-century “Wi-Fi” (a.k.a. the telegraph) as the family hurtles from Morrisburg to Thunder Bay and back, all in the name of Museum Month and the magic of living history.

Museum-Month Time-Machine: The Peregrin Family’s Seven-Stop Sprint through Ontario History

1 | May 3 – Opening Day at Upper Canada Village (Morrisburg)

Sarah Peregrin felt the van’s brakes exhale as they rolled beneath the cedar arch that read Village Opening Day – May 3, 1866…er 2025. Forty-three historic buildings were already humming: the water-powered sawmill shrieked across fresh pine, the blacksmith’s anvil rang like a dinner bell, and the horse-drawn carry-all clopped past Cook’s Tavern on its first loop of the season. (Museum Month Living History)

Nine-year-old Max sprinted straight to the Bakery, nose first; fifteen minutes later he emerged hugging a loaf of wheat bread still warm enough to fog his glasses. Beside the Woollen Mill, big sister Grace filmed the spinning jenny for her history vlog, astonished that “industrial revolution TikTok” could hit 120 spools per minute. Dad (Evan) tried guiding the draft horses that power the canal schooner; Mom (Lena) bartered a cameo brooch in the Tinsmith Shop for a promise of future coffee. By 5 p.m. their Museum-Month passports bore the very first stamp—ink barely dry on the first day the gates had been open all year. (Museum Month Living History)

  2 | May 17 – Fanshawe Pioneer Village Opening Day (London)

Two weeks, and forty roadside butter-tarts, later, the family crossed Veterans Memorial Parkway into Fanshawe Conservation Area. Saturday, May 17, was this 66-year-old village’s launch for the public season, running 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Interpreters in hoop skirts greeted visitors with “Happy Victoria-Day weekend!” Max earned the first “junior detective” ribbon of 2025 by spotting a counterfeit coin at the Denfield General Store. Grace joined a quilting bee in the Fanshawe Schoolhouse, learning that one good running stitch outpaces any sewing-machine analogue until July. Evan sampled birch-beer at the Spriet Visitor Centre, while Lena hammered a glowing rod into an S-hook under the blacksmith’s keen eye (and Max’s phone timer—exactly 47 seconds of 1,300 °C glory).

Their second passport stamp came with a bonus: the opening-day proclamation read aloud from the 19th-century bandstand, promising “tea with Eldon House” on Victoria-Day Monday, history truly alive and scheduling itself into their calendar.

  3 | May 18 – Village at Black Creek “Once Upon a Time” (Toronto)

Sunday morning the Peregrins pivoted east along Highway 401 to Toronto, swapping bonnets for fairy-tale capes. Black Creek’s spring marquee, Once Upon a Time (May 17–18, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.), had transformed the 1860s village into a living storybook. Grace was knighted on the Village Green with a wooden sword, Evan and Lena stumbled into a pirate skirmish outside the Half-Way House Inn, and Max crafted a paper crown before dancing at the “enchanted ball” under the sheep-barn rafters. A roaming puppeteer rewrote Jack and the Beanstalk with a cow that refused to be sold because “milk futures look bullish,” sending the crowd, parents included, into snorts of laughter. (Museum Month Living History)

By mid-afternoon the passport officer inked their third circle. Grace whispered, “Three museums in sixteen days, this compass is going to smoke.” (Museum Month Living History)

  4 | May 20 – Season Kick-off at Lang Pioneer Village Museum (Keene)

The clutch of spring maples along the Indian River was nearly empty when the Peregrins arrived just after 10 a.m.—Lang’s very first public hour of 2025. No festival bunting, no queue; only the creak of the Jacquard Loom resetting after winter and the splash of the millrace.

Lena chatted with the weaver about punch-card programming (“Victorian binary, who knew?”), while Evan tried peaty hearth-smoke in the Fife Cabin and declared it “campfire-plus-bacon.” Grace chalked “We made it!” beneath last autumn’s farewell note still faint on the South Lake School board. Max helped the miller open the sluice gate at the Grist Mill, watching water torque the wheel for the very first grind of the year. (Museum Month Living History)

They lunched alone on the grassy bank, just five modern time-travellers and 1840-something birdsong. Stamp #4 landed on the passport like a quiet exclamation mark. (Museum Month Living History)

  5 | May 24 – Spring into Moreston at Moreston Heritage Village (Owen Sound)

A sunrise drive around Georgian Bay delivered them to Grey Roots Museum for the one-day Spring into Moreston celebration, Saturday May 24, noon – 4 p.m.. The ten-acre 1920s village buzzed with new-season energy: alpacas grazed beside the timber-frame barn; the Good Cheer Bandstand hosted fiddle reels; and Raptors’ Ridge ran birds-of-prey demos that kept Max’s jaw permanently ajar. (Museum Month Living History)

Grace learned the Charleston on the grass while Evan tackled a plank-saw relay at the Herb Miller Sawmill, reenacting 1925’s answer to CrossFit. At the 1925 Arnott General Store they tasted butterscotch penny-candies, and Lena convinced the print-shop volunteer to typeset “Peregrin Gazette No. 1, Spring-Into-History Edition.” (Museum Month Living History)

Their fifth stamp included a commemorative daisy pressed into the ink—courtesy of the village horticulturalist who’d noticed Grace filming garden B-roll for her vlog. (Museum Month Living History)

  6 | May 25 – “Made in Kawartha Lakes Show + Sale” at Kawartha Settlers’ Village (Bobcaygeon)

Overnight they zipped back east to Bobcaygeon in time for the final day of the Made in Kawartha Lakes Show + Sale (May 24–25, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.). Forty-five regional artists had opened pop-up booths among the 20 heritage buildings.

Max scored a pottery mug splashed with Kawartha-blue glaze, then collected passport “art-hunt” stamps in hopes of the grand-prize draw. Grace interviewed a glassblower whose torch hissed beneath the eaves of the Wray House porch. Evan sampled Kawartha Dairy ice cream (classic Moose-Tracks), while Lena joined locals belting sea-shanties with North Country Express beside the Murphy Barn. (Museum Month Living History)

Between purchases they still found time for history: the Muir House kitchen garden, the Beck Courier Office hand-press demonstration, and a serene pause inside Christ Church where Max thunked the 1900-era pump organ one deep note. Stamp #6 came with the event-passport bonus, though alas, the cash-prize email never arrived. (Museum Month Living History)

  7 | May 30 – Fort William Historical Park (Thunder Bay)

A budget red-eye flight landed them at Lakehead just after dawn. By 10 a.m. the Peregrins joined the first English-language guided tour (daily, every 45 minutes, open 7 days a week starting May 17 season). (Museum Month Living History)

Costumed voyageurs hoisted 90-pound bales, singing paddling chansons; Max managed a 14-second tumpline stand before toppling into grass. In the Great Hall, a Scots clerk let Grace price beaver pelts against trade muskets—supply-chain studies, 1804 edition. Evan tested the forge bellows, Lena tasted fresh-fried bannock at the Anishinaabe encampment. (Museum Month Living History)

The finale came under the dome of the David Thompson Astronomical Observatory, newly reopened for daytime solar viewing. Through filtered lenses they watched sunspots crawl across a molten disk, realizing museum-month could stretch well beyond barns and blacksmiths.

Passport stamp seven thudded down; the interpreter tied a tiny brass bell to the booklet ribbon, a voyager’s good-luck charm for long journeys home. (Museum Month Living History)

Back Home Memories

Grace closed the booklet and twirled the compass won at Upper Canada Village’s gift shop. “North, south, east, west—there’s another museum on every bearing,” she said.

Evan grinned. “Good thing the season’s only just begun.”

And with Museum-Month memories still fresh on their boots, the Peregrins began charting June, because history in Ontario, they’d learned, is always in season and seldom farther than a tank of gas (or the reach of a good horse-drawn carry-all).

Ontario’s Other Time-Travel Hot-Spots — Quick Guide

Doon Heritage Village (Kitchener) – Interprets rural Waterloo County in 1914 with 22 furnished buildings, but note the site is undergoing major infrastructure upgrades and will remain closed through the 2025 season while water-, hydro- and fibre-lines are replaced. When it reopens, visitors will again stroll dirt lanes, meet costumed neighbours and watch the grist-mill turn.

Westfield Heritage Village (Rockton) – More than 35 log, stone and frame structures, everything from a 1775 trading post to a 1911 railway station, sit in 204 forested hectares managed by Hamilton Conservation Authority. Special theme days bring the blacksmith, printer and steam engineers back to work.

Cumberland Heritage Village Museum (Ottawa) – A 1920s-30s rural hamlet where visitors peek inside a fire hall, shingle mill, one-room school and general store, pet heritage livestock and discover how radio and early electricity changed farm life; the site reopens each spring (2025 season starts 11 May).

Backus-Page House Museum (Wallacetown, Lake Erie North Shore) – Centred on an 1850 Georgian-style brick home, this Talbot-Settlement complex adds barns, trails and an agricultural centre to tell stories of early cash-crop farming on Ontario’s fertile “Long Point Settlement.”

Petawawa Heritage Village (Petawawa) – A volunteer-run village that honours Algonquin roots, German founding families and lumber shanty days with costumed tours, artisan markets and candle-lit Christmas nights among log cabins, a chapel and a Hudson’s Bay Company post.

Ault Park / Lost Villages Museum (Long Sault) – Ten rescued buildings, from a school to a barbershop, were floated or trucked here before the St. Lawrence Seaway flooded their original hamlets in 1958. Exhibits recall the communities now resting beneath the river.

Battlefield House Museum & Park N.H.S. (Stoney Creek) – Inside a 1796 stone homestead and on the surrounding 32-acre parkland, staff recount the Battle of Stoney Creek (6 June 1813). Musket demonstrations, the annual re-enactment and woodland trails round out the visit.

Canadian Transportation Museum & Heritage Village (Essex County) – A 100-acre campus pairs one of Ontario’s largest vintage-vehicle collections (plus Canada’s only dedicated ambulance museum) with a 20-building village spanning 1700s log cabins to a 1920s barber shop—and even a ’50s diner for lunch.

Founders’ Museum & Pioneer Village (Slate River, Thunder Bay) – Twelve furnished buildings—including a print shop, blacksmith and antique-auto shed—re-create frontier life in Northwestern Ontario; open weekends May–September for self-guided rambles beneath the Nor’Wester Mountains.

Scugog Shores Museum Village & Archives (Port Perry) – Sitting on Scugog Island, this 12-acre site gathers 19 relocated structures (church, blacksmith, Ojibwe wigwam, more) and traces settlement around Lake Scugog; general admission resumes 21 May 2025, with off-season education programs year-round.