After a ten-month-long renovation, Spadina Museum: Historic House & Gardens-home to four generations of the Austin family-is looking fresh, but not too fresh! To mark the new look of Spadina (pronounced Spadeena) Museum, three hour-long tours have been developed to tantalize visitors with details of life in the decades between the two World Wars.
And this great house is made greater because of the stories about the people who inhabited it. On a guided tour titled Meet the Austins, visitors see how the family was a product of the period in which they lived. "It was a time of tremendous change and many new inventions," says museum administrator Karen Edwards. "The family was very musical and they bought a radio license for themselves and they also bought one for a young patient they had befriended in a sanitarium."
This was a progressive era when women first got the vote in Toronto, hemlines shortened and women danced the Charleston. So, it's not surprising to learn that the Austin girls' sense of adventure led them to become nurses in the First World War.
The guided tour, In Full Swing: The Restoration of Spadina Museum fascinates home décor buffs with the depth of detail that was brought into restoring everything from the linoleum on the kitchen floor to the vintage wallpapers and carpets. This effort was aided by the fact that some samples were actually saved by the family. Two stuffed wolves standing at the front door speak to a time when taxidermy was a popular hobby and urban people had a different attitude toward hunting. Even department stores in New York sold them (stuffed animals), adds Edwards.
The level of detail is remarkable, going right down to a database created from old shopping lists, that shows what the family ate and when, from Cornflakes to canned salmon. "This era marked the rise of convenience," says Edwards.
School children enjoy the It's a Kid's Life tour which traces the parallel lives of the young Austins who lived in the great house and their chauffeur's son and daughter who lived above the garage. It's the kind of upstairs-downstairs story that makes the house come to life for visitors of any age.
Spadina, which is located around the corner from Casa Loma, is one of ten historic museums operated by the city of Toronto. These include: Fort York National Historic Site, Canada's largest collection of War of 1812 buildings; Colborne Lodge, the regency villa built for the man who gave us High Park; Mackenzie House, home to Toronto's first mayor, firebrand reformer and newspaperman William Lyon Mackenzie; and Montgomery's Inn, from where Mackenzie launched his 1837 Upper Canada rebellion. Learn more at www.toronto.ca
InterContinental Hotels
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TRAVEL TIP
In the War of 1812, Fort York defended the settlement that was to become Toronto. Discover the historic district on a 90-minute guided walk on June 12 at 1 p.m., then enjoy free admission to the fort afterwards.