Rain and flooding across Niagara could not keep an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 visitors from the NOTL Museum’s annual Heritage Festival on Monday, where the public got its first real look inside the former home of museum founder Janet Carnochan.
The free Civic Holiday festival filled Castlereagh Street with about 40 artisan, food and heritage vendors, live music, historic demonstrators and the museum’s popular treasure sale, all beside an active $10-million expansion project that has narrowed the grounds and left fresh sod soggy from the storms.
“With the weather the way that it was, it’s amazing that so many people could come out and set up their booths because some people are dealing with a lot of damage right now,” said festival organizer Gwen Anderson, the museum’s educational program co-ordinator.
Crews filled a large excavation on the property just weeks before the event, so staff steered visitors off the wet lawn and onto the street, which the museum has closed for the festival for three years running.
Carnochan, a teacher who helped establish the NOTL Historical Society in 1895, built the house next to Memorial Hall, Ontario’s first purpose-built museum. The museum bought the property in 2024 and finished rezoning it earlier this year, clearing the way for its future life as a research and archives centre.
“This is the first year we’ve been able to really welcome people to the house and just give them a sense of what’s here and what we’re going to do with it,” said executive director Amy Klassen.
The capital campaign has passed 65 per cent of its $10-million target, said Klassen, and the museum plans to stay open through construction for as long as it can, though a temporary closure will likely become necessary during a later phase.
“Hopefully the community will be rallying behind us as we push to the finish line,” she said.
Karen and Chris Travers represented the Canadian Volunteers, a re-enactment unit portraying Upper Canadians who fought for the Americans during the War of 1812, set up near the United Empire Loyalists’ Association booth, giving visitors both sides of Canada’s divided past.
For a long time, that history stayed buried — it clashed with the idea that everyone rallied behind the king when war broke out, Karen Travers said.
“We were kind of history’s dirty little secret, that there were some people who supported the Americans,” she said.
Some backed the Americans because they seemed to be winning, she said, while others held more republican leanings. Many in the unit’s history had been Loyalists themselves before switching sides, leaving family fighting family.
“History is complicated. People choose sides for different reasons at different times,” said Travers.
Volunteers spent more than a week and a half pricing donated treasures, while another group researched and priced books and paper items for the sale in Memorial Hall, storing some in their own homes before the big day.
“It would not be able to happen without the staff that we have, but especially without the volunteers,” said Anderson.
Anderson, who ran the festival for the first time after Klassen moved into the executive director role, hopes it can one day grow into a town-wide heritage weekend with other local organizations.
The festival returns next Civic Holiday Monday, though construction will decide whether it can take over the street again.
