I am good at planning trips, and I have experience in mapping, routing and calculating everything involved in exploring the part of the world that we live in. On my travel itinerary, I have the distance between each location, with the time to drive there, when we arrive, how long we stay, and when we leave. I do this so that we can thoroughly enjoy where we are and not be rushed out of one place to see another.
But on this trip, I had overestimated my stay at the previous stop, and the next one wouldn’t be open for another few hours. I had researched the area and had a few options to visit to fill our time. This place was close enough and small enough that we would fill in our extra time perfectly.
By small, it would not be an all-day visit, but rather something we could expect to spend an hour doing. But it was delivered in a much bigger way than I was expecting, and I actually became angry.
Philipse Manor Hall Historic Site was a slight detour from our next destination. We arrived and parked in the small lot on the grounds. Only one other car; I began to wonder if it was open. We entered the building and proceeded to pay admission. The cashier-slash-tour guide noticed the toque I was wearing. It is the business of my brother-in-law and said Orangeville on it. In a confused expression, he asked where that was. I, being the ever-jokester, said, “What? You never heard of this place?”
He shook his head, still bewildered.
“It is about an hour north of Toronto,” I replied.
The cashier knew where that was. At this moment, another guide piped up and said, “You came all the way here just for this museum.” We would continue with this banter, and I would be offered a guided tour of this historic home that is now a museum. Sadly, I had to refuse. The tour did not start for another half hour, and that would put us behind schedule. Tour guides are our favourite part of any spot; they have all the information, even stuff that is not on display, and we can learn more about what is here than what we could do on a self-guided tour.
Charlene and I would slowly walk around, looking at each of the displays, reading up about what these were and why they were significant to this museum and the local history. A theme started to arise: slavery. I was not expecting this at all. After all, we are in the North. I did not think that there was slavery in this part of America.
The museum’s design was built to honour its entire history, from that of the first people, the Philipse family, and the people of the area, including that this would become city hall before turning into the museum it is today. The part that grabbed me the most was slavery. The Philipse family’s primary source of income was in the buying, selling, trading and capturing of people for the slave trade. Yes, they had farms and a healthy source of income, but the human lives they enslaved were their most considerable profit. I had no idea that this happened in the North. I was stunned, shocked and offended.
We did tour the museum and learned of its varied and, at times, dark history. The tour that we had to skip was starting, and I was a bit jealous that we were missing it, but we had other great places to see. But we are left enlightened by the history of this area; only some things are good all the time.
- Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site is a small museum that could take less than an hour to go through alone. Check their website for tour times for the best experience.
- There is free parking, but the lot can only fit a few cars.
- There is a small entry fee and no additional cost if you wait for a tour.
- The location of Philipse Manor State Historic Site is on Featured Map. This map is all the places we have seen that are worth the time and effort to visit.
- There is only the opportunity for a few pictures to take.
