THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL WINTER FAIR: ONTARIO'S FARMING HERITAGE

HERITAGE MOMENTS

BY: ELEANOR HOWELL-CHRISTENSEN

Photo courtesy of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. 

When we think of Toronto's animals, we're most likely thinking of raccoons, pigeons, rodents, and pets (cats/dogs etc). We're probably not thinking of cows, sheep, alpacas or horses - all of which can be found at the 95th Royal Agricultural Winter Fair which just occurred at Exhibition Place. The Royal (as it's affectionately known) is one of the largest shows of its kind in the world and has been an important part of Toronto's history for the past century. It makes sense, when you think about it: Ontario's First Peoples were agricultural, and upon arriving the European settlers turned much of the area into farmland.

Ontario has a long history with farming, and the Royal is a large-scale celebration of this heritage. Attending for the first time this year, I couldn't help but notice how many museum-like elements there were to the fair. It's essentially one enormous "show and tell" - and isn't that roughly the essence of a museum? The Royal is a two-week demonstration of Ontario's farming heritage, a heritage that you can see, touch and (let's be honest) smell.

I've gathered together some photos of the Royal through the years (the only thing better than pictures of animals are vintage pictures of animals, right?) and if you're interested in learning more about Ontario's agricultural history, Archives of Ontario has compiled a whole page of online resources on the subject.  Let's put aside our skyscrapers and take just a moment to enjoy our province's greener history.

All images are courtesy of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

The Royal Agricultural Winter fair occurs every November in Toronto. Next year's dates are November 2-11, 2018. 

ALIAS TORONTO

HERITAGE MOMENTS

BY: ELEANOR HOWELL-CHRISTENSEN

If we haven’t already, soon we’ll all have heard the name Grace Marks. Netflix’s miniseries Alias Grace, based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, debuted at TIFF just a few weeks ago and will be available to stream on November 3. Alias Grace is a fictionalized interpretation of a gruesome murder that happened in 1840’s Toronto, a time when the city was still largely built of wood and had only recently changed its name from York. Grace Marks was accused of murdering her employer and his housekeeper, and the question of her guilt befuddled society at the time — and still does to this day (as this anticipated Netflix adaptation implies). We seem to love a ‘good murder’, particularly a scandalous one, and particularly when it’s a woman who’s done the murdering. 


For my first post as the Heritage Moments columnist I thought I’d jump on the Alias Grace bandwagon that’s shedding light on some of our city’s early history, and offer up three stories of women, murders, and Not Guilty! verdicts. From Richmond Hill to Parkdale to the Annex, the courts of Toronto have a strange history of murderesses, sensationalized trials, and verdicts that ultimately let these murderesses walk free. Read through the stories of these three women who have played sensationalized roles in the darker side of Toronto's heritage. 

GRACE MARKS

c/o murderpedia.org

Let’s begin our murderess tour with Grace Marks, now a star of a Netflix drama but who, at the time of her trial, was a recently-immigrated Irish maidservant. At only 15 years old, Grace was arrested in 1843 alongside fellow servant James McDermott for the double murder of their employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. Wealthy farmer Kinnear had been found dead from bullet wounds outside his Richmond Hill home, while Montgomery’s body had been strangled and hacked to death with an axe then dumped in the cellar; the post-mortem autopsy results showed she was pregnant at the time, most likely with Kinnear’s child.

McDermott was found guilty of murder and hanged, but rather than being given the death sentence Grace was sent first to an asylum and then to Kingston Penitentiary where she spent almost thirty years. She divided those who encountered her, both during her trial and after she was locked away: some thought she was naive and innocent, while others thought she was just as guilty as the deceased McDermott. 

A group of Reformers convinced of her innocence appealed repeatedly to various government officials for her release. Eventually granted a pardon, the now old Grace was released. No records of her exist after her release from Kingston. The issue of her guilt or innocence is still unresolved.

Read more here:

http://murderpedia.org/female.M/m/marks-grace.htm

CLARA FORD

c/o Toronto Then and Now

Perhaps the most charismatic of the three women in this article, Clara Ford was arrested in relation to the Frank Westwood murder case in 1894. 18 year old Westwood had been shot on the doorstep of his family’s Jameson Ave mansion. He died several days later, maintaining that his shooter had been a stranger, a moustachioed man dressed in a dark suit. As the young son of a wealthy Toronto family, Westwood’s murder caused a city-wide uproar. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was called in to speculate: on a visit to Toronto, the creator of detective Sherlock Holmes was asked to weigh in on the murder case. Doyle declined to comment, and with the police force working on very little information, the mystery of the moustachioed man prevailed for weeks.

Things took an interesting turn when the police arrested Clara Ford, a biracial female tailor. She was known to regularly dress as a man, owned a gun with bullets to match Westwood’s wound, and frequented the Parkdale area in her social circles. She wasn’t surprised to be arrested and frankly confessed to the murder. According to Clara, Frank had tried to take advantage of her and she’d retaliated by biding her time then dressing as a man, going to his house and shooting him. Known for her charisma and bravado, Clara navigated the trial with self-confidence and won over the jury: despite the overwhelming evidence against her, Clara was acquitted. Toronto loved Clara and her eccentricities so much that when she left the courthouse she had to struggle through cheering crowds in order to take her jurors out to eat. 

Clara became a household name and even placed the dark suit she’d been wearing when she shot Westwood into a local museum. She left Toronto to join a performing group, where she toured the States as a 'murderess' spectacle.

Read more here:

http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=3216

CARRIE DAVIES

c/o Development of Toronto

Torontonians will recognize the name Massey (Massey College, Massey Hall) but in 1915 the name was tinged with scandal. Sharing similarities with the Westwood murder, young Charles Massey was shot in front of his home on Walmer Road. The wielder of the pistol was 18 year old Carrie Davis, Massey’s young English maidservant who accused her victim of ruining her life as she shot him. Police found Carrie preparing to turn herself in and confess. She claimed that Massey had attempted to rape her the day before: she’d felt powerless as a young female servant and had resolved to defend herself. 

Carrie had been brought to Canada as part of a government scheme to recruit domestic servants from Britain. She was known as being quiet and modest in her spending, sending most of her income home to her poor family. Massey, on the other hand, was notorious for his womanizing and his casual approach to finances. When the case went to trial, Toronto sympathized with the vulnerable Carrie and her desperate attempt to protect herself from abuse. Certain newspapers weighing in on the crime emphasized her good character and suggested that the murder was justified: she was a young, vulnerable female protecting her honour in a difficult situation.

The jury didn’t meet for very long before deciding Carrie was not guilty. Even though she’d confessed to the murder, the courtroom was relieved to see her walk free. The judge himself was reportedly teary-eyed at the verdict. Carrie decided not to seek more employment in Toronto and instead left the city for the life of an Ontario farmer’s wife. She never told her children of her crime. 

Read more here:

https://torontoist.com/2013/02/historicist-a-massey-family-murder/

REPLICATING TO UNDERSTAND? A STANFORD UNIVERSITY APPROACH TO THE MUSEUM OBJECT

OBJECT OF THE WEEK

BY: ELEANOR HOWELL-CHRISTENSEN

Reproducing a priceless (or at least very valuable) museological object is usually synonymous with the term forgery. Reproducing for money is a time-old practice that's plagued the museological community for centuries: think of the Cerne Abbas Giant or the Holly Oak Pendant.  Yet a class at Stanford University is actually encouraging its students to reproduce historical objects, not to gain money but to gain more understanding.

'Things that you learn by doing are lessons that last for a lifetime,' says lecturer Kristen Haring, who teaches the Objects of History class at Stanford. Students replicate historical objects and then interact with them, allowing them to get a literally hands-on approach to the historical eras they're studying. The course uses a combination of modern approaches (think 3D printing) and traditional approaches (think potter's wheel) to explore various objects from the Stanford Collection.

The idea isn't completely new - I remember writing on papyrus in grade school to get a feel for Egyptian Hieroglyphics - but the Stanford course takes the concept to new heights. So what do you think? A fun way to engage with history, or a waste of time?

Check out the video here:

SKETCHBOOK + MUSEUM = MAGIC

OBJECT OF THE WEEK

BY: ELEANOR HOWELL

The view from where I sit: sketching at the ROM.

"Drawing in a sketchbook ... teaches first to look, and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover ... and it is then that inspiration might come."

- Le Corbusier, Architect -

Growing up in England just 60km away from central London, school trips to London museums were a frequent occurrence. You've all seen them, the school children flocking from gallery to gallery, exhibit to exhibit, each with a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other. I remember often having to answer a long list of questions or complete a museum scavenger hunt. As I progressed in the school system and was able to develop my interest in art with more advanced classes (I would eventually go on to complete an undergraduate degree in Studio Fine Art), more often than not the worksheets full of questions were replaced with sketchbooks. "You have two hours," my teacher would say, and we'd scatter in pursuit of interesting objects to draw or paintings to copy. The sketchbook is a lens through which to view a museum, and I'm going to convince you that the sketchbook is a very useful lens indeed.

Study of a replica of a Pachycephalosaurus skeleton.
 Drawn by Eleanor Howell-Christensen at the ROM on November 4th 2016.

Last week I set off to the ROM with sketchbook and pencil case in hand. I had a few free hours and I'd decided that as therapeutic change from assignments and readings I'd treat myself to some casual drawing. It had been a long time since I had had a proper sketchbook session at a museum or gallery, and the process reminded me what makes it such a positive experience. Here's why you should take a sketchbook with you on your next museum outing:

1) You actually have to LOOK at things.

There's no aimless wandering from room to room without actually taking in anything for the sketchbook-carrier. Being passive is not an option because you're there with a mission and the motivation to accomplish it. If you're guilty of sometimes feeling like you drift from exhibit to exhibit without really taking anything in, then the sketchbook is for you.

2) You have to REALLY look at things.

Once you've settled on your object of choice, you find yourself spending a lot of time just staring at it. What are those bumps there? What angle is the curve here? Where do the shadows fall?The Pachycephalosaurus cast is far from being the most jaw-dropping dinosaur skeleton at the ROM, and it's only actually a cast, so I'd imagine most people just walk on by without really paying it much attention - I mean, there's a T-Rex just a stone's throw away, so who can blame them? Yet after being sat in front of the Pachycephalosaurus for almost an hour, I felt like I knew it fairly well (at least, I knew it's neck vertebrae!). I really got to see the cast for what it was, rather than passing by like most others.

3) It's therapeutic.

One minute I was on busy Bloor Street, the next I was sat in a quiet corner of a gallery. My sketchbook forced me to go slow, take my time, give into a slightly indulgent activity.  You can put headphones in and listen to some music or a podcast while you draw, or you can take in the museum environment and absent-mindedly listen to the conversations taking place around you. Rushing through a museum is usually quite stressful; a sketchbook session can be like meditating.

4) It generates discussion.

In my experience taking my sketchbook to museums, people love to watch other people draw. It's true: they love it. I've been stopped many times to chat about what I'm doing and why, or to have someone simply say they like the drawing. Sometimes a person will express their thoughts on the object being drawn, or want to chat to me about what's brought me to the museum today. More often than not these are people I normally wouldn't have the chance to speak to: the sketchbook gets people talking about the drawing, about the object, about the museum, about anything really. At the very least, you'll be able to have a chuckle to yourself as people passing by try to pretend they're not peering nosily over your shoulder.

5) You don't have to be good at drawing.

Who are you showing the sketchbook to at the end of the day? There's no teacher grading your shading skills: when you get home you can keep that sketchbook locked up with a chain and padlock if you like (although I wouldn't recommend it). You're just drawing for you. Whether you're artistically inclined or not, you can have a good time doodling - if worst comes to worst and you feel like your drawing's a monstrosity, then there's always the next blank page.

Study of a Canadian Cup Coral.
 Drawn by Eleanor Howell-Christensen at the ROM on November 4th 2016.

There are no rules when it comes to the sketchbook, and it will certainly shake up your typical museum experience. If I've convinced you to start sharpening your pencils, then hooray and good luck! If, however, you still need a bit of convincing, then here are some great articles about the brilliance of the sketchbook in a museum setting:

The Globe and Mail: Why I Prefer to Travel with a Sketchbook Instead of a Camera
The Iris (Behind the Scenes at the Getty): Five Tips for Sketching at the Museum
Huffington Post: Museum 'Bans' Cameras and Asks Guests to Sketch Art Instead

Happy sketching!

A MATERIAL ANCHOR: PAPER SOUVENIRS

OBJECT OF THE WEEK

BY: ELEANOR HOWELL-CHRISTENSEN

A selection of the postcards and guides I've collected over the years from museum and gallery gift shops

When I was ten years old, my Dad and I hopped on a train from my small hometown in Hertfordshire, England and, half an hour later, hopped off at Kings Cross Station, London. We took the tube to Green Park and then walked the short distance down Piccadilly until we reached our destination: The Royal Academy of Arts. As excited as I was for the exhibition we were visiting, I was particularly looking forward to what was happening afterwards: a trip to Fortnum and Mason to eat smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches, then an hour's browse of the enormous toy store Hamleys. I loved to draw (which was why my art-enthusiast father had orchestrated this day trip) but how could Pre-Raphalite and other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection possibly compete with the stacks of Harry Potter merchandise at Hamleys?

Rather well, it turned out.

One of my most poignant childhood memories is stepping into one of the large rooms at the Royal Academy on that day in 2003 and being completely and utterly overwhelmed by what I saw. Gold-gilded frames, rich and vibrant colours, painting after painting of larger-than-life women with cascades of red or gold or black hair: my ten year old self, who had previously seen art as 'just being able to draw something well', was left awe-struck. She felt something that she'd never felt before: a connection to the paintings, a pull to the objects on display. Suddenly, art meant something different to her. The museum/gallery experience meant something different to her. This moment was important enough to that ten year old that she took home the free exhibition brochure and kept it, storing it safely as if it were treasure. 

That treasure (pictured in the selection above) has since been tacked to several different walls, both in England and in Canada. It's even been mounted and framed, dog-eared as it is, as a kind of emblem of memory and meaning. Since that experience at the Royal Academy, I've made a habit of collecting other such souvenirs from almost every art gallery or museum I've ever visited. I'll go into the gift shop and peruse the wall of postcards, spend the 0.75 dollars/pounds/euros on an image from the collection that particularly inspired me, and then I'll take that postcard home and keep it, sometimes in a box and sometimes on a wall. If I went to a specific exhibit I might even keep the guide too. I have postcards and guides from multiple museums, galleries, and exhibits in multiple countries, and they are some of my most loved possessions. 

Postcards for sale in the gift shop at the National Gallery of Art in London, UK (Source)

But why? Why do I invest so much emotionally in cheap pieces of card? They aren't particularly good representations of the art - I'd be much better off buying $60 prints that won't fade, that are bigger, that I can mount and frame. Gift shops offer hundreds of high quality items that might be 'better' souvenirs and yet, regardless of budget, I return to the postcard wall, I save the tattered brochure. Postcards and guides are the lasting memory capsules of my visit: they're ideas and inspiration and meaning that I can hold in my hand. They're 5x7 inches worth of experience that can be written on, passed from one person to another, slotted between the pages of a book or diary.  Walk into any major museum gift shop and you're almost guaranteed to see a whole wall of them for sale. A postcard is just a piece of card, and yet we buy it and collect it and display it because there is "the attachment of a narrative, describing the collector's experience to a material anchor", and it is this narrative that is "at the heart of the [postcard] souvenir's function" (Hume, 2013). 

We go to a museum or a gallery, we have an experience, and then we buy a postcard or keep the guide because we need a "material anchor" to hold onto that experience. This material anchor is no more than an image or two on a piece of paper, and yet anchor us it does: it represents a whole exhibition, a whole gallery, a whole idea, a whole experience. It becomes a cultural receipt, a record of a transaction of experiences. We keep the postcard for the same reason we keep a receipt: as evidence of an important occurrence that we'll want to revisit in the future. 

My postcard and brochure collection doesn't replace the many museum experiences it represents: it memorializes them. I've curated my own personal museum of memories and ideas in the form of inexpensive bits of paper and card. The collection tells a narrative of a cumulation of experiences, and each piece in the collection tells the story of one particular exhibit, one particular object. 

These cultural receipts and material anchors make up a story that I can read again and again - and so I do. 

References:

Hume, David. (2013). Tourism Art and Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism. New York: Routledge.