Huron Village

Huronia Museum Request for volunteers: Huronia Museum needs a few good volunteers with or without their own cordless drills to help safely store its recently received shipment of organic elm bark from Cornwall, Ontario. The elm bark must be quickly mounted to plywood to prevent mold and curling from starting so it can finally be used in the rebuild of the longhouse that was lost to a tragic fire in May of 2007. If you or anyone you know has some time this week or next to help out the museum with mounting the bark to plywood, building drying racks or helping to move it from delivery trailer to the village, please call the museum’s Maintenance Manager, Calvin Watts, at the Huronia Museum at 705-526-2844. The museum really needs just a few good volunteers to make sure this shipment gets moved quickly and dries properly so moisture doesn’t ruin the materials before we even get to build the longhouse!

History

On July 1st 1947, the Huronia Museum first opened in a large wooden frame building that had been the family residence of James Playfair 1860-1937, a prominent Midland businessman. The current museum building was Midland’s Canada Centennial project and officially opened on July 1st 1967 in Little Lake Park adjacent to the Huron/Ouendat (Wendat) Village.

Exhibits

In 1976, the Historic Art of Huronia Gallery in the museum building opened and presently displays art by David Milne, Homer Watson, Manly MacDonald, Franklin Arbuckle, Hilton Hassell, Mary Hallen (Victorian era watercolours), William J. Wood, Thor Hansen, Group of Seven artists (A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, J. E. H. MacDonald) along with contemporary art, native art and archaelogical collections of Ouendat and Ojibway First Nations. Other exhibits are about Georgian Bay lighthouses, shipwrecks, maritime and military heritage. There is also an extensive photographic collection of the work of Midland’s long-time professional photographer, John W. Bald.

The Huron Village represents what Huron life was like between AD 1500-1600, just prior to the arrival of Europeans. The village has the following components: shaman’s lodge, wigwam, masks, fish racks, longhouse, sweat lodge, corn field, bone pit, fur drying rack, burial rack. The Huron Village was created by W. Wilfrid Jury (1890-1981), Director of the Indian Archaeology and Pioneer Life at the University of Western Ontario in London. The village is modelled on Jury’s work on the excavation of the pre-contact Forget site near Midland. The village originally opened in 1956. In May 2007, a fire destroyed part of the village. Reconstruction is underway, and the village is now open to the public.