travel dates: June/July, 2024
Dragging my family to living history sites is something of a hobby for me, so of course Upper Canada Village was on our itinerary. Upper Canada Village bills itself as one of the largest living history sites in Canada and says it aims to “depict life in a rural English Canadian setting during the year 1866.” It is indeed a large site, with over 40 buildings and extra things to do like boat and wagon rides.
I was fully prepared to love Upper Canada Village, and yet I must sadly report that it fell a little flat for us. I think this is largely because our experience with the interpreters there was so…uneven. Some of them were great and others seemed kind of annoyed that we were there. It was awkward! I also would have liked to see more organized programming maybe? We’ve been to historic sites with very full schedules of shows and presentations, which is great for adding some structure to your day (and, frankly, kind of essential when the interpreters don’t seem interested in talking to you in a lot of the buildings). We’ve also been to places with lots of hands-on activities for kids (or adults!) in the assorted buildings and/or children’s programming like interactive games or scavenger hunts. Upper Canada Village had tons of…stuff…but the presentation wasn’t our favorite and left it, sadly, fairly low ranking on our living history sites list. But also maybe we hit it on a bad day! A lot of people love it! Anyway. As it was, we had planned to spend an afternoon here and then come back for another full day, but after that first afternoon we decided we’d gotten our fill. 
We had a very short drive this morning from Kingston to our campground near Upper Canada Village (and we could check in whenever we wanted because we’d had to book 3 nights for the holiday weekend so that our reservation actually started the night before), so we got all set up at the campground and made it to Upper Canada Village by around 1, giving us 4 hours to explore before they closed. We had free admission because it was included with our Fort Henry tickets from a few days before, but otherwise we would have paid $80 CAD for our family (2 adults and up to 3 children/students).
When we looked at the info they gave us when we got there, we realized that it was just about time for a performance by The Travelling Tiltons, so we hurried right over. It was early in the season, so this performance wasn’t exactly…polished, but it was extremely energetic (and have us unrealistically inflated hopes about the enthusiasm of the people working elsewhere in the village):
Next we wandered off toward the water and stopped in at the tin shop:
The tin smith was not exactly excited to see us. He didn’t acknowledge us when we walked in and when Dave asked the guy what he was working on, he looked at him like he was an idiot and said, “hooks.” He did not elaborate and gave monosyllabic answers to further questions. I appreciate that Dave is always willing to ask questions at such places, because I’m so nervous about getting a response like we got from this guy that I usually don’t initiate conversation. Anyway, we didn’t hang out there long.
Our schedule told us that fresh bread was being made at the bakery any second now, so we headed that way. Only to find no signs of bread baking whatsoever and a baker who was no more interested in talking about his job than the tin smith had been.
I should say that we might well have had a better experience if we’d just gone in a different order, as we had better experiences from here on out. Although things were still rather hit or miss: some interpreters seemed ready with a little spiel about their particular building or job and eager to answer questions; others were just kind of…there.
At any rate, we wandered all over, and I think we went in nearly every building. The big brick house in the middle hosts museum-type exhibits (there’s also a museum in the visitors center, but we ended up not having time to tour it):
There was a very popular milking demonstration in the barn, and Abe and Dave took advantage of the chance to milk a cow:
These pigs were very stinky but very cute:
We took a wagon ride around the village and then took in the last horse-drawn canal boat trip of the day (it was very sunny):
We finished up at this mill, where the people inside could have talked for forever, in contrast to, say, the tin smith. But by then Abe was pretty much done for the day, so we had to take off with a still slightly incomplete knowledge of the history of milling in Upper Canada.
Deciding not to go back to Upper Canada Village the following day meant we suddenly had a free day to play around with, so we drove over to check out the trails at the Upper Canada Migratory Bird Sanctuary. This was also Canada Day! We did a short walk at the bird sanctuary, did laundry, and went grocery shopping. So not the most exciting Canada Day ever (that would be our first Canada Day in Canada, when we were in Halifax. We walked the boardwalk at the bird sanctuary, where we learned that 99% of the birds that find sanctuary here appear to be red-winged blackbirds. Fortunately, red-winged blackbirds are pretty great birds. Then we tried another trail, but found it a little too muddy to make much progress on.
Upper Canada Campground
We considered two different campgrounds in the area: Upper Canada and one at the aforementioned bird sanctuary. It was tricky because of the holiday: both campgrounds required a 3 night minimum (I’m pretty sure) when we only wanted 2 nights. I have just consulted my text chain with Dave to remember how this all went down, and I’ve gleaned that we were leaning toward the bird sanctuary, but they took so long to open reservations up that I got nervous and booked Upper Canada in late January…and got the last available site! Phew!
In light of this, I’m surprised at how relatively nice our site was. The campground was packed for the holiday, and it felt very crowded overall, with extra cars all over the place…but our site was easy to back into and seemed more spacious, with a bigger yard than most of the sites. 
Our row completely cleared out the next morning when the long weekend was over. Anyway, we were happy enough with the campground: it was big and bustling, with lots of kids running around, lots of seasonal campers. Lots of amenities: two pools, a rec hall (that had bingo one day), big open areas for kids to play. There were pay showers, but they were nice ones and only $1 CAD for 5 minutes. Dave didn’t like that traffic coming in and out had to go through the same gate. And there was always a back-up at the dump station, but, again…very full campground on a holiday weekend.
And that’s about it for our Upper Canada time! Next up is Ottawa; in the mean time I’ll leave you with cute pictures of a boy and his terrier:
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