Positioning Canada's Historic Gardens

Parkwood has embarked on a project to showcase Ontario’s historic gardens in 2012 – with the aim of promoting collaboration amongst these gardens and capitalizing on new tourism investment opportunities. 

Parkwood's Blooming Buddies
Garden Club hard at work

As far as we know it’s the first venture of its kind, and it’s creating both real excitement and splitting headaches for us.  We believe historic gardens are well-positioned to take advantage of new government investment in tourism and to capitalize on contemporary consumer trends for authentic experiences, gardening, food safety and culinary history, heirloom plants, etc.   We also want to encourage visitors, stakeholders and supporters to embrace heritage conservation as a green investment.

Through our work with the Ontario Garden Tourism Coalition and the National Historic Sites Alliance for Ontario, our project partners, we know that historic gardens fly way under the tourism radar and make too few appearances on “bucket lists”.  For many gardens, their stories often play second fiddle to the buildings or events that hog all the attention and they are seldom promoted for their own worth as historic and horticultural resources.



Historic Garden Workshop
March 2011



From a day-long workshop we hosted earlier this year for Ontario’s Historic Gardens, we learned that there was great enthusiasm for increased communications and collaboration amongst the garden operators and programmers, but that we lacked an agenda or organization to provide the rallying point. 

There were two outcomes from that event:  Parkwood began to compile an inventory of Ontario’s historic gardens and;  we secured grant funding to support a showcase event or week, around the historic themes and geographic links expected to emerge from the inventory.   Parkwood will have a starring role of course!

OK, a little too ambitious perhaps and the headaches should have been obvious, but we had to start somewhere.    Beyond the better-known historic gardens it has not been easy to identify likely sites, and then to coerce/cajole the owner or operator into providing useable information.  To be fair, most of us are highly overworked and highly resentful of filling out questionnaires.

On the other hand, the identification process has led to exploration of what constitutes an historic garden and who defines.  Where do cemeteries, forts, spiritual or cultural landscapes fit in?   Can we fairly present the evolution of garden practices in
Ontario - from aboriginal, through settlement and survival to the highly-designed gardens of the 20^th century wealthy?  

Did we mention that Will & Kate’s first royal visit to North America began at the historic gardens of Rideau Hall, the residence of Canada’s Governor General? 

The thematic possibilities look fantastic, but a bit overwhelming as we attempt to group and distil it all into sexy visitor offerings and travel itineraries.  We have definitely entered “What were we thinking?” territory, but stay tuned...

Artefact & Archival Donations to Parkwood

Parkwood does not solicit artefact or archival donations. However, once in a while there is a real gem among the several calls we receive in a week about a carriage found in a barn or a Parkwood Christmas card found at auction or even perhaps an early McLaughlin Canada Dry store front sign.
Many of the items in our secondary collection come from artefact & archival donations made by the general public and McLaughlin family members to Parkwood. These items are referenced as secondary collection items because they are not original to the house or are not items that actually belonged to the McLaughlin's who lived at Parkwood, but assist us in telling the story of Sam and Adelaide McLaughlin and the history of the estate.

Saying that, I should reference that in the 12 years I have been at Parkwood, an item has come home to the estate that is part of the primary collection and is designated as so, since it was returned by a family member who was bequeathed the item when Adelaide McLaughlin passed away.

This week we have had two marvellous donations to our secondary collection, each arriving under very different circumstances. Those of you that follow our blog know that we recently lost Philip Jackson, widower of Diana Phillips Jackson, grand-daughter of Sam and Adelaide. The Jackson estate bequeathed a gorgeous oil on canvas portrait of Eileen McLaughlin Phillips McEachern painted in 1929. Eileen is in her equestrian gear, one of her passions in life, and is a stunning example of society portraiture in the 20th century.

The second donation to the archives is a marvellous bit of fate. A woman named Frances C  from Swift Current called General Motors information line about a 1939 brochure she had been saving which referenced the Royal Visit and the custom made McLaughlin Buicks for the Royals to travel in while in Canada. The operator at General Motors Canada was quick enough to think of us, rather then just get rid of Frances (GM as a corporation is in the car business not history) and called the museum to see if we would like to chat with Frances about her fantastic keepsake, hidden away in one of her drawers.

We certainly did and the parcel arrived this morning with a fantastic reference to the Royal Tour, General Motors, McLaughlin Buick and Oshawa, Ontario. Already the brochure has captured the attention of our PhD student Amanda, and is something she will be able to use in her thesis and is something we will actively be working with in our WWII story with the Gr. 10 History students from Fr. Austin in Whitby.

Thank you to the operator who was quick to think of Parkwood. Thank you Frances C of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, for saving a wonderful piece of Canadian history!

Adelaide McLaughlin

Adelaide c.1949

When we discuss Adelaide McLaughlin, the image that ones mind conjures is like the photograph to the right. A grandmotherly figure, who was genteel, warm and full of class and decorum. Of course, Mrs. McLaughlin was all those things, but there is another side to her, one that many people do not think about while on tour or while participating in our programs.

Like everyone, Adelaide was once young. A farm girl who grew up in Brougham, Ontario, she went to Normal School in Ottawa and became a teacher. Her first, and last teaching placement was at Sinclair School in Whitby and the only known remaining photo Parkwood has of those days is the one attached below, courtesy of the Whitby Archives.
The photo, dated June 11, 1896, is of Miss Adelaide Mowbray's class.

Adelaide McLaughlin third from left

Many know the McLaughlin courtship story; Sam McLaughlin was out for a Sunday bike ride, attended church service with relatives and spied the future Mrs. McLaughlin singing in the church choir. Three chaperoned buggy rides later, the two were engaged and eventually married on February 2, 1898. There are no wedding photos of Sam and Adelaide's wedding, but the earliest portrait we have of Mrs. McLaughlin is the one to the right.

Adelaide c.1898

Five daughters, the McLaughlin Buick, and the McLaughlin Chevrolet later, Adelaide McLaughlin was entertaining statesmen and the aristocracy at Parkwood, shortly followed by the creation of General Motors and the who's who of business that started to come through the doors of her home.

Edwardian Adelaide

Mrs.McLaughlin became society hostess, philanthropist and community activist in her own right, and has some wonderful stories of her own. Stories that Parkwood will be sharing from time to time on this blog.

The first myth to dis-spell is the myth of teatotaller Adelaide.

There is a McLaughlin Family story about Sam and Adelaide returning to

Oshawa after a holiday in France in the early 1920s when they had been gifted with a crate of wine from a vineyard owner. While heading into New York harbour, the McLaughlins' realised that that due to prohibition being in full effect in the United States, they would not be able to travel through the country with their wine. Mrs. McLaughlin cleverly rolled each bottle of wine in her corsets, and under garments before packing her luggage, smuggling the "contraband" over the  border and home to the Parkwood wine cellar.

We also have some wonderful oral histories from the former servants' about Mrs. McLaughlin carrying trays of lemonade out to the gardens on those hot & humid days in August to provide the staff with a short, cool reprieve from the heat, or the collection of pickled bean recipes that she was famous for making and delivering to family and friends in the community.

1948 The McLaughlin's 50th Wedding Anniversary

Finally, Sam's nickname for Adelaide was Always Late Mowbray, a play on her name Adelaide Louise Mowbray, but he admitted that it was one of his pet peeves about his spouse, since she always seemed to keep him waiting when they were trying to get ready for an evening out.