On the afternoon of Sunday August 3rd, 2025, a number of members of the Historical Society of Ottawa’s Museum Club, along with several members of the Cumberland Township Historical Society, enjoyed a peaceful stroll through a village magically trapped in the 1920s. This village, the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum, located at 2940 Old Montreal Rd, Cumberland, ON K4C 1G3, features about two dozen buildings placed in a beautiful parkland setting. Unlike many living history museums that place themselves in a pioneer or settler timeframe, the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum represents…

Thursday, July 24th, 2025 dawned sunny and hot as our Museum Club undertook its walking tour of Sandy Hill and its guided tour of Laurier House. In response to the extreme heat predicted for the day, our organizer, Callie Foster, a summer co-op student, and our walking tour lead, Ben Weiss, had arranged to split the group offering a walking tour both before and after the Laurier House tour, so some of our participants could avoid the hottest part of the morning, if they chose to do so. As such,…

Given rising international tensions, sixteen members of the Historical Society of Ottawa’s Museum Club sought shelter in the Diefenbunker, Canada’s Cold War Museum, on the afternoon of Sunday, June 29th, 2025. Our guide informed us that the facility had been commissioned by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1959, though he never visited it, and that it became fully operational in 1962. Designed to protect 535 senior government and military officials, all men, it could survive a blast from a 5-megaton atomic bomb at a distance of 1.8 km. A full-scale…

Let’s hear your stories about Bytown and the Rideau Canal as we begin to mark 2026, the 200th anniversary of the beginning of both! All contributions are welcome. Selected submissions will be shared on a special webpage on the HSO website for all to access, including educators. Eligible contributions can be submitted in a variety of formats, including written or audio/video. We request that submissions be received by November 30, 2025. We hope to also incorporate selected contributions into the HSO’s many other platforms – such as the HSO blog,…