Whitehern House, Hamilton

I’ll take any chance I can get for trips outside the city. Since leaving Montreal and giving up my car, it isn’t as easy to run away on a whim for the day. This week though, Kira left me her car while she flew off to visit her fiance for ten days in Chicago, and I took full advantage of it. On Saturday, Alex and I drove out to Hamilton to do some thrifting for the shop (we’re really excited about our next few shop updates!), and while we were there we took the opportunity to check out Whitehern and take some pictures. There’s a place in Dundas (allegedly haunted) that we were hoping to get to, but the weather was spotty, and we were on a schedule, so we stayed close – maybe next time.

Whitehern was home to the McQuesten family, a fairly influential Victorian family in terms of industrial development in the area. There’s a great family history here, with links to all the children and what they did with their lives, as well as some pretty amazing bits of letters between the family members. My favourites are the ones from the Mother, who sounds like she was pretty sassy. The house itself is open for viewing, and from what I read, it still contains a lot of their original belongings. As usual, I went on a day when it was closed, so we weren’t able to get inside to visit, but it looks like it might be worth a tour.