Mackenzie House is a historic building and museum in Toronto, Canada that was the last home of William Lyon Mackenzie, the city's first mayor.
Mackenzie was forced into exile in the United States after having led the Rebellion of 1837. He returned to the newly-created Province of Canada in 1850, and died in this house in 1861. Mackenzie House is purportedly haunted by William Mackenzie, allegedly seen working his printing press. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell discovered many of the reported ghost activities were due to the activities of the late night clean up crew.
The neighbouring row houses were demolished in 1936, while Mackenzie's grandson, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was Prime Minister. However, this house was saved because of its historical significance. Designed in the Georgian architecture style, today the house serves as a municipally-run historic house museum about 1860s Victorian life.
An interesting addition to the grounds are the side panels of the Memorial Arch that once stood at the foot of the Honeymoon Bridge in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Built in 1930s, the arch was demolished in 1960s and the panels stored until it was moved to Toronto in 1974. It is installed in an area next to the historic home.
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Emanuel Hahn's "Mackenzie Panels" (1938) in the garden of Mackenzie House. The panel shows William Lyon Mackenzie presenting his historic Seventh Report of Grievances to the House of Assembly of Upper Canada.
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Emanuel Hahn's Memorial to Samuel Lount at Mackenzie House. Names of those executed during the repression that followed defeat of the rebellion appear on one of the panels, as do profiles of the two rebels who met their death on the scaffold in Toronto, Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews.
Read more about Mackenzie House: Affiliations
Famous quotes containing the words mackenzie and/or house:
“People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater.”
—Kenneth MacKenzie Clark, Baron of Saltwood (1903–1983)
“Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us—that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions—they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate ...”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)