WALKER HOUSE KINCARDINE ca. 1850

A written guide to Kincardine’s oldest building and longest standing wooden hotel in Bruce & Grey Counties.
Be sure to check out our TOURS to see how you can explore this beautiful building and experience local history in person.

North Room
This section of the Walker House was built fifteen years after the main portion of the house was constructed. It allowed the Walker family to expand their hotel business. They added 8 more rooms upstairs and six more rooms in this space. Today this section has been kept as an open space in the museum to allow our community to use it for various events such as weddings, baby showers, lectures, wakes, parties, or exhibitions.

Kitchen
The historic kitchen was used by the Walker family and Marie Gairns to make the meals for the guests of the hotel and later the boarders when it operated as a rooming home. There are many original artifacts from the Walker family and Marie Gairns in this room. 
These include an ice box that was made in Owen Sound, our neighbouring community, used in the Walker House before refrigeration was available, as well as a pink cabinet that was saved from the fire in 1995 which Marie Gairns used to store her dishware and dry goods.

Walker Apartment
This area of the house was used by the Walker family as their private residence when the hotel was first built in 1850. It is believed that all nine members of the family would have stayed here for at least the first year while the hotel was becoming established. The floor in this section of the house is original to the 1850’s and was saved from the fire. Scorching can be seen on the wood around the nails when they were heated from the flames. The dark couch and matching chair are original pieces of furniture that were brought with the Walker family from Sligo Ireland in 1850. 

Paddy’s Bedroom: In the bedroom portion of the apartment, the bed and dresser are both original to Paddy Walker. Both pieces were saved from the fire in 1995. 

Bathroom: This would originally have been another bedroom. It is now presented as a bathroom to showcase the changing plumbing technologies available to Kincardine over the 19^th and 20^th centuries. When the Walker House was first built in 1850 there was no plumbing or running water available. Each of the hotel rooms would have had a chamber pot and there was also an outhouse that gusts would use.  

Military and Medical Room 
Originally this space was one of the hotel rooms. Today it showcases the medical and military history of Kincardine and Bruce County. 
The medical portion of the display highlights the life of Doctor Solomon Secord, a physician who served the community from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s and who also served in the Civil War as a surgeon on the Confederate side. Medical equipment used in Kincardine from the 19^th to 20^th centuries is featured in this room. 
The military portion of the exhibit explains Kincardine’s military history. There a large photograph of the 160^th Bruce Battalion is on display. This battalion was made up of young men from Bruce County who served during the First World War, also pictured are Kincardine’s fallen, the ones that didn’t make it home again. 

Upper-class Bedroom 
This section of the house used to be two separate hotel rooms; however, it was decided to combine the two rooms into one room to showcase some larger furniture that would have been available to the upper-class residents of Kincardine in the Victorian period. 
Also on display are many artifacts that relate to women in the Victorian era. This includes a pair of ornate hatpins which were used to fasten large fashionable hats to the well-done-up hair of ladies during this period. These also had another important purpose as many women would use hat pins as a means of self-defence. Eventually, the hat pin became a symbol for suffragists held up as proof that women were capable and should be deserving of the right to protect themselves and the right to vote.

Industry Room
This section of the house was a hotel room but now displays the various changing industries operating in Kincardine from the 18^th century up to the modern day. 
Learn about the importance of Kincardine’s Harbour as a hub for industry, about the Andrew Malcolm and Coombe furniture companies, and the emergence of Douglas Point which later became Bruce Power. See how these changing industries have made and shaped Kincardine’s community over time. 

Fashion Room 
This once-hotel room now holds a collection of wedding dresses worn by different Kincardine residents over different periods. In this room, you can see how styles changed over the 19^th and 20^th centuries for both men and women.

Textile Room 
This room of the house was once a hotel room but now shows the various work and crafts that were going on in the average home in Kincardine over the 19^th and 20th centuries.
One display is one of the oldest quilts in the Walker House Museum collection dating from 1892 as well as a singer sewing machine from the 1920s. learn about the work required to run an early Canadian household. 

Heritage Room
This once-hotel room displays a large collection of photographs of Kincardine created by John Scougall. Scougall was a bank teller who lived in Kincardine from 1874 till his passing in 1922. He was an avid photographer and took pictures that captured many different aspects of life in Kincardine during this period. These include family life, dress, recreational activities, events, industry as well as the architecture of the time. 
Through his work, one can get a glimpse of what life was like in Kincardine during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.