The Paris Museum &
Historical Society

About the Paris Museum and Historical Society

The Paris Museum and Historical Society (PMHS) was founded in 1972 by a small group of heritage-minded residents. Today we are incorporated and are a registered charity. Our mission is to collect, preserve and make accessible the rich cultural heritage of Paris and surrounding area through exhibits and research materials. We are the only organization in the province to house an archive, a museum and a historical society, all under one roof.

We are affiliated with the Ontario Historical Society and belong to a number of other professional associations, including the Ontario Museum Association, The Brant Museum and Art Gallery Association, and the Archives Association of Ontario.

Our museum houses a research room, warehouse and storage facility, an exhibition hall and a gift shop which includes works by many local artists and artisans. Our collection comprises over 40,000 objects and archival documents such as fine art, land documents, photographs, maps, family histories, extensive files on local buildings and businesses and many other historical documents and artifacts. We have microfilm of local newspapers from the 1880s onward and bound original newspapers to 2010. Thanks to generous donations we have digitized our microfilm collection and are updating our collection methods.

We enjoy collaborating with a variety of community partners. We have contributed to the County of Brant Public Library digital online collection and take part in their county-wide history lectures. We also create historical displays for various County of Brant tourism events and for the Paris Agricultural Society. We provide historical research to various county departments and committees. Our outreach program includes presentations and tours for local seniors’ homes, local groups and social clubs. We host hundreds of local and international visitors to our museum every year.

Our organization is entirely run by volunteers who range in age from 16 to 86. In 2017 our volunteers logged over 4,000 onsite hours and countless hours in their homes and out in the community. We know that Paris’ heritage could very well be lost without their tireless efforts.

- Stephanie Pile

History of the Paris Museum and Historical Society

Regionalization loomed over Paris in 1972. Late that year, the mayor and nine far-sighted volunteers gathered in Fred Bemrose's living room. Their purpose was to create the Paris Museum and Historical Society.

They feared the Paris library would soon lose its collection of historic documents; letters of the village founder Hiram Capron, pre-Confederation photos, original maps and irreplaceable records. They wanted to safeguard the town's heritage before it was lumped together with other archival material in a centralized regional library.

At the time, Paris was a tightly-knit rural community of 6,500 with a strong sense of its own history. Life was slower then. People read newspapers, wrote letters and met at church, the library and community events.

Bemrose, a salesman for Penman's Textiles, was joined that afternoon by Donald A. Smith, a respected local historian and principal of the high school, along with his wife Isobel; Jack Pickell editor of the Paris Star, along with his wife Muriel, Jackie Remus, an avid guardian of Paris's identity, a couple of town councillors and several members of the library board.

They purchased the entire collection from the library for $1.00. To help them get started, the library allowed the fledgling museum to use its lower level (now the children's department) for its collection.

The Paris Museum and Historical Society held its first general meeting and public exhibit the following year. Donald Smith, its president, brought along a brass bell used by three generations of school principals to summon students to classes. He told the 125 townsfolk in attendance the new museum would be a permanent, non-profit institution open to the people of Paris. It would encourage research into the history of the town and the surrounding area.

Bemrose, the museum's founding curator, was already busy acquiring antiques and artifacts to supplement the library's donation. He arranged to store them in the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) basement on Dundas Street.

As its first major project, the museum built a float for Brantford's 1974 "Thanks A Hundred" parade. It highlighted the 100th anniversary of the year Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

In 1978, the board decided to open up PMHS to new members. Many of the initial members were archivists from the library. The fee was $2. Eight years later, it was raised to $5.

Before long, both the lower floor of the library and the PUC basement were bulging. Bemrose and his colleagues were inveterate collectors. Unbeknownst to the board, Bemrose often stored pieces of the museum's collection in his basement and friends' barns and garages. He was very protective of the town's treasures.

Over the next two decades, PMHS moved every few years to accommodate its ever-growing collection. In 1990, Bemrose convinced Paris council to let the museum display the town's historical artifacts in 10 lit glass cases surrounding the council chamber. The cases are still there, filled with photos and records documenting the past.

The next year he persuaded the board to erect a $40,000 cairn to commemorate the village's founders. It can still be seen at 61 Dundas Street East.

The display cases at town hall provided excellent political exposure and allowed the museum to expand beyond the library basement. But when the library donated another large swath of historical documents to the museum, more space had to be found. PMHS arranged with the library to have an office and storage space on the library's upper floor. This shone a public light on the wealth of information the museum had and attracted new volunteers and members.

Meanwhile, Public Utilities wanted its facility on Dundas Street back. On a cold November morning, a small group of volunteers moved all the shelves, boxes and artifacts to a new site on Woodslee Avenue. Shortly after everything was transferred, a fierce storm blew through Paris. It snowed all afternoon and into the night.

Three months later a pipe broke in the Dundas Street PUC basement that PMHS had recently vacated. By the time the leak was discovered, it was flooded to the rafters. Had the voluntary moving crew waited till spring, hundreds of the museum's irreplaceable artifacts would have been ruined.

In 1999, the town of Paris ceased to exist as an independent municipality. By that time, it had grown into a town of 12,310. Under regionalization, the Paris library became a branch of the County of Brant Library.

That same year, Fred Bemrose, then 83, retired as curator. Bob Hasler succeeded Bemrose as curator, a position he still holds.

The early years of the 21st century were a period of experimentation and creativity, thanks in part to a $140,000 endowment from a generous benefactor. Many of the museum's traditions date back to that period: its annual volunteers' reception, its summer walking tours and its "show and tell" at which heirlooms are evaluated.

In 2004, hoping to consolidate everything in one place, the board decided to rent a building at 15 Curtis Avenue North. It hired a part-time curator, Lana Jobe, to organize its sprawling collection. It held training sessions for volunteers. It collaborated with outside organizations -- Beaver Magazine and CBC -- to tell local stories. It developed a logo and a Paris colouring book.

These initiatives ate into the endowment. By 2010, the rent on the Curtis Street building was sucking the non-profit organization dry. "We almost went bankrupt," Hasler recalled.

But a core of civic-minded Parisians refused to the let museum go under. They organized a capital campaign, went to the mayor and council for help and found a rent-free location at the Syl Apps Community Centre. "We started to pull together and work as a team," Hasler recalled. In 2011, the museum moved to its current location at 51 William Street.

A period of retrenchment began. PMHS began tracking its spending rigorously. It turned down projects and proposals it could not afford. In 2014, the board told Lana Jobe it could no longer pay her. After her departure, a plea was sent out to former volunteers to come back and help.

Gradually, the museum worked its way into the black. It developed a productive working relationship with the county. It culled its collection and created an easy-to-search digital record of its holdings. Thanks to several generous donors, it was able to invest in new technology and training.

In 2016, the museum opened a gift shop featuring crafts by local artisans. In 2017, it held its first community garage sale and found new ways to raise funds.

In 2017 PMHS marked its 45th anniversary. We look back on our development with pride and look forward to finding creative ways to showcase the heritage of Paris, forging partnerships with other local organizations, contributing to our community and welcoming many more visitors.

- Carol Goar

- The following is an expanded version of a speech made by John Bemrose on February 28, 2016, at the dedication of the Fred Bemrose Reading Room. Fred was the founding curator of the Paris Museum and Historical Society.

I'd like to thank you all for the gracious way you've honoured my father. Reading was a passion of Fred's from boyhood, and to have this reading room named after him would have pleased him immensely -- just as it pleased him to visit the museum during the last years of his life, to be welcomed so warmly here, and to see the really superb care you've taken of the collection.

I've been asked to say a few words about what drew Fred to the history of Paris. When he was young, he had an ambition to become a high school history teacher -- an ambition that ended when the Depression forced him to quit school and go to work for Penman's. The love of history stayed with him -- he always had a book on the go -- but over the years, it changed. Some time in middle age, he realized that the subject that interested him most wasn't ancient Greece or even the history of Canada -- it was Paris. I think the main catalyst for this discovery was the publication of At The Forks of the Grand, written by his old teacher, Don Smith. The book generated a great deal of excitement when it appeared in 1956. Dad read it with great interest, and so did I, a boy of nine. It put a kind of romance into the town. It deepened our experience of the place, and is still the best single sourcebook of our history. From The Forks of the Grand, it was but a small step for Fred to understand he had his own contributions to make. Unlike Don, Fred was born here and spent his entire life here: he knew things Don didn't. In other words, he realized that he himself, like many other old-timers, was local history. And he wanted people to know that history. He wanted people to never forget how it once had been.

In the course of his long life, Fred lived in various neighborhoods around town, absorbing the unique qualities of each. He was born in 1916, in the Upper Town, at number 16 on what is now called Mount Elgin Street. A few years before, his parents had arrived from Nottingham, part of the great influx of English who came to work in Penman's mills. A little later the family moved down the hill to 26 Burwell. One of his favourite boyhood memories involved that house. When he was about six, the Dumbells, the famous Canadian vaudeville troupe that originated in the trenches of World War One, chose his mother to play the piano for them when they performed in Paris. They rehearsed in the Bemroses' front parlour. The Dumbells included several female impersonators and I've always wondered what young Fred made of all the cross-dressing -- regrettably, as with so many things, I never thought to ask him.

In the 1920's the family moved to an old plaster and lath house at 32 Mechanic on Coney Island. Most of Fred's boyhood was spent here, and years later his most entertaining stories told of that little neighborhood with its characters, its chivarees, its truly alarming floods. He learned to swim below the gates of the Wincey Race, played hockey above the Wincey and Penman's dams, hung around Bill Hick's forge, roamed with his friends through Barker's Bush, out to the favourite swimming holes at First and Second Clay. When his mother played at the Capitol Theatre for the silent movies, he used to get in for free by faking an urgent need to speak to her -- a ruse the manager kindly tolerated. He saw hundreds of films that way and became something of a child connoisseur, favouring Tom Mix over Fred Thomson, Buster Keaton over Charlie Chaplin.

When he was thirteen, Fred and his pal, Harry Peel, went to work for Bill Pebberdy on his farm in the oxbow of the Nith River, on the northwest edge of town. On one memorable occasion, they helped Bill drive his cattle across the river and up West River to the railway stockyard, chasing them out of gardens and porches along the way. This farm, which had originally been created by Hiram Capron, figured very large in Fred's memory and imagination right to the end. While he could still walk with me -- that is, into his 98th year -- he most often chose to walk there, over the bridge to the Lion's Park and north along the river, following the oxbow into Barker's Bush where he'd spent so many happy hours as a boy.

As a young teenager, Fred took up the cornet under the tutelage of Walter Williams Senior. Eventually he became lead trumpet and soloist at a time when it was associated with the 10th Brant Dragoons. During the war, the band often entertained troops at Niagara-on-the-Lake: it was as close to the war as Fred would get. In 1939, he tried, twice, to join the army, but was turned down both times on account of a heart murmur.

Fred carried that disappointment all his life, though it he rarely spoke of it. Yet the army's loss was Paris's gain, for he put particular effort into preserving the town's military past -- a kind of atonement, I think, for his enforced absence from the war. He spent hundred of hours and quite a bit of his own money on a unique project: finding a picture of every Parisian who had served in the century's wars. Today those photos make up one of the Museum's most cherished assets.

Fred didn't just collect things, of course. He wrote articles, spoke to countless schoolchildren, took visitors on tours of the town, researched ancestors for anyone who asked, and put up displays, most notably his annual Remembrance Day display at the Legion. He seemed inexhaustible, yet by his early nineties dementia was starting to declare itself. Names and dates slipped away, to his endless frustration. Yet there good times, too. When I visited him in those last years, I would often find him in his bathrobe, in his basement workroom with its boxes piled to the ceiling, bent over some photo or document he'd forgotten he had, delighted with his discovery.

After his family and friends, the town was the love of his life. He was haunted not only by its past, but by the unforgettable presence of the place itself. "The rivers, the hills, how it all comes together," he said once, gesturing towards the forks, a little frustrated, perhaps, that he couldn't make himself clearer. I think he suspected that all the facts he exhumed, all the walks he went on, all the pictures he collected or took himself, could never entirely capture what he loved most deeply about Paris. But he kept trying -- for over forty years he kept trying. I think we can all feel fortunate that he did. Thank you.

Our Board Members

• Miranda Siklenka, Chair

  Miranda works as a teacher in Hamilton. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Classics with research specialization in archaeology. She has worked in several museums in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia and has completed courses in collections management. She is delighted to contribute her experience to the preservation of the history of Paris. Miranda is also an archaeological illustrator with drawings featured in publications based in Italy, Denmark and Canada, and is affiliated with excavation projects in Italy and Jordan. She resides in Paris and is an artist outside of her work at PMHS and teaching career.

• Judy Moore, Vice Chair

  Born and raised in the Junction, Judy was a teacher for 30+ years in the Grand Erie District School Board before retiring. She recently completed an honours degree in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Laurier University. Judy has been busy volunteering at the museum photographing artifacts and helping with data input. She values the history of Paris and considers it an honour to be able to assist in preserving it.

• Marie Williamson, Treasurer

  Marie was born and raised in Paris and attended Brantford Business College. Her first job was at Penmans head office. Her husband also from Paris was in the RCAF for 25 years and they lived across Canada and in Germany. Returning to Paris in retirement, Marie volunteered in 2000 as Treasurer and has been volunteering ever since. Marie also leads walking tours of Upper Town during the summer months.

• Tina Lyon

  Tina came back to Paris in 1999 after living in the US for a number of years. Her father was in the Armed Forces so the family moved several times across Canada and Europe. In her later years Tina held a variety of positions from Ambulance Attendant to Executive Assistant. She owned her own equipment company. When she returned to Paris Tina volunteered at the Paris Performers' Theatre, North Ward School and finally found her home at the Paris Museum and Historical Society. Tina began her work at the museum cataloguing artifacts, doing data entry and other archival jobs. In late 2019 she took the reins as Curator. In her spare time Tina is working toward a Certificate in Museum Studies.

• Patti Gladding

  Patti graduated from the University of Waterloo majoring in Sociology. She then attended teacher education at Althouse College. Now happily retired, Patti was employed by the Grand Erie District School Board and taught in Brantford as well as Paris. A direct descendent of a fur factor of the historic Northwest Trading Company and pioneer fishing family on Lake Superior, Patti has enjoyed historical accounts of the family in the north. She has lived in Paris twenty-one plus years and enjoys volunteering with the Paris Museum and Historical Society, the Paris Horticultural Society and the Paris Friends of the Library.

• Amanda Barclay

  Amanda was born in the UK, moved to Princeton in 1994 and then into Paris in 1996. Amanda is an Occupational Therapist with 30 years experience. She currently works at Six Nations Health Services. She is an avid gardener, and enjoys learning new things everyday. Her love of history and photographic talents will be an asset to the museum.

• Jazmin Beddard

  Jazmin has worked and volunteered in the Ontario cultural heritage sector for the last decade; for several museums, participating in academic and CRM archaeological efforts, and leading conservation projects. She has a H.B.A.Sc. from LakeHead University specializing in archaeology and Canadian history, M.A. archaeological training from Trent University, graduate certification in Cultural Heritage and Conservation Management from Fleming College and is working towards an M.A. of Interdisciplinary Studies from Royal Roads University. She is excited to be a part of the Paris Museum & Historical Society team full of passionate individuals and to lend a hand to their continued efforts to preserve and disseminate knowledge of Paris’ heritage, emphasizing the importance of Ontario’s cultural institutions. Originally from Hamilton, she now lives in St. George, adjacent to Paris.

• Gillian Cunningham

  Gillian moved to Paris in 1997. She has been involved with many community groups in her time here, such as the Girl Guides of Canada for 25 years, Boy Scouts of Canada, and the Paris Agricultural Society Ladies Division. She has also been committed to helping the St. John Ambulance Unit 407 BHN for 24 years, the Brantford Navy League of Canada, and the RCAC Support Committee. Moreover, she has coached ball hockey and has lent a helping hand to the Brantford International Villages Festival for several years. Gillian is an avid history lover and through her volunteer contributions at PMHS, she wishes to help everyone learn what a wonderful and rich history Paris has to offer.

• Jayme Frazee-Wright

  As a result of living in Paris her entire life and a natural interest for history, Jayme hopes to help respect and treasure the rich history that Paris and surrounding areas has to offer. While her original career goal was to become an archeologist, she’s realized recently that the local affairs and history of Paris are more important to her. Now she wishes to become more politically involved in the community to one day become a future councilor for Paris. With Jayme’s contribution to the museum through her young ideas and a strong interest she hopes there will be more awareness to the history of this town. Jayme is happy to help preserve it for years to come, allowing the future generations to enjoy it just as we did.