Frugal Film Project – November 2024 – Living History

I will be honest, I’ve been trying to get out to Westfield Village all year because this year marks the 60th Anniversary of this hidden gem of a living history museum. While it isn’t staffed as often thanks to the changes that came down the pipe but they still maintain the property and make it accessible to the public while keeping site staff to a minimum. But I’ll let you in on a secret, I like the village when it’s quiet, it lets me soak in the history of the place.

Like many other living history museums around Ontario, Westfield Heritage Village is a built community. The original Pioneer Association formed in 1961 when two high school teachers, Glenn Kilmer and Golden MacDonnell began to investigate purchasing a plot of land as a home to save and display historic buildings before they were lost during the urban renewal sweeping the province in the mid-century. The pair successfully purchased a thirty-acre plot of land near Rockton, Ontario where they could build a hands-on educational centre to teach about Canadian history of ordinary people in the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The museum was slowly built, with a mix of historic buildings and custom structures built on the site with the assistance of Doreen Kilmer, and Glen’s father. On opening day 15 June 1964 the site contained a functioning blacksmith forge and twelve preserved buildings. The museum also provided jobs and volunteer options for locals and students who staffed the buildings portraying period-appropriate residents and workers. Wentworth County would take over ownership of the museum in 1968 and the transfer allowed for Ex-Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Locomotive No. 103 to be relocated from Gage Park to the museum in 1977 adding a period locomotive to sit alongside the former Jerseyville Station also operated by Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo. Over the years the collection had expanded to beyond the 18th and 19th century with additional 20th century buildings added by 1981 but the museum was loosing popularity and was running into financial troubles forcing the county to close the doors in 1984. And the story could have ended there, with rumours about transferring the buildings to different locations and splitting up the collection. But a year later the county was approached to use the site as a location for filming a made-for-tv movie, Anne of Green Gables. Soon other movies and shows were asking to use the site and Wentworth County sold the property to the Hamilton Conservation Authority in 1990 who began a five year redevelopment plane with the end goal being reopening the museum to the public. The buildings and other artefacts on site were all restored and in 1995 the new Westfield Heritage Centre reopened. The site would be a weekend only getaway for many and the buildings again staffed by employees and volunteers and special events became part of the village life. I even had a chance to show off War of 1812 drill here in 2015 as part of our training for the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and got to occupy the second-oldest building on the site. But in 2020 the pandemic shut down the village but also made it easier for weekday access to the site as the Conservation Authority expanded the hiking trails. Today Westfield still runs several special events over the course of the year it also is home to many television and movie productions Red Green Show, Murdoch Mysteries and several smaller projects using the historic site. I have even featured it in my “On The Road” series over on my YouTube Channel!

One of the best and worst parts about going to places that I’ve been many times before is that I know exactly what I want to photograph to show the best possible cross-section of an amazing museum like Westfield. While I did go in with a planned hit list I also wanted to try and get the best possible angle on each building and try and capture things that I don’t always photograph. Of course, I had to include the iconic buildings like the Ranger’s Cabin, the oldest log church, the covered bridge, No. 103 and the Jerseyville station. From there I went with my gut to fill in the rest of the images. What did help was touring through the village in a different direction as it gave me better options for photography rather than always approaching from the same direction. Once I had those items in the bag I went with the map of the village and lined up the buildings that have an interesting history or story to them for inclusion.

Westfield can be both an easy and difficult location to photograph, easy in the main parts of the museum as there is plenty of open light and lots of room around the different buildings. But at the same time some of the oldest buildings are undercover and cramped together. Thankfully most of the leaves are down from the trees and I had decent light the day I visited. I went with the 28-80mm kit lens to give myself some wiggle room to best compose the images. I also exposed the roll at the box speed of ASA-200 and decided to develop the roll in Diafine. What makes Diafine interesting is that it has an ideal EI for almost every film and a standard set of times to allow for developers to develop multiple rolls of film all of them different at the same time. But with Arista 200, it uses a 4:00 + 4:00 time but an interesting agitation pattern, 30 seconds initially with 1-2 inversions every 2 minutes, I went with 2 inversions. The negatives came out thin, but there was still enough detail to pull out images during the scanning process. The results are excellent, Arista 200 being a tough film to handle, I think Diafine would have done better with a slight under-exposure, maybe around 250 or 320 rather than straight ASA-200.

Ontario has a lot of living history museums like Westfield dotted around the province and some are a bit more visible than others but even the smaller ones are worth visiting. And I’ve had the chance to check out and photograph a few of them. If you’re in the GTHA then Westfield is certainly an excellent choice and it is open throughout the week even through there are no buildings open, but they are running a Christmas event in December (Sold Out). There’s also The Village At Black Creek (Formerly Black Creek Pioneer Village) which is a far larger and regularly staffed museum in Toronto. Further east there is Upper Canada Village in Morriston. Also in Kitchener is Doon Heritage Village, another I have not yet visited but should! And two others are Fanshawe Pioneer Village in London and Lang Pioneer Village in Peterborough. I didn’t only shoot my Frugal roll at Westfield on this trip, I also brought along my Rolleiflex so you can see all my photos over on Flickr. Next month I’ll be going back to an old favourite spot, the historic city of Galt, Ontario which today is a part of Cambridge, Ontario to wrap up 2024’s edition of the Frugal Film Project.