November 2024
Nestled along the shore of Lake Couchiching, sits the stately, 19-room house that served as the summer home of Canadian author and satirist Stephen Leacock. This house represents Stephen Leacock’s love of the small Ontario town of Orillia, immortalized as the mythical Mariposa in his best-seller book “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.”
Known as “The Old Brewery Bay,” named after a former 19th-century brewery nearby, the historic former home now serves as the Stephen Leacock Museum. Situated on a 10-acre property, the two-storey wood-frame building was built in 1928, in the Arts and Crafts style. Leacock originally bought the property in April 1908, building a small one-room cottage, which they the “Cook House,” but used tents for sleeping. A two-storey boathouse was added in 1919, on the water’s edge at the north end of the property.
With features like it’s rustic interior and simple brick fireplaces, the house is more like a cottage than an ostentatious, up-scale mansion you might expect someone of Leacock’s status might own. It was the perfect place for the Montreal resident to spend his summers, frequently writing at his desk in a sky-lit sunroom on the rear side of the house.
Some of the other heritage features of the house include a rough-cast exterior stucco cladding, multi-pane casement windows, a steep, hip roof, with cedar shingle cladding, hipped roof dormers and exposed rafter ends, our, tall, red-brick chimneys, wooden, multi-pane, casement sash windows and French windows, lattice filled loggia archways for climbing vines and three second-storey balconies with lattice work balustrades.
The literary legend Stephen Leacock
Born on 30 December 1869 in Swanmore, England, near Southampton, Leacock’s family moved to Canada when Stephen was six-years-old, settling on a farm near Sutton, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Simcoe. Leacock graduated from Upper Canada College and would go on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto. After teaching for a while in Strathroy, Uxbridge and Upper Canada College, he earned a Doctorate in political science and political economy at the University of Chicago in 1903.
Leacock began began submitting articles to the Toronto humour magazine Grip in 1894, writing fiction, humour, and short reports to supplement his regular income. From there, his stories were published in magazines in Canada and the United States and later in novel form, as his popularity grew. Leacock would go on to become one of Canada’s most internationally successful authors.
Married in 1900 to Beatrix Hamilton, niece of Sir Henry Pellatt, the Canadian soldier and financier who built Casa Loma in Toronto, the couple celebrated the birth of their only child, Stephen “Stevie” Leacock in 1915.
In addition to his writing, Leacock was a lecturer and professor in McGill’s Department of Economics and Political Science from 1900 to 1936. After his retirement, Leackock spent his last years at his Old Brewery Bay home. He died on 28 March 1944 in Toronto, following surgery for throat cancer, and was buried in the family plot at St. George’s Church, on the south side of Lake Simcoe, near Sutton.
After Leacock’s death in 1944, the boathouse fell into disrepair and was later demolished.
In 1957, the Town of Orillia purchased the property and established the Stephen Leacock Museum. The house was designated an Ontario Heritage Act property in 1978 and a National Historic Site in 1992. A replica of the two-storey boathouse was built in 1995, using the original plans.
The property’s park-like setting on the shore of Lake Couchiching makes for some terrific views and a tranquil spot to take a break. The museum is open year-round and available for rentals, meetings and special events.
Sources: LEACOCK MUSEUM HISTORIC SITE | Orillia & Lake Country Tourism (orillialakecountry.ca), HistoricPlaces.ca – HistoricPlaces.ca, Stephen Leacock – Wikipedia, Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) | About McGill – McGill University, Old Brewery Bay rooted in era when Orillia was ‘the hardest drinking village in Ontario’ – Orillia News, About Us – City of Orillia, Ontario Heritage Trust | Leacock House, Stephen Leacock’s boathouse was originally built in 1919 – Orillia News.
