Sunday, June 2, 2002, marked the opening of the Region’s newest heritage house to the public, McDougall Cottage. Learn about the hardworking Scots that made this charming stone cottage their home, and view the most spectacular hand-painted friezes and trompe l’oeil ceilings that Ontario has to offer.

Historical McDougall Cottage, a c.1858 limestone labourer’s dwelling, is open afternoons for visiting Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m., Thursday, 12 to 8 p.m. McDougall Cottage is located at 89 Grand Avenue South in Cambridge on the banks of the Grand River and is owned and operated by the Region of Waterloo. The cottage serves as an interpretation centre, showcasing its unique interior landscapes, presenting exhibits of local interest and sharing research resources with the public.

This charming vernacular cottage, with its equally charming pocket-sized garden has been home of two families of hardworking Scots for more than a century. The McDougalls, born of a Highland clan, first raised its walls using local limestone, dressing its street-side with carefully-matched blocks of handsome granite. By the dawn of the new century, a second family, also from the heather hills of Scotland, had taken ownership of the cottage. Newly married in 1901, James Baird and his wife Margaret, moved in and set about “renovating” their first home. The most fashionable of all the “modern decor” that the Bairds would add to the cottage were the exotic landscapes and trompe l’oeil ceilings that James’s brother Jack painted in the young couple’s dining room and study.

Where did these exotic scenes come from? Were they the products of an active imagination or had this adventuresome brother really viewed those fantastical landscapes and witnessed the dramatic events he painted on the walls? We may never know, but we can take pleasure in them today, much as the Bairds must have done, by visiting the McDougall Cottage.