Daly House goes dark for tours

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This article was published 10/10/2023 (1085 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a historical city site that is perfect for candlelight tours, especially with Halloween just around the corner, says Daly House Museum curator Eileen Trott.

For the second year in a row, the museum will offer guided tours with “Daly After Dark,” which takes people through the 141-year-old home — in the dark, Trott said.

“Yes, that’s right, all the lights are going to be off, but there still will be some lighting in each room so that you can see. And we’ll have people on each floor to help you and guide you through,” Trott said.

Four evenings have been set aside for the candlelight tours, but for the rest of this month, the public is welcome to come to the museum to see the new exhibit during the daylight hours as well.

There will be unique and eerie exhibits that look into the history of how Halloween was celebrated in Brandon’s past, and how the Victorian Era had some curious and cruel traditions.

“We’ll have the weird and crazy things that the Victorians believed in. They believed that if you saw a pigeon, that it was an omen of death. So, everybody downtown — with all the pigeons, they’re all doomed,” Trott said as she laughed.

The people in the Victorian era, which lasted from 1837 until 1901, had some truly strange practices by today’s standards, Trott wrote in a blog on the museum’s website.

“They regularly took photos and posed with deceased family members as a way to commemorate the memory of the dead. This unsettling practice was called post-mortem photography.

“A less macabre but just as creepy, was the common Victorian practice of hanging a framed coffin plate of a loved one on the walls of their home as a keepsake,” wrote Trott in her blog.

The Daly house was built in 1882, the same year that Brandon was incorporated as a city.

It was originally owned by Brandon’s first lawyer and city’s mayor, Thomas Mayne Daly, who was also Manitoba’s first federal cabinet minister and Canada’s first juvenile court judge.

The house was bought by Daly’s law partner, George Robson Coldwell, 125 years ago in 1898. He and his family lived there until the 1930s when it was turned into a children’s shelter known as the Maples.

In 1976, the building was taken over by a non-profit organization, and after renovations it was reopened two years later as the museum and is now a designated a municipal heritage site.

While the timing of the exhibit is purposely planned around the Halloween season, Daly After Dark is not a haunted house tour — it is a historical experience in a historic home.

While researching that era, it has been interesting learning the different customs and spiritual beliefs that were commonplace at that time, said Trott.

“We’ll talk about things like the Victorian funeral parlour. They used to have funerals right out of the home. And we’ll show the mourning clothes that women had to wear for two years.

“We’ll also have a mummy unwrapping party, and there’s going to be adult room full of dolls. So, we have some new features planned with the exhibit here as well,” Trott said.

Last year tickets for the Candlelight tours sold out quickly, Trott added.

“It was popular, the visitors had fun, the staff had fun and so did the volunteers — so that’s why we’re doing it again,” Trott said.

All ages are welcome, but Trott reminded people that there will be discussions and visuals of mature topics such as death and human exploitation.

The candlelight tours will be held on four separate evenings in October; the 20th, 25th, 27th and the 31st at 7 and 8 p.m.

Tickets are $10 each and are available on Eventbrite. For more information, call the Daly House Museum at 204-727-1722.

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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