War of 1812 Bicentennial

Upper Canada Village

Crysler Farm Battlefield Park, Ontario, St. Lawrence Parks, is between the cities of Brockville and Cornwall, near Morrisburg, Ontario.

On completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Ontario St. Lawrence Seaway Development Commission (Ontario Government) developed a new series of parks and recreational facilities covering some 6000 acres along the new and old shores of the St. Lawrence River.

Crysler Farm Battlefield Park, 2000 acres of well-landscaped grounds, is one of these parks and a memorial to one of the battles of the War of 1812. Upper Canada Village is a part of Crysler Farm Battlefield Park, a 65 acre wooded tract of river front land on which a whole village of a century ago has been reborn. There are about forty buildings which almost all genuinely date from the middle of the nineteenth century. The furnishings, etc. were saved from the flooded area of the St. Lawrence Seaway and moved intact or in pieces, rebuilt and refurnished with painstaking accuracy as if in use today — but the year is 1850.

Of the many buildings, only two are Museums. Fifteen houses, two churches, a school, taverns, barns and general stores have an atmosphere of living. The woolen mill and the saw mill are water-powered and operational as is the printing press, craft houses and cabinet maker. The blacksmith forged the nails to rebuild the village.