Goulbourn Museum (https://goulbournmuseum.ca/)

2064 Huntley Rd, Stittsville, ON. $ By donation

Friday & Saturday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. (+Thursdays in summer)

First, to manage expectations, this is a small museum.  It’s a single room, focussed on the Goulbourn Township, just south of Stittsville.  While I really like this kind of small museum, I didn’t spend more than 20 minutes in there to read all they had and be satisfied that I’d had the Goulbourn Museum experience. 

What I thought stood out on my trip was the model of a general store as a community hub, and the exhibit called “Scorched” which was about the devastating wildfires of 1870, both of which demonstrated aspects of rural life in the 1800s. 

Goulbourn was established by veteran settlements after the War of 1812, and so there were lots of references to the military, including books for sale and references in the displays; the whole museum is next to a Legion Hall. 

What really impressed me about this museum wasn’t what was in its physical presence, but what was available online as a history centre (https://goulbournmuseum.ca/collections-research/history-centre-2025/).  There are records of births and deaths, letters from soldiers during the First World War, and minutes from Town Council sessions.  This was an intense reminder that small, municipal museums aren’t just display halls, but centres for the collective memory of communities.  This is particularly the case for small communities like Goulbourn, which would be otherwise subsumed by the National Capital Region.