Car-free day trip: Stephen Leacock's summer house with Anne Lister
It’s the last weekend to catch the small but mighty Anne Lister display on the second floor of the Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia. Museum’s young and enthusiastic curator Amanda Marino who spearheaded the project is clearly a Gentleman Jack fan: about a third of the material on display relates to this recent BBC-HBO series about the life and business endeavours of “the first modern lesbian” (a catchy but debatable tag). The top hats in the room, though they feature prominently on Gentleman Jack, are not strictly accurate—but there’s a printed and illustrated interview with the costume designer of the show on one of the panels to keep things factual. Where it’s independent from the show, the historical content is spot-on and covers all the essentials: Lister’s education (heavy on Classics), family history (how she, and not a male sibling, got to run Shibden Hall and live there with the unmarried aunt and uncle and her sister), her politics (very Tory), her key relationships and the ‘marriage’ with the massively land-owning Ann Walker, and of course the Diaries—how they survived the multiple quiet burials and how they were finally decoded.
If you turn it on, the tablet on a tripod will play for you a documentary with Helena Whitbread, one of the key decoders and advocates for the publication of the diaries.
A much younger (and grinning) me with Helena Whitbread in Halifax (England) municipal archives with Anne Lister’s diary:
But there is more to see in Orillia, starting with the rest of Stephen Leacock’s house, so after the paywall fold come the tips on how to make the most of your car-free day trip to the little town of the sunshine sketches fame and how we can begin to tackle Leacock’s opus.