Heritage Week

Opening Ceremony

This is an in-person event. No registration required.

Join Mayor Marianne Meed Ward and the Town Crier at Centennial Square (Brant Street and Lakeshore Road) as we kick off Heritage Week. Following the ceremony, Beach Canal Lighthouse will display plans for the lighthouse. Learn about the 1857-8 light station, with its beacon of light guiding ships through the canal between Lake Ontario and Hamilton Harbour for over 100 years.  Display will be located at the Gazebo in Spencer Smith Park.

Burlington Museums virtual lecture

This is a virtual event. No registration required. Join the lecture.

Learn about the history of Burlington's museums - Joseph Brant Museum and Ireland House Museum. Joseph Brant Museum was opened in 1942 in a replica of Joseph Brant's original home and has become a community landmark through the years, collecting and displaying Burlington's culture and heritage. Ireland House Museum was built between 1835 and 1837 by Joseph Ireland, one of the founding farmers in Nelson Township. His family home was lived in by four generations of the family, and then turned into a community museum to preserve Burlington's agricultural heritage.

Laking Garden Heritage Walk at Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG)

This is an in-person event, maximum 20 participants. Register online.

Note: Paid parking in effect. Please meet the interpreter at the entrance to Laking Garden at 1221 Spring Gardens Road.

Join us for a stroll through this quaint garden and hear about the significance of its surrounding landscape and how it became the garden we see today.

Burlington Historical Society Walking Tour of Greenwood Cemetery

Registration for this event is now full.

This is an in-person event, maximum 25 participants. Registration required. Meet at the gates at 1030 Greenwood Drive.

In this Year of the Garden, join Alan Harrington of the Burlington Historical Society for a walk through Greenwood Cemetery, founded in 1888, and visit the gardens and gardeners who are buried there. The most famous one is Spencer Smith who is buried along with both of his wives. To him we owe credit for the beautiful park on our lakefront which is home to festivals and family enjoyment.

Freeman Station

This is an in-person event. No registration required. Freeman Station is located at 1285 Fairview Street.

Note: There is plenty of free parking on site and is wheelchair accessible.

Join the Friends of Freeman Station for a trip back to a century ago - to the "Garden of Canada" during the Golden Age of Steam at the 1906 Grand Trunk Railway Freeman Station -  Burlington's distribution hub for fresh fruits and vegetables. In the 1920s, farmers would bring local crops to the station by horse cart to be loaded onto refrigerated boxcars and shipped to Toronto. Berries picked that morning were served at Toronto's Royal York Hotel for breakfast. Some produce was packed into wooden baskets (hand-made mostly by women workers) at a factory beside the rail station. Other fruits and vegetables were packed and canned as jam and jellies at the canning facility nearby. Watch melons, apples and pears get shipped to destinations across the world - as recreated by our 1/24 scale model train diorama. There will be lots of hands-on interactive activities and admission is free.