General Information

Step back in time and try your hand at setting type and working one of eight operating presses. Qualified staff provide guided tours, and there are interesting demonstrations and opportunities to "try it yourself". Working hot metal typecasters will cast type before your eyes. You will be visiting Canada's largest working printing museum. The restored Mackenzie House, a gift from friends and supporters of William Lyon Mackenzie when he retired from the provincial legislature in 1858, became a historic site museum in 1950 and is home, since 1967, to a recreated 19th-century printing shop. You can see "over 500 years of printing technology, amid the authentic ambiance of a period print shop." William Lyon Mackenzie was the great grandfather of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Perhaps better known as the first mayor of Toronto and the leader of the Rebellion of 1837, Mackenzie was also the publisher of the Colonial Advocate newspaper from 1824 to 1834 and one of Canada's earliest printers. The paper was based in this house here in Queenston, Upper Canada, and was fond of critiquing the Family Compact, the informal name of the Conservative elite who controlled Upper Canada at that time.