Doors Open at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum

Join us at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum for an exciting day jam-packed with activities for the whole family.

Enjoy our museum gallery spaces including our permanent local history exhibit and our Discovery Kids Space. Artist Maddie Lycheck will be hosting a creative workshop, Altars & Archives in Classroom A, with two time slots available. The historic Martin Haus will be open for two aligning events - Separate Journeys, Shared Soil: an immersive "intervention" exhibit curated by artist Aaron T. Francis, and Who's Cooking? Women Entrepreneurs Past and Present: a series of cooking facilitations in the historic kitchens, followed by food sampling and a meet and greet with the chefs. Family games, coloring, and crafts are available throughout the day in the foyer and outside on the patio.

Doors will open at 10:00am and close at 4:00pm.

Food and drink vendors will be onsite throughout the day, highlighting women-owned businesses in Waterloo Region.

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What’s Cooking? Women Entrepreneurs Past and Present

Join local women food experts for cooking facilitations in the historic Martin House kitchens. There are two facilitations that each include a cooking demonstration, followed by a meet-and-greet with the chef and sampling of a fresh dish. Registration is required.

Facilitation #1: Summer Kitchen - 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

The first hour is a closed cooking facilitation featuring X of X bakery cooking X dish. The second hour will be open to registered guests and the public for a meet and greet with the chef and sampling of X dish.

Facilitation #2: Winter Kitchen - 2 to 4 p.m.

The first hour is a closed cooking facilitation featuring X of X bakery cooking X dish. The second hour will be open to registered guests and the public for a meet and greet with the chef and sampling of X dish.

*Each facilitation has a maximum of [25] participants (age 16+). Registration required.

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Altars and Archives: Queering the Domestic, with Maddie Lychek

Join conceptual lens-based artist Maddie Lychek for a workshop where you will create intimate shrines using collage, drawing, and found imagery. Inspired by domestic spaces, sentimental objects, and the aesthetics of queer memory-making, the workshop invites reflection on what we choose to keep, display, or hide. Participants are encouraged to reimagine the altar as a playful, defiant, and emotional site of storytelling. Through making and sharing, the workshop explores how personal archives can hold joy, longing, humor, and resistance.

Two workshop times (registration needed):

11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

2:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.

*Each workshop has a maximum of 20 participants. Registration required. Register Now

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Vintage Black Canada : A Doon Village Introspection, curated by Aaron T. Francis

This exhibition at Martin House, in the heart of Doon Heritage Village, invites visitors to reflect on the ways that different histories that have shaped the cultural fabric of Waterloo Region, can exist side by side. Martin House, itself originally built in the 1820s by Mennonite settlers, has long stood as a reminder of perseverance and community. It also carries with it the layered story of the Martin family - early immigrants from Pennsylvania whose home hosted worship services, family generations, and even the “Doddy Haus,” an addition that gave aging relatives private living space within the larger household.

Within this setting, A Village Introspection introduces photographs from the Vintage Black Canada™ archive, curated by Aaron T. Francis and organized across three broad thematic strands. The first captures rural life in the Caribbean, evoking traditions of resourcefulness, familial bonds, and agricultural self-sufficiency. The second turns to immigrant life in post-war England, a period marked by both the hardships of displacement and the quiet dignity of everyday resilience. Finally, the third strand explores new beginnings in Waterloo Region, offering a glimpse at the evolving sense of belonging experienced by Caribbean immigrants and their descendants. Each of these strands parallels the Mennonite story as it has traditionally been showcased in Martin House.

*No registration needed