Doors Open set for Aurora return in busy Heritage season

Doors Open, the popular Ontario-wide program allowing people to see inside heritage spaces that are often closed to the public, is set to return to Aurora this fall after a long absence – and it's just one of several events coming up celebrating this community's built heritage.

Doors Open Aurora will take place Sunday, September 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and includes 13 in-person sites for people to visit, including a unique look at the Aurora Cenotaph and Peace Park, which is set to celebrate its 100^th anniversary in October.

A preview of some of what's in store can be seen now throughout Aurora Town Square in a new photography exhibition, A Glimpse of Aurora's Historic Places, which has been curated by the Aurora Museum & Archives.

The show brings local historic sites to life through artwork, photographs, and other artefacts – sites which might be familiar to residents, but plenty more where heritage elements might lie just behind the facades.

Helping to curate the exhibition is Jeremy Hood of the Aurora Museum & Archives, who said one of the starting points was considering “when the notion of a historic place began.”

“In different municipalities, it's obviously different in the way that different places have observed their history,” he said, noting that in Aurora, this shift in thinking started more than 60 years ago when Dr. Leslie Oliver laid the groundwork for the Aurora Historical Society, and subsequent documentation of what this community looked like in the 1960s and early 1970s.

“There is no shortage of historic buildings (in Aurora) and how do we choose? It was done partially in concert with our revitalized Doors Open efforts. During the pandemic and through some of the changes in the municipality, we hadn't been involved in Doors Open, but this year we wanted to come back in force, and so we were able to do that and some of the locations that are being featured in Doors Open have been selected for Historic Places. We have photos from a number of buildings that maybe people didn't think of, even just a residential home in one case, that probably wouldn't raise any eyebrows unless you were to see its history and its old representation.”

There has been a push at the municipal level in recent years, particularly at Aurora's Heritage Advisory Committee, to revive the Doors Open tradition, and Hood said he's “really glad” it's happening this year because it is “an extremely valuable process for the Town” in “re-establishing” the connection between Aurora's residents and its heritage spaces.

Among the participating sites and events this year are the Aurora War Memorial, Hillary House National Historic Site, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge 148, the Rising Sun Masonic Lodge, Royal Rose Art Gallery, Saltbox Café, Trinity Anglican Church, the William Rowland House and St. Anne's School.

Additional program elements include an architect talk on Aurora Town Square, an opportunity to visit the headquarters of Dave's Vinyl Party, a Harmony, Heritage & Haunts Walking Tour, and more.

“One (site) that's really interesting that people might not see, because it's quite hidden, is the Oddfellows Block,” says Hood. “There was a fire on Yonge Street in the 1880s and when they built the new building, the Oddfellows fraternal order purchased an entire block of buildings – a three-building block – with their doors right in the middle that leads upstairs to their private lodge rooms they've occupied ever since. Very few entities have occupied the same space for that length of time, especially in Aurora. Rising Sun Lodge, which is on the corner of Mosley and Wells Street, opposite Town Park, was a church for a very brief time before the Masons purchased it, also in the 1880s, and they've been there ever since as well. It's generally closed to the public, it looks a bit boarded up, but it's not – that's just the way the windows were treated at one point – and there are some unbelievable original artworks inside.”

Both sites, he said, provide “fascinating glimpses” into organizations that were a regular part of everyday life in Aurora's early days.

While the Aurora War Memorial and Peace Park, a site that houses the Cenotaph commemorating the First World War dead of Aurora, King and Whitchurch-Stouffville, as well as the Altar of Sacrifice memorializing those who fell during the Second World War, and the more recently-dedicated Korean War memorial, is not necessarily a collection of buildings, they are elements of built heritage that is celebrating its milestone centennial this year.

It's an attraction on the Doors Open 2025 tour, but will be the focus of celebration this fall when it's the subject of a rededication event on October 3.

For more information on Doors Open 2025, including sites and how to volunteer, visit www.doorsopenontario.on.ca/pages/events/aurora.

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter