Is e an Taigh an Taisbeanadh

This case study explores the intersections between the Scottish-Canadian immigrant experience in Ontario and current decolonial museological practices and exhibition techniques. The paper examines the ways in which Hillary House—a Gothic Revival Victorian preserved in Aurora, Ontario—reflects the perspectives and experiences of educated, middle-class Scottish immigrants who, both consciously and unconsciously, aligned themselves with British colonialism and imperial causes. Many mid-19th-century immigrants from the Lowlands of Scotland found themselves deeply entwined with English values, even as they embraced the components of their identities that were distinctly Scottish. Their goal was often to advance in the socio-economic hierarchy in Canada with new opportunities, including land ownership and the establishment of professional practices, and to assimilate with their counterparts from England proper as part of a new elite. From this perspective, these immigrants were caught between the historical threshold of having experienced invasion, colonization, and then unionization at home in Scotland, and then perpetuating the imperial system through their own immigration and settlement in Canada as British subjects. Hillary House surfaces these dynamics in its architectural exhibition, as visitors come to understand the spectacle of Scottish-Canadian Britishness in the mid-19th-century.