Step into local history this summer with The Brown Homestead!

Drop in for Summer Saturdays - explore our historic buildings and pastoral grounds with heritage demos, hands-on family activities, lawn games, tours and interactive exhibits. Fun, discovery, and history for all ages. Grab a bite to eat from Char in the Kitchen and stay awhile on our picnic tables.

Summer Saturdays are open house-style events. Admission by donation. Open to all.

Facilitators: Jackie Labonte and Marie Louise

Join us for an engaging and educational workshop about traditional medicines, how to identify them and understand their benefits. Participants will learn how to make skin salve, and will be able to take some home. Part of the workshop will include a walk through Short Hills Provincial Park. 

Pigments of Heritage with watercolour artist Rémy Bles

$109 per person

This hands-on workshop invites participants to The Brown Homestead to paint the historic Norton Cabin (c. 1817) in watercolour, using their own hand-made paints created in class derived from natural pigments and repurposed from old building materials.

Join us for Doors Open St. Catharines and discover our historic buildings, hands-on activities,  heritage craft demonstrations, community exhibits and more.

Get a special first look at select pieces of the 2026 Indigenous Art juried exhibition presented in partnership with the Woodland Cultural Centre.

• Hear from Curator Alex Jacobs-Blume and a featured artist

• Learn the history of Canada’s oldest Indigenous juried art exhibition

• Join a Q&A

• View a preview of the 2026 exhibit

• Enjoy light refreshments

Doors open at 12 p.m., talk begins at 1 p.m.

Admission by donation. Space is limited. Stay tuned for registration details.

Spring into the growing season with The Brown Homestead! We’re kicking off the Grow@ the Homestead 2026 with a site-wide, family-friendly gathering of games, gardens, and grub!

• Pick up Homestead-grown heirloom vegetable and herb seedlings for your garden (maximum of 5 per postal code) 

• Help plant our flax garden with Ali McDonald

• Grab a bite to eat from Char in the Kitchen (11 a.m. - 3 p.m.)

• Take a tour of the John Brown House and our historic property

• Explore current exhibitions and displays

• Enjoy lawn games and spend time on our pastoral grounds 

Facilitators: Jackie Labonte and Marie Louise

Join us in celebration as we open the Three Sisters Garden at The Brown Homestead for the 2026 season and plant the first seeds. All are welcome to share in this experience and learn from our Indigenous Knowledge Keepers Jackie Labonte and Marie Louise. 

Join architectural stained glass artist Mackenzie Campbell for an illuminating lecture on the craft of stained glass and a live demonstration of conservation techniques. 

Open by donation, space is limited. Sign-up to save your spot. 

The Brown Homestead is pleased to join the St. Catharines 50+ Active Living Information Fair at the Dunlop Drive Older Adult Centre.

We’ll be there to highlight our volunteer program, and to encourage folks to join our upcoming programs and events. This event is geared towards adults 50 and over and their family, friends, and caregivers to our information fair focused on staying active, healthy, and connected. Admission is free.

We Lend a Hand Documentary Screening and Filmmaker Q&A 

We’re joining a special screening of the documentary We Lend a Hand: The Forgotten Story of the Ontario Farmerettes directed by Colin Field at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre  The screening will be followed by a Q&A period with the filmmakers. Opening remarks and Q&A period led by The Brown Homestead Executive Director Andrew Humeniuk. 

The documentary  reveals the true and forgotten story of the Ontario Farm Service Force, which put 40,000 volunteer teenage girls to work between 1941 and 1952, arriving from different parts of Ontario and Quebec to many locations in Southwestern Ontario. They were called The Farmerettes. Their job: to ensure critical food production during the most perilous period of modern history. 

With no prior farming experience, their hardships were tremendous. For long months, they worked under relentless weather conditions and schedules. Yet they single-handedly managed to produce hundreds of thousands of tons of food that were shipped off to the frontlines to feed starving European populations and even prisoners of war.   

Through reenactments and unique archival images, We Lend a Hand: The Forgotten Story of Ontario Farmerettes recounts the story of these magnificent young women, now in their late 90s, bringing back their most cherished memories while reminding us –  perhaps for the last time – that service comes in many forms.

This event is presented by Vineland Growers’ Co-Operative, Historical Society of St. Catharines, and Niagara Federation of Agriculture with The Brown Homestead as a promotional partner. 

Tickets are $12.50 (plus $2.75 handling fee, plus HST).

Seeds of Change: Agricultural History Speaker Series

Discover how evolving agricultural technology has changed the way we grow, harvest, and sustain our food, and also shaped our relationship to our food and the people who grow it, over a series of thoughtful and engaging conservations.

When Tonya wrote Farm : Lot 23, she went back into her childhood memories of the farm where she grew up: “I let myself drop into the smells, sounds, feelings and the mystery of that place. In doing this work I was reminded that when we are anywhere, we are in relationship to all that is there. We are never only on the land, or working the land or extracting resources from it. We are with it and however we are with it affects us, just as it affects the land and all that lives there. I believe that we are always with the land in ways that fall outside of the narratives the dominant culture gives us.”

Tonya will share some poems and talk a little about her understanding of her relationship to the farmland where she grew up.

Then Tonya will invite those in attendance to spend time remembering and writing about a childhood relationship to land. Maybe it's one memory in particular, the way an apple eaten off the tree tasted, or the mourning doves that woke you up, the sticky feeling of dandelion milk drying on your fingers? 

Tonya will be leading this event virtually via Zoom and we will send out a Zoom link a few days prior to the virtual event, to all who signed up.

This event is free to join. Find more details and save your spot on our Grow@ the Homestead webpage.

Seeds of Change: Agricultural History Speaker Series

Discover how evolving agricultural technology has changed the way we grow, harvest, and sustain our food, and also shaped our relationship to our food and the people who grow it, over a series of thoughtful and engaging conservations.

After what we hope to be a nourishing and rewarding growing season, join Jackie Labonte and Marie Louise in closing the Three Sisters Garden as a community. Together, we will offer our thanks and share in singing and drumming. All community members are welcome.

This is a free event, and we hope to see you there!