The Daly House Museum is a non-profit organization based in Brandon, Manitoba. The building itself is a beautiful Victorian house that was built in 1882, the year Brandon became a city. The Museum consists of Victorian-style rooms and artifacts, as well as a general section of Brandon and Prairie history. The Museum also features the Stephen A. Magnacca archives and research centre.
In 1882, the Thomas Mayne Daly, the first mayor of Brandon, had this house built for him. It was one of the fanciest and highest class houses in Brandon at the time. Daly was the also Manitoba’s first federal cabinet minister and the first Juvenile Court Judge of Canada. After Daly, his wife, and their children moved to British Colombia, one of Daly’s law partners, George Robinson Caldwell, moved into the house with his family. The Coldwell family resided in the house for about three decades, until the property was taken over by the city and given to The Maples, a children’s shelter. In 1976 Brandon Museum Incorporated took over the building, and it became the Daly House Museum.
The Museum now contains a plethora of artifacts from Brandon and the surrounding area, and across Canada. We are open Tuesday to Saturday year round, working to preserve and collect local history while offering guided tours to the public. Through this blog we hope to perpetrate information about the Museum itself, the process of archiving and running a museum, and local history.
