The West Parry Sound District Museum, commonly known as the Museum on Tower Hill, began as a group of dedicated citizens. Today the Museum continues to preserve and interpret the core cultural themes that carved the West Parry Sound District out of a rugged Canadian landscape and explores contemporary topics relevant to today's communities.

Help Us Get Our Train!

We are happy to announce that we will be receiving a new working model train of the Ottawa Arnprior Railway for our E. Roy Smith Gallery! This generous donation will require a remodel of the gallery, and therefore some fundraising.

In our Peter McVey Atrium we have this lovely train post-it board, but what lies beneath? To uncover the mystery underneath and to get our train to Parry Sound, we need your help and generosity. You can donate by purchasing a train card at the Museum today!

UPDATE: August 8th.

We almost have the first line of our post-it board uncovered! Looks like sky, possibly snow? To help us get our train and uncover the mystery image, we need your help!

UPDATE: August 19th.

Look how far we have come in revealing the historic image! We have uncovered some pretty neat squares of our historic photograph. I can see some trees now in the distance...

What do you think the photograph could be of?

Ground-breaking interactive history app launches in Parry Sound

PARRY SOUND, ON - June 8, 2018 - The Downtown Parry Sound Business Association and the Museum on Tower Hill are excited to announce the launch of Parry Sound's coverage in On This Spot, an interactive history app.

Users who download the app will be able to view over 100 historical photos of Parry Sound and compare them to carefully restaged photos from the same perspective today. Using the in-app camera they can create their own then and now photos, allowing them to effectively superimpose themselves into historic photos of Parry Sound. Four walking tours will give unparalleled access to an enormous depth of local history.

The app's Parry Sound coverage launched June 8, to coincide with the beginning of the tourist season. The Parry Sound coverage was made possible through support from the Downtown Parry Sound Business Association, the Town of Parry Sound, the Museum on Tower Hill, and the Bayside Inn.

The historical photographs, which come from the collections of the Museum on Tower Hill and the private collection of Mike Morden, a local history enthusiast, date from the 1850s to the 1970s. The four walking tours examine different themes running through Parry Sound's history, including pioneer life in the 19th Century, Parry Sound's industrial history, tourism and steamships, and views from Tower Hill. They include many of Parry Sound's historic landmarks.

"Smartphones have the potential to make local history vastly more accessible and engaging," says On This Spot CEO Andrew Farris. "Now anyone with a smartphone can see their surroundings through the eyes of people a century or more ago, creating an exciting and tangible connection with the past. We've found this experience to be particularly popular with young people, and we believe interactive tools like this will become a necessity for heritage and tourism organizations in the years to come."

Parry Sound is now available in the On This Spot app alongside a growing list of Canadian cities including Vancouver, Winnipeg and Aurora. The app is free to download on Android and Apple smartphones and tablets. Download links can be found at www.onthisspot.ca.

The launch of the coverage is accompanied by the launch of an online store selling then and now photo prints of Parry Sound at www.onthisspot.ca/shop. Postcards featuring these photographs will be available from the Downtown Parry Sound Business Association and businesses will also be able to advertise on the app through the Nearby feature.

Sample then-and-now images can be found at www.onthisspot.ca/parrysound and selections can be made exclusively available to any media outlets seeking graphics.

Click here to learn more about our Drop-in White Glove Tours this summer!

Click here for more information about Under the Waves: The Waters of Georgian Bay Exhibition

Click here for more infromation about our Avro Arrow: A Dream Denied Exhibition

Click here, to read the latest In Our Collection article featured in the Parry Sound North Star!

Click here, to learn more about the Museum's Genealogical Club

Funding provided by the
Government of Ontario.