Marty Pullin plays a tune on his bagpipes in the garden of McDougall Cottage in the Galt area of Cambridge.

Peel back a few layers of the fast-growing hi-tech Ontario community of Cambridge, about 80 km west of Toronto, and in the southeast corner, along the Grand River, you'll find an earlier stone-built industrial city that used to be called Galt. (With Preston, Hespeler and parts of several townships, Galt amalgamated in 1973 to form Cambridge.)

Ramble through old Galt and you'll discover what remains of a vigorous Scottish-Canadian community that played an important part in building modern industrial Canada. At its heart, on Grand Ave. beside the river, is a beautiful old granite-built house known as the McDougall Cottage. For more than a century (1850s-1960s) it was home to two skilled and talented Scots families,the McDougalls and the Bairds.

INTERPRETIVE CENTRE

Since 2002, it has been owned and operated by the Waterloo Regional Government as an interpretive and events centre. Its purpose is to highlight the contributions made to Cambridge and to Canada by immigrants from the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland.

For an autumn excursion, you're invited to drive down to Cambridge. Have a look at historic Galt with its majestic gothic churches, public buildings and Victorian factories, then make an afternoon visit to the McDougall cottage. From Wednesday through Sunday, it's open from noon to 5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.There's no set admission fee; you drop a loonie or two into a sporran hanging just inside the door. (A sporran is a Scotsman's purse, worn in front of a kilt.)

From costumed guides who'll probably offer you a cup of tea and shortbread, you'll learn the cottage is a busy place, particularly on Thursday evenings. Get there around 7 p.m. tomorrow, and you'll be in time to hear a lone piper "pipe down the sun" on his highland bagpipes. This traditional Scottish rite has been staged every Thursday this summer. Tomorrow night's will be the last performance of the season.

Until Christmas week, many other Thursday night events will enliven the lovely old house. On the first Thursday every month, lots of Galt Scots come to a Kitchen Ceilidh. It's described as "a wee party" with music, ballads, stories, jokes and refreshments.

On Thursday Oct.13 a special kind of ceilidh, the Scotchtoberfest, celebrates uisque beatha or Scots Water of Life. That's Scotch Whiskey to the rest of the world. For this occasion, they get an LCBO Event Permit and take you on a tour of Scotland to sample four famous single malts.You have to register in advance and pay $35. It's the Scots answer to Oktoberfest.

For more information, visit region.waterloo.on.ca or call 519-624-8250. Susan Burke is curator at McDougall and also at the Josef Schneider House in Kitchener.

I think you'll be surprised by the beautiful friezes and other art in this sparsely furnished delightful old house.