Personal Style

Nancy Lockhart’s historical cottage in Niagara-on-the-Lake offers an ideal winter retreat.

Nancy Lockhart’s charming home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

SSome people buy a cottage to get away from civilization. Not Nancy Lockhart. Her circa-1840 clapboard biscuit box house is right in the heart of Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the close-knit community there was a big part of the attraction. “You never know if someone’s going to pop by to chat, which I love,” she says. “It’s the antithesis of my house in Toronto, which is surrounded by trees and overlooks a ravine. It’s beautiful, but it’s quite isolated during the winter.” Nancy bought the house in 2016, three years after losing her husband, Murray Frum — a legend in the Toronto art world, a longtime trustee of the Art Gallery of Ontario and a dedicated philanthropist. Nancy goes back and forth from her busy life in Toronto as a corporate director, but finds herself spending more time in Niagara in the winter. “You get that beautiful white blanket of snow that stays white,” she says. “It just feels magical; very Dickensian.”

She celebrates Christmas here, and enjoys dressing her antiquefilled home with subtle touches of seasonal colour. Growing up in Montreal as one of five children, Nancy enjoyed holidays that were full of tradition. “Christmas was about bringing out the ornaments

stored in cardboard and cellophane boxes and placing them one by one on a huge tree while a fire blazed in the background and Mantovani played on the turntable,” she says.

These days, the towering tree of her childhood is replaced by two smaller trees: one in the corner of the dining room and another on the second-floor landing. She favours simple and whimsical decorations like the felt mice ornaments she exchanges with her nieces.

Every room in the three-bedroom, 1,320-square-foot cottage is subtly dressed for the season, from the vintage bottlebrush trees on the living room mantel to the guest bedroom’s green bed linens to the multiple posies of holly in the sitting and powder rooms. Come December, the home has a distinctly Victorian vibe, decked as it is with freshly cut boughs festooned in ribbons, swags of vintage Christmas cards and an array of scented candles that layer in the fragrance of firewood.

This holiday, it may not be possible to entertain a crowd at the cottage, but Nancy looks forward to greeting family and friends (and neighbours, of course) over the front gate to share some old-fashioned Christmas cheer.

Nancy’s niece, artist Sharon Okun, painted this portrait as a surprise gift. It features Nancy’s pup, Zinnia. Armchair, Absolutely Inc.; fire screen, Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen.

LEFT: Every December, Nancy shops for amaryllis, eucalyptus and anything with berries for her winter bouquets. “I don’t like hugely mixed bouquets; I like subtle, soft colours,” she says. In pre-Covid times, Nancy threw large Christmas cocktail parties in the dining room.

Nancy with her rambunctious Lhatese, Zinnia.

BELOW: Nancy decorates the exterior with a mix of fresh evergreen boughs, red ribbons and clear twinkle lights. At night, the effect is magical. Wreath and garlands (throughout), Sheridan Nurseries.