Ancestral Roofs

"In Praise of Older Buildings"

Monday, August 6, 2012

Oh kill me now!

Upper Canada Village...once I get over the guilt I always feel, at walking over graves in this living history museum (more on the drowned villages later), I am always astounded at this place. Understatement it would be to call it old house nut heaven.




I'm reading Peter John Stokes' book 'A Village Arising', about the creation of this astonishing place - the removal of many worthy UEL dwellings in the path of the cultural tsumani which was the St. Lawrence Seaway project in the Victory era 1950's, when 'the future' trumped 'the past' and dynamite ruled. He wrote in the front for me "in memory of lost buildings and in celebration of those we've saved", in his 'fine Italian hand'.

We have to be eternally grateful to folks of vision who preserved some of our built heritage in this place... the scholarship, the expertise, the fidelity to so many aspects of the rebuilt and recreated landscape - from streetscape to eaves return to lost farming and domestic skills.

Thanks PJS.


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