Time Flies

AncestralRoofs was the ever-listening ear for my enthusiasms about the Ontario buildings and communities we explored over the years from 2010 to 2020.  During that time I took two architectural history courses from Shannon Kyles at Mohawk College, and several others from online MOOCs Ed-Ex and Coursera. And bought evey book I could find. (And still do. Just recently I acquired Shannon's massive informative and entertaining  Ontario Architecture, and I suggest you do also. ) At the same time, I was enjoying writing for several local publications, affording loads of research opportunities. 

Montepulciano, Tuscany

The year 2020 changed everthing. Covid shut-down prevented the local drives that had sustained the blog.  Later that year my dear Denis died. He had been my supportive partner in a long life together, and on so many countryside explorations, my "getaway driver" he called himself, hovering on roadsides while I ran back for good photos of fine structures. Life changed. In time, travel called again, not our chummy rambles along country roads but a trip to Italy, a return to many spots Den and I had visited years earlier, but with a new perspective. The featured photo on AncestralRoofs, unchanged since those days, is telling. It's not an Ontario Gothic Cottage, but an arch in a medieval stone wall in an Italian hillltop town. My continuing travels led shortly afterward to the travel blog Bernini's Elephant and Other Stories.

Just recently, my brother commented on the writing on AR and suggested I keep posting. Then this week I received a comment from a fellow who'd come upon my 2015 post about the village of Moira, and his connection with the early families there. Even after all those years, relevance. And some pretty good research all in one place. I admit I enjoy rereading my writing. I said that?

I spent a lovely 4 days in Perth recently, in a gorgeous stone outbuilding adjacent to a restored mill in a lush garden along the exquisite Tay River. 

The visual treat and the history rabbit-holes made me want to revisit AR, if only to collect in one spot what I learned about the indefatigable industrialist/politician/empire builder John Graham Haggart. His beautiful Georgian house in an even more beautiful wild garden setting highlights Perth's parklands.

 

A welcoming sight at my stone cottage stay.

During my explorations I captured every interpretive panel I could about the Tay Canal, built along the Tay River in 1834 and expanded by 1887. an additional section leading to Perth's industries,  dubbed "Haggard's Ditch" by some. 

To the right. the Haggart home, built in 1837 as a hip-roofed Regency style home. The surrounding property is so 'regency.'

Above, Code's Mill, begun 1842. Photo taken from Stewart Park

The interpretive panels recounted the facts, and revealed the impatience for growth and wealth between every line. Resonance of industrial Perth's inner harbour days followed me as I followed park paths and boardwalks. Wouldn't you love to have heard the local debates of the time?

Later I drove to peaceful Beveridge's Locks, which maintained the opening from the Tay Canal, a sideroad from Perth to  Lower Rideau Lake and the superhighway Rideau Canal.

Literally, Beveridge's Locks are a sleepy backwater, and a delightful spot to wander alone at the end of a summer afternoon. The frustrations of driven men to keep this silty waterway open for business, are but faint echoes.

Just now I ordered two Canadian classics exploring the ethos of those empire-building days - Sarah Jeanette Duncan's The Imperialist (1904) and  Frederick Philip Grove's The Master of the Mill (1944) to keep the quest alive.

 I'm hooked. Again. Off the wagon. I have visited a number of great Ontario spots in recent summers, and I intend to share them with you. Ancestral Roofs is back.