dealing with Aging

Another last look at my little Mouck house

The Miller's house, VanAlstine's Mill (now Lake on the Mountain)

Most of our friends are dealing with aging. We decry our unreliable memories. Occasionally we head to the doc for a tune-up. The ladies grab for fans.
No less inevitable, but less emotionally charged (perhaps!) is the aging of buildings in our memory. Our past is present in these structures. We may have known them in our youth, may have passed by vaguely aware of something unusual about a
particular building. "The old Pringle place" of my youth, a weathered frame eyesore to our dad, turns out to be (thanks to PJS' sensitive eye to such things) "a well-proportioned timber-framed farmhouse of the 1820's" with "sophisticated joinery." (Settler's Dream p.21) It's long gone. Sorry I didn't pay more attention. The old war song "Johnny I hardly knew ya" plays in my head. Likely we laughed at your unpainted condition and your old-fashioned trim, with its implied lack of industry scorned by our industrious parents.

Sometimes we just tidy up. And demolish the old thing. I happened by the day a satisfied team of workers had just finished smoothing the earth flat where the very significant little Mouck house had once stood in South Marysburgh. Had, in fact, until earlier the same day.

But there are some happy (though guarded) outcomes. The Miller's House, at the top of the escarpment which fed VanAlstine's extensive mill complex at Stone Mills (now Lake on the Mountain/Glenora Ferry) sat unattended for years, and is recently the scene of renewed industry. I had a chat with a fellow working inside the old structure earlier this summer. Told him the place had been a somewhat notorious  dance hall in the 1940's (for they had engaged 'negro' musicians and caused a fuss), and later the restaurant and activity hall for the resort which operates there still (and the scene of my first formative experiences as a waitress in high school). The chap believes the owners of the fine restaurant in the old stone store opposite are planning another eatery.

Hope they don't fail to notice the fine Greek Revival detailing - easy to overlook with the distractions of insulbrick siding. The eaves returns, the deep cornice. This place looked pretty good in Belden's 1878 Atlas (image scanned from SD, as the mighty Belden wouldn't fit under my scanner). The house is top centre, just in front of a toy sailboat on the lake, to the right of the stone store. A temple form building, dated 1850. 

Watch this space.

Another Salvation story

One of the finest things about Upper Canada Village is the costumed interpreters, who portray life as it was lived in 1860. The style of dress, the activities and professions they recreate for the visitor (and our federal government's cost-cutting plan is recommending they be replaced by audio-guides like you rent in art galleries. I DON'T think so!) are endlessly fascinating.

More on all this later - I am still unpacking a multi-layered day at this astounding living history village, which will keep me thinking and writing for some time.

The brick building above is Cook's Tavern, moved from the path of the encroaching waters of the Seaway Project, and recreated here, restored to the mid c.19. A book of reminiscences of the drowned viillages, as they are called, describes the actual Cook family preparing meals for visitors, in the days before their community disappeared.

The woman in this photo is in role as a 'goodly woman' of the community, in conversation with the 'innkeeper'. She was a child when the local church was moved out of the path of the flooding. The event was  immortalized in the photo (below) that Peter John Stokes has taken for the cover of his book about the creation of Upper Canada Village.

This iconic photograph shows the 1957 voyage of Moulinette's frame 1837 Episcopalian church from the path of the flooding, 20 miles along the St. Lawrence to the Upper Canada Village site. The woman told me about that day. She and her brother spent hours sitting by the roadside, waiting for the church to pass by. Their mother brought snacks and encouragement as their patience began to fade. Finally, at the end of a long afternoon, she recalled, the treats gone, replaced by boredom and discouragement, the spectacle unfolded.

The church passed by, on a pretty rudimentary float pulled by tiny trucks. A local Barney Fife, puffed up by the drama of the event, directs the entourage sharp left.

That little church was recreated at Upper Canada Village as Christ Church, beside the Lutheran Minister's house. It represents the church home of a congregation of the 1860's.

where there's life there's hope

Pick up Sticks

I  used to pass them by on my way to impressive places like Crysler Hall and Cook's Tavern at Upper Canada Village, hastening to connect with domestic interiors and costumed interpreters. But thanks to Shannon Kyles' Ontario Architecture course, I have grown to love log buildings. And not before time, I think. I have just finished researching PEC examples for Orland French's upcoming book 'Wind, Water, Barley and Wine', and this very morning am writing (or am supposed to be writing) about an outstanding Mel Shakespeare rebuild in Hastings County, for 'Country Roads' magazine.

But although I still have to check my notes before pronouncing on Swedish keying or colombage, I confess to a completely physical love affair with log buildings. A feast for the senses they are, soft weathered grey, radiating the warmth of the sun on their smooth flanks, their voice the midnight snap of frost or the creak of wood on wood as doors open and feet tread their glossy plank floors.

So far in their past is life as living breathing beings in the vast forests which are part of our collective settlers' memory. So inaccessible is the desperate UEL experience of felling these giants and forcing them to our will as simple shelters. Now we love them with a Walden Pond sort of nostalgia, or a craftsman's appreciation of the artistry of their construction. Hard for us now to remember how quickly the UEL settlers wanted to move on, to recreate the fine Georgian frame or stone houses they left in that other country before 1784.

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.

Mallorytown, by George!

SO and I just spent 8 days camping in and around Charleston Lake Provincial Park - I say about, as for the two nights there was no room at the inn, we decamped to a favourite pleasant commercial campground near Mallorytown, the better to organize ourselves for a weekend trip to Upper Canada Village, further along the 401.

early tiny square attic windows

I had a ramble around Mallorytown, and picked up a local history (have I mentioned how much I LOVE local histories, written by locals, who give time and attention to the recollections of village elders?). This little book was called Fact, Folklore and Fiction: The History of Mallorytown. I got the impression the writer, David J. Wells, was being a bit coy about which was which.

Peter Gibson tavern c.1850, said to have sheltered the infamous  Frank James 

half-round fan-lights proliferate

typical 5-bay Georgian, end chimneys, small windows

Although this lively book didn't give me the architectural history detail I'd hoped for, it did people the little village with interesting characters I wasn't likely to meet on my ramble.

And did you know that Mallorytown was home to the nation's first glassworks from 1839-1840...now if they could just agree on where it was! Passionate collectors and museums seem to have an appetite for the workmanlike ware, with the Mallorytown pitcher claiming special place.

Mallory Coach House, c.1853

Other than this bit of industrial history, I was unable to determine the source of the early prosperity that led to the building of some proud and substantial Georgian houses in brick and stone. Seems to have been a proud and self-reliant UEL settlement. The town was a bit far from that centre of marine commerce, Mallorytown Landing, where Vermont Loyalist Samuel Mallory landed in 1784 to begin a new life.

 So, my guess is, logging, given that a large numbers of the farms seem to have produced healthy crops of rocks.

Moving in the Best Society

Anerican raiders off Ernestown, 1812

Re-enactors' encampment on the F-G lawn

On the July long weekend, we spent three days in Bath and Kingston, immersing ourselves in our history. These communities along the St. Lawrence  brought to life the drama of the early days of the War of 1812, the war many Canadians see as the war that defined us as a separate - and very proud - nation.
Activities in Bath centred on the Fairfield-Gutzeit house (1796), built by the sons of William Fairfield who built the outstanding Fairfield House at Amherstview.



The lads, Wm. Junior and Benjamin, moved to Bath in 1793, seeking their fortune - and managed to do so. They became influential members of the community and entered political life. It was their ship, 'The Two Brothers', which was burned by raiding Americans in the early days of the war along the St. Lawrence.




The house is much changed from the original one and a half storey Georgian form with steep roof, which betrayed its Vermont origins.

Today, the Fairfield-Gutzeit house (so called because it was brought back into the family in 1938 after almost 80 years by Mabel Fairfield-Gutzeit, William's great grand-daughter) is owned by the Fairfield-Gutzeit Society. We had a lovely tour of the house, alive with the breezes from the lake outside its doors.




The non-profit Fairfield-Gutzeit volunteer organization manages and maintains this incredibly important property, as well as two other Bath heritage buildings I have written about - the Bath Town Hall and the Layer Cake Hall.


So, what's a girl to do?
I joined the Fairfield-Gutzeit Society, and felt pretty darned good about it.
Just wish I were a bit closer, so I could put my energy where my admiration is.

Spellbound

Some folks admit to a sense of awe they experience in visits to churches and cathedrals. There's something uplifting about the spaces, the generations of the faithful elevated by something 'other' in these majestic places. Transcendence. For me, this very old house west of Kingston has a very similar effect. It sits by the lake, in a park filled with joggers, dog-walkers, picnickers and lovers. The lake they enjoy  is the same waterway the tall frame house's Loyalist builders looked upon when they landed in 1784, fleeing the horrors of revolution in their country.

the early high-pitched Loyalist roofhouse - porches were a later additionn

warm wood

I admit to a feeling bordering on reverence when I visit this house. Fairfield House, silent and alone in its park, has a powerful presence which it is willing to share. Folks enjoying the park pass it by, while I sit at its feet and listen to the old stories.

the 'terroir' of building - early home built on limestone flats 

I feel the lives of those who built this house and places like it; their dreams, their heartbreak, their hope for the future. The stones, the timbers in this house resonate with the Loyalist family's determination to rebuild their lives and fortunes.

external fireplace wall radiating heat

Fairfield House (1793), Amherstview