Service with a Smile

Super-service, 1928, Mahone Bay

I don't usually photograph service stations, but this one In Mahone Bay, morphed into an artisan market, insisted. Looking at it this morning made me hungry for more images, when there was variety and character in these utilitarian structures. I did a quick search and found a wonderful collection of images on a great site 'www.blogto.com'. I strongly recommend a visit!

To see lots more nostalgic images, and get you thinking about planning your road-trip...

                     

http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/03/what_gas_stations_used_to_look_like_in_toronto/

More....from Mahone Bay

Double-dog dare you not to smile!

Blysteiner House, 1860

Another riot of colour, this time from Mahone Bay.

Grayfield, 1880

 If this doesn't bring back the sun, what will?

Mader building, 1901

Zwicker House, 1870

It just makes me happy to look at these places, and recall strolling about in this delightful town on Mahone Bay.

Rainbow challenge

OK, I am throwing down a paisley gauntlet, and issuing myself a personal challenge.
Only colourful houses for the next two posts.

The five-sided roof of the Scottish Dormer

Morash House 1888

Feel like dancing?
Do the "Lunenburg Bump".

Now that was easy...just go to Lunenburg!
What joyful structures...not great photos, not great architecture maybe, but joy enough to compensate.

Joyful

This image just flashed up on my screen-saver, which cycles through my photographs and occasionally surprises me with something good ("Did I take that?"), or something forgotten ("Was I here?")

Scottish dormers aplenty, Lunenburg

This house, appearing on my monitor on a dark night in a dimly lit study, following a post about sombre though beautiful log houses, just made me laugh. What a joyful structure. What great colour. How could you have a dull dreary day in this house, ever?

Purdy party

These days I am fallen under the spell of Al Purdy - his poetry, his life, his influence, his A-frame mouldering in Ameliasburgh, the passionate efforts of good folk to save this place I am so drawn to. I hear Pinsent's wonderful voice declaiming the boozy lines. Purdy caught the spirit of this area. I can't think of anyone who drew the hard land north of 7, as we say here, so clearly and showed its beauty so defiantly.

 In homage, I say their names aloud - a  litany of hard northern places from 'The Country North of Belleville' : Cashel and Wollaston... Elzevir... McClure and Dungannon, Herschel... Monteagle...Faraday...and post these photos of log buildings from O'Hara Mill Homestead, to honour the folk who conquered these lands on the Canadian shield, while it was conquering them.

My Queensborough friend Katherine has done a fine job of capturing Purdy's work and his spirit in her blog-post.  http://atthemanse.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/al-purdy-and-the-country-north-of-belleville/. A must-read. As is Purdy.

Harrowing Experience

We visit Harrowsmith often. I always look forward to revisiting the village's unique limestone buildings. I dare say a great deal has been written about them - I haven't come upon any of it, to date.

What I love about the stone-builders of this town is how they used the two colours of limestone available to them, to create buildings which celebrate that fact...'stripes' and 'checks' (because really what else can you say?), contrasting door and window lintels or quoins. A quite unusual grouping of fine stone buildings, which I look forward to seeing, each time we drive through on our way to Richard's.

Some time I really must insist that we stop, to get the skinny on this delightful stone town. And I'll try to pick a moment when a long evening sun warms these old stones, to try to capture how beautiful they are.

Where there's a Mill there's a way

Carpenter's Shop, O'Hara Mill Homestead

 Carl Sagan is reported to have said "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe." Bread-making is an art taken for granted in our day. Even at our most virtuous when we get all 'back to the land' and bake up a few loaves, it's very likely that we start by opening bags of whole foods store flour.

As I learn more about the history of Hastings County my respect for our foremothers deepens - the appalling hardships of pioneering women have been described by Moodie and Traill, but our modern minds can but fail to capture the fear and despair of these tiny outposts of humanity along the colonization roads - and women's struggles to provide a basic meal for their family each day, to keep children well, to keep men fed for the brutal work they undertook.

Mill with working English Gate Upright Frame Saw

Creating a plumping mill or hominy block (beside the carpenter's shop above) to pound wild rice or wheat into meal was a first breakthrough.

With the development of a water-powered grist mill in an area, a whole new life became possible. Massive stone grinding wheels reduced stubborn grains to cooperative flour...a great convenience if we overlook the fact that men walked through barely passable bush roads, or dragged their meagre havest over (relatively) smoother winter hardened paths, over impossible distances. So many forgotten terrors and hardships, their daily bread.

Last weekend we paid an amazing visit today to O'Hara Mill Homestead near Madoc. We chatted with some outstanding people - with energy, vision, and passionate committment to maintaining and handing on the past.

The folks at O'Hara have recreated the mill (a saw-mill in this case) and rebuilt a dam to power it. This post is a tribute to those first entrepreneurs and altruists (maybe) who harnessed the power of the area's many waterways - for domestic convenience and  for industrial growth....and to the women working in log shanty kitchens, hoping for a brighter future. And a tribute to the people who work so hard to pass this history on.

Blacksmith's Shop

O'Hara House

Carriage House