Going to Town: Architectural Walking Tours in Southern Ontario

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

Katherine Ashenburg proves an excellent guide to the 10 Ontario towns
she has chosen to examine closely and on foot. The towns range in size
from Merrickville, with a population of 1000, to Stratford, weighing in
at 27,000. They vary immensely, and it is difficult to discern a common
thread, except that during the 19th century each at some point
experienced great expectations that either were not realized or, if
realized, were not sustained. How great these expectations could be is
illustrated by Cobourg’s splendid Town Hall, designed by Kivas Tully
and completed in 1860. How insubstantial the many dreams of glory proved
is shown by the population figures. Picton’s population “has hovered
around the 4,000 mark for a century,” Merrickville’s population
“is roughly what it was 150 years ago,” and Port Hope, which
numbered 5585 in 1881, failed to reach this level again until 1948.
Great expectations produced substantial and varied architecture; failure
to grow helped preserve it.

Every town has its own story. Some, like Picton and
Niagara-on-the-Lake, began on a strongly Loyalist foundation; others,
like Perth, Goderich, and Stratford, were not Loyalist at all in their
origins. Ashenburg gives a brief history of each town, thereby providing
a context for the architecture, before settling down to describe
specific buildings. Her tours lead the reader past an amazing variety of
buildings, churches, libraries, town halls, jails, and any number of
houses. Many of the buildings are illustrated, and each item is
accompanied by helpful analysis and pungent comment. The full-spread
maps are useful, though sometimes very difficult to read in the region
of the book’s gutter.

Altogether, Going to Town is a stimulating performance, designed to
lure travelers out of their cars so that they can fully experience the
buildings described and perhaps explore further; Ashenburg encourages
readers of this selective guide to “keep looking, keep walking.”