If Walls Could Talk: Manitoba's Best Buildings Explored and Explained

Stephen Fai is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at
Carleton University.

Part architectural guidebook, part folk history, If Walls Could Talk
explores Manitoba’s notable buildings. As the authors explain in their
preface, buildings erected after 1925 are not included because there was
simply not enough space in the book to accommodate them. Each of the
eight chapters is devoted to a single building type—homes, farms,
official, churches, schools, commercial, industrial, and
recreational—and is further divided into extant examples and lost
treasures. Using a combination of photographs, drawings, and text, the
Butterfields endeavor to communicate the complex relationship between
the buildings and the people who make them. In trying to evoke the
social context of each architectural example, they draw upon what would
appear to be numerous and diverse sources. Unfortunately, they do not
provide us with a bibliography. Their book concludes with a
do-it-yourself appendix for the would-be architectural historian.

If Walls Could Talk paints a broad picture of a neglected part of
Canadian architectural history. Not overly concerned with detail or
academic method, the book will be of limited interest to researchers.
Recommended for the recreational reader.