Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture

Patricia Whitney, former coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at
the University of Prince Edward Island, is the Bank of Montreal Visiting
Scholar in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Old Ontario Houses has all the gloss of the most inviting coffee-table
books, graced as it is by the brilliant color photographs of John de
Visser, a master of his art. Tom Cruickshank’s text places the
handsome images within a geographical location (the book is organized by
regions reflecting the diversity of the vast province of Ontario) and
provides the sort of detail that will please the general reader while
respecting the expertise of architectural historians.

Virtually all the exterior photographs show the houses in high summer,
spring, or early fall, which does not take into account the three months
or more of an Ontario winter. The dramatic view of snowy Belleville’s
Bellevue Terrace set against a purple sky is a welcome exception, as is
the picture of Barnum House in Grafton, its flushboard whiteness shining
against the purple shadows of a late winter afternoon.

There is balanced architectural presentation in that exterior
photographs and interior pictures are complemented by shots that
highlight special features—here a Georgian door, there a Victorian
staircase or a ceiling medallion or an embellished hardwood floor. The
result is that one feels an intimate connection to the forebears who
lived inside these spaces. And it must be said that while some very
great houses indeed are pictured, there are as well cosy farmhouses,
middle-class homes, and curious places such as Woodchester Villa, a late
octagonal building (1882) overlooking the Muskoka River and here
presented against red-golden autumn foliage.

A particular favorite of mine is Reydon Manor in Lakefield; Samuel
Strickland, the work of whose sisters Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna
Moodie is foundational to Canadian literature, built this house in 1867.
Not only a marker, therefore, of Confederation but also a tribute to
pioneer hard work, the manor speaks of the comfortable accomplishment of
a family that came to Upper Canada in the 1830s.

This fine book includes a concise introduction, a small bibliography,
and a helpful index. It’s a real treasure.