Harvest

It's harvest time in the prairies. This grain elevator's still up and running, although I forget where it's actually located. That's for the best.

Old church

SB and I went for a drive last weekend up the river, where we found quite a few nice historical and heritage sites. One of them, below, is the St. Andrew's on the Red, the oldest stone church still being used in Western Canada. It was built for the Anglican Diocese between 1845 and 1849, which means that it's celebrating its 160th birthday next year.

Although it has always been an Anglican church, its stonemason was Duncan McRae, a Presbyterian with a taste for the liquor. McRae's days of heavy labour came to an end when he fell off the scaffolding during construction of this very church.



Although it's a very unpretentious building, there are several nice details like these hand-forged hinges on the front door.



And these braces, stabilising the beams/columns under the 2nd floor balcony. The 'nails' holding this together are actually square wooden pegs. Note the rough wall texture.



Some of the stained glass windows. If you look closely at the depth of the wall, you'll see that it's over 2 feet thick!



Legend has it that the length of the central portion of the building (the "nave") was decided on in a way that we might find sort of amusing now, but makes a fair amount of sense. The following is a quote from David and Maureen Butterfield's book, If Walls Could Talk:

"McRae argues that the church Cockran [the Archdeacon -- ed.] envisions is far too long for the human voice, specifically that of the Archdeacon's, to carry. But Cockran disagrees. He insists the mason stand where the back of the church is projected to be. He blazes forth his first sermon on that very spot. "Duncan McRae," he bellows, "they tell me that you drink more rum than is good for you. In future, curb your bestial desires and try to live a sober, righteous and Godly life." McRae, stung, but still in control of his wit, replies that in fact, contrary to his former opinion, "the church is nae long enough.""

Northern Ontario

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of travelling to northern Ontario with Ms. Fourayem, and meeting up with her family. Definitely one of the best weekends I've had all summer, and there have been quite a few great weekends! This entry will focus on on just a few rural architectural highlights.....


This is the amazing view from the cabin/camp/cottage where we stayed. Logan is the most spoiled dog in the world, but he's awesome and he's bigger than you! On th e left is the only finished building on the property, a beautiful sauna where we spent quite a bit of time. I'm definitely sold on saunas. Get hot and sweaty, then jump in the lake (watch out for leeches!) and then get right back in the sauna. Repeat!




This is the outhouse building. No running water (or electricity) around here! Watch out for mosquitos.



This is supposedly a former train station, but now it's a restaurant. It's a little overdone with the inauthentic log interior, but they do have coffee.



We went for a drive to get ice cream one day, and found ourselves here. A picture says a thousand words. Great ice cream, too.



This is a building located at a place called Northern Light Lake, if I recall correctly. A small but prosperous little resort area near the US border. I like this little building because it's a shiny metal shed.



This is a little bridge we crossed when we got a little lost in the car on some back roads.



And finally, this is a little houseboat we saw in Kenora. I'd never been to Kenora but it seemed like a pretty cool place. Maybe some day I'll live on a houseboat. This one IS for sale.....

Must be some kind of sign.

Wind Power

Last week I travelled to Southwestern Ontario and I grabbed some photos of the wind turbine project being undertaken on the eastern shores of Lake Huron. The last time I poked around, I think 120+ turbines were being planned for the area, with about 20 up and running right now. Apparently this is a really great spot to generate wind power.

The photos don't do justice to the feeling of driving along the highway and suddenly seeing dozens of these things, as far as the eye can see. That is a beautiful sight!

Better than I could have ever said it.

"A vacant, broken-down Manitoba farm house is a Prairie icon, symbolic of a time passed and a people vanished. Such places, however, are more than just symbols. They are embodiments of time, space and culture. Step through the weathered door of that farmhouse, in the heat of a late July day, and you can feel the chill of abandonment and smell the dust settled there. Tread carefully, because the floors may be rotting and spongy to the step. Shafts of light try to poke through the faded, ragged curtains that ominously flap over yellowed windows. The surrounding quiet is sharp and hard, like the broken glass shards covering the floor. Except for you, no one's been here for years."

A beautiful quote from my co-worker David Butterfield's book, If Walls Could Talk, published by Great Plains Publications.

Trappist Monastery

I thought that I would try to pick up my spirits by going to a historic rural site today, and post some photos. It's Saturday, July 5th. I arrive there at 4pm and the site is closed! I'm pretty sure it didn't open today. When are people supposed to visit these sites, anyway?

I also went to a bookstore where I found an entire section of books dedicated to this fair prairie city and province. Well over one hundred books! I guess there's more money to be made in books commemorating our past, than in getting people to actually visit these places. What a shame!

So I am disappointed that the site was closed, but I did manage to get some photos.




What I find so especially interesting about this site is that it belonged to a religious group that moved to another site when they felt that their way of life was being infringed upon by the ever-sprawling city. Five years later, the site burned down. I'm sure there's a whole lot one could say about that, but I'll leave it up to you.

Equipment

Throughout the past year at school, I was told over and over again that I focused too much on "the product" and not enough on process or experience. It was a fair and valid point, because that's exactly what I do. In architecture, I'm not sure that's a good thing, but coming from an education in product design, it's a pretty normal thing for me to do.

So in honour of the profs this past year who tried ever so hard to pull me out of my obsession with "things," here are some photos I took with my friend SB. As far as I can tell, this is a small steam plant that would have supplied heat and maybe electricity to the stockyard building nearby.

Sambo

I had forgotten about a meeting/lecture at school today, so a co-worker and fellow architecture student and I went down to the university to hear what our prof had to say. As I entered the school - for the first time since early May - I felt a sense of anxiety. Very real anxiety. But anxiety is nothing new to me. I suppose I just realized that the new schoolyear is coming upon us quickly. But then, I'm a fortunate one. There were people still up in studio working on their projects from last semester. It is very late June. School ended two months ago!

The lecture was really good. It sort of reminded me why I am doing what I'm doing, and to hear it from a different but related and very interesting perspective was great. Part of what made the lecture good was that it validated some of my own interests (it's rare that architects even pay attention to rural issues or rural architecture).

Coincidentally, I went to the library after work yesterday and got a library card. I picked up two books - one about Canadian architecture, and one about Rural Studio. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know about Rural Studio, but if you don't, then you owe it to yourself to find out more about it. Essentially, Rural Studio is doing what I feel I ought to be doing when all is said and done.

Go to Rural Studio's website.

Union Stock Yards

I wasn't going to post today, but my friend SB dropped by unannounced and we went on a long bike ride - more than five hours, I think. SB wanted to check out an abandoned stock yard. So we did.

I don't know much about it, but the stockyard used to be outside of the city, but of course now it's engulfed in the larger metro area. It sits abandoned and neglected.

We went with the intention of just looking around - SB didn't know that I had a blog about rural architecture. When we got there, we found that there were two buildings, and both of them were open. I should probably mention that now - for the sake of clarity, I wouldn't ever break into a place if it was boarded up, locked shut, or even probably had a sticky door. Both buildings were wide open, with not so much as doors to keep people out. So we did what anybody would do - we went inside. I'm glad that SB had remembered a bike light (that we used as a flashlight), otherwise we would have never been able to go inside.

This is part of the front of the first building.....



And this is the back....

This is the basement, and the open room we found out back, obviously destroyed by fire. We saw that the buiding was made from thick, solid concrete (it was a stockyard building, after all). SB is an engineer as well, so I trusted his judgment that the place looked okay to investigate. Safety first!


This is the main stairwell, up on the ground floor. I have another photo that shows everything in a lot more detail and with much better lighting, but I like these atmospheric photos better, and they much better reflect the reality that my eyes don't flash light like my camera. For the first while, this was a very freaky place. I thought ghosts were for sure going to capture our souls.


This is another set of stairs. They were solid concrete and cast iron. Amazing. The iron handrails were basically the only salvageable items in the whole building, but that might be a problem considering that they are cast into the concrete!


This is the hallway you enter when you reach the top of the first set of double stairs. I lied. There was quite a bit of fairly intact wood trim.



More stairs.






This shows about 3/4 of the length of the building. It was big. We investigated most of the rooms.


There were lots and lots of stairs. Every floor had one set of stairs up to a landing, and then two sets up to the next floor. I'm sure it was something to behold when it was brand new. This set is slightly different because it leads up to the roof.


If you stick around this blog for long enough, you'll see that I like to 'frame' the frame. Here's a view out of a window. A long time ago, this is where cows came to die so we could eat delicious beef.


This is the view from the top floor up onto the roof. Nature has taken over. At some point, there was a fire and there's not a whole lot left of the old structure.


This is a view of the roof, complete with mosquito breeding grounds.


And finally, if you look up at the first photo of this post, you'll see an elliptical hole at the top of the building. Here's the view from the other side.

Ageing gracefully

Here are five photos I took of a drunken barn. I'm really glad that people leave these things to fall apart on their own. It's odd to think that it's apathy, not love, that keeps these buildings around. People just can't be bothered.

Seeing that I am currently working in heritage conservation, my office has a great library full of books that document and explore a lot of rural architecture. I think I'm going to start taking some books home, and if I find anything interesting (I will), I will post it here.

I am the laziest ambitious person I know.

Before we get to the real reason I'm posting, I wanted to give a little bit of a background to this blog and, well, myself. Because although you don't care, I figured that when I'm old and senile I'll want some sort of record of my excess of motivation and lack of action.

You'll see in a minute why I'm being self-depracating. Be patient.

Regarding the "Architecture" part of the name of this blog. Well, some day, I am going to be an architect. I'm almost 30 and I still have to say "when I grow up" because it's been a long road here and I feel like I'm just getting started. Or at least starting over, which is almost entirely true. Anyway, I'm in school to learn how to do the thing that is architecture. That's an easy one. But the path here comes via my 'previous life' as an ambitious design student. I have a degree in Industrial Design, but I never took it anywhere. The reasons are many, but the reason I tell people when they ask why I never pursued product design is that "I didn't want to end up detailing toothbrush handles for a living." And while that's also mostly true, it's only a half truth. I don't mind details and detailing at all. And toothbrushes are great. But the world does not need another toothbrush. I sacrificed my career because I didn't see any way around detailing toothbrush handles. You see, contrary to what most people think, the large majority of designers aren't the people with the fancy new furniture collections in high-tech design magazines. Most designers work for Walmart, knocking off other peoples' designs for shoes. Or designing moulds that will be used to manufacture some lead-contaminated childrens toys to be made by slave labour in China. Or spend weeks deciding on the ideal thickness of a new ballpoint pen.

Or detailing toothbrush handles.

And that's basically what I trained to do at school. And I didn't want that. I mean, I love to learn about manufacturing and I love to draw and I love most of the individual parts of the design process. And I learned all of those things. But the world doesn't need another toothbrush, and it certainly doesn't need another cynical designer detailing your next toothbrush. Right? Right.

So. To make a long story longer, I took my diploma and put it in a box somewhere, and continued with the job I'd held part-time throughout my years at university. Body piercing.

I was good at it. Actually, I was great at it, and people recognized that. I helped create new techniques, new jewelry, new manufacturing methods for jewelry and tools (so my design education wasn't a total waste). I made good money and I could sleep in every day and I really liked almost every single person I've ever worked with in the business.

But then, after about 7 years of this, I got the design bug again. And a year later, I've finished my first year of architecture school and completely retired from body piercing. I traded in my black t-shirts and titanium and now I work for the government (at least until the end of summer). Well, I've kept one piercing and I do have to wear long sleeves every day, but the point is that even just a few years ago, I would never have known what I'd be doing (or not doing) now. I've had a rewarding career in the body arts and I knew from the age of 7 that I wanted to be a designer - maybe some day I can combine both. Sometimes life feels like an out-of-control car. Sometimes it's not so great, but most of the time it's incredible. When I get old(er), I'll have some great stories for the grandkids.

Okay. So the point.

It's summer. The design bug is back but I really have no time and no outlet - that I've figured out, anyway.

And so I am feeling especially terrible as I whine about this non-predicament. I got the kick in the pants that I needed when I found out about this site called AfriGadget. You know how your grandfather told you that he had to walk to school uphill both ways in 3 feet of snow every day? Well, the people on that website blow your old fart of a granddad out of the water. The acts and stories chronicled on that site remind me why I wanted to be a designer in the first place. The people there are better designers and make more of a difference in the world than a million Frank Gehrys or Karim Rashids ever could. And that reminds me of what I want to be when I grow up.

My hero is isn't Le Corbusier or Bruce Mau or Philippe Starck. It's William Kamkwamba, the 14 year old from Malawi who built a windmill for $16 and scrap parts to generate electricity for his friends and family.... after reading a single book. Sam Mockbee of Rural Studio is another. And there are many, many more stories just like these.

Kind of puts my lazy ass into perspective. Yours too.

And what does this have to do with rural architecture? The pioneering people who built those century-old buildings did so with their bare hands, for real needs. It's not a romantic ideal, I simply appreciate people who see a real need, fill it, and make a difference. No expectations of becoming famous or making money. Just genuine design for genuine need.

It's taken me way too long to figure that out.

I decided to start a blog about rural architecture after this weekend and last saw me driving for hours and hours out in the countryside to visit the Mrs, who's working out in the bush this summer. I was taken by the dozens of abandoned buildings I encountered along the way, which finally inspired me enough to start this blog. I've been collecting such photos for a few years at least, and I wanted to share. I'm not a professional photographer and at least for this post, I'm not using any photo editor - these are straight from my camera (Sony H7).

For now, here are a few photos. I don't know the stories behind any of the buildings, and I doubt I could locate any of them on a map, so I won't try, at least for now. I just enjoy taking them, and that's all that matters.