Homeplace: The Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries by Peter Ennals and Deryck W. Holdsworth (review)

738 The Canadian Historical Review were the avenue to economic and social advancement? Were they at all swayed by the best example of this genre, fellow engineer Thomas Keefer's 1849 The Philosophy ofRailroads? A.A. DEN OTIER Memorial University ofNewfoundland Homeplace: The Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries. PETER ENNALS and DERYCK w. HOLDSWORTH. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1998. Pp. xiv, 305, illus. 65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper This path-breaking book is a comprehensive, well-written history of Canadian housing types and styles, effectively set in the context of economic and social change from the early seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Homeplace also represents a sophisticated new conceptual framework for understanding and interpreting house form and appearance by challenging the conventional approach of architectural and art historians. The authors are historical geographers with impressive credentials in this area ofresearch. Ennals has specialized in rural built form in the Maritime provinces; Holdsworth has done important research on urban architecture in Ontario and the western provinces, and is best known as co-editor and contributor to the Historical Atlas ofCanada, volume 3. The authors dismiss the 'facadism' and 'elitism' of the traditional work on house styles, which concentrate on architecturally designed, high-style houses and ignore the ordinary buildings that make up the great proportion of houses of any period. Their proposed taxonomy of form, therefore, attempts to include all dwellings, regardless of size and aesthetic qualities. They recognize the significance ofwhat they call the 'polite' or 'self-conscious' type, but give equal coverage to three other forms - the folk, the vernacular, and a usually neglected type, those shelters erected for workers in fishing, mining, and logging in isolated parts of the country. Each of these four categories is described in two time periods, the world of agrarian and mercantile capital and the later emergence ofan industrial economy. The geographical coverage is more balan~ed than is often the case in national surveys, with the Atlantic region and the West also getting their proper due. The polite house invariably represented the wealthy and powerful segment ofthe population that wished to make a visible statement about its position in society. While the ruling oligarchy of New France created a hybrid from various regions ofFrance, the British elite closely followed the official styles of Georgian, Regency, Greek Revival, and Gothic Re- Book Reviews 739 vival. By the later nineteenth century, architectural eclecticism was the norm, with 'a dour baronial quality' characteristic of the mansions in Montreal's Golden Square Mile, or in Toronto's several elite neighbourhoods . Ennals and Holdsworth argue that, although houses ofthis type were relatively few in number, they became the models for style and taste and were widely mimicked in smaller, simplified versions by those who aspired to have a touch ofelegance in their dwellings. A folk tradition has been more difficult to document. It includes both the French and the Irish traditions brought to early Canada in the form of a house with a large, multi-purpose room and one or two smaller service rooms. Much oftlie British folk tradition came via New England, where the full double-house form prevailed. A folk tradition continued to exist in the West, and the authors explore the Mennonite and Ukrainian folk traditions in home design in some detail. The folk tradition was everywhere eroded, however, by the powerful forces producing the most prevalent home type, the vernacular, which the authors position midway between the folk and the polite types. Ennals and Holdsworth define the vernacular as smaller and less formal versions ofthe polite styles, but with some regional dimensions of the folk traditions. The results were forms such as vernacular Georgian, or Gothic Revival, but, by the late nineteenth century, the widespread use ofpattern books created a mass taste regardless oflocal conditions or the availability ofbuilding materials. In a briefconclusion, the authors suggest the primacy of the vernacular in the twentieth century through the mass-produced suburbs, partially shaped by the state through the financial and design requirements of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Perhaps the most intriguing yet least satisfying portions of the book are the chapters on the housing associated with...