Gathering Place for the Generations
I had a
toy farm when I was a child; a miniature homestead in enamelled sheet metal –
barn and barnyard, chickens, cows and a
little red brick farmhouse. On the
barn’s tiny gable wall was the simple title that for generations has evoked
vivid recollections: “Grampa’s Farm”.
To a
farmboy like myself, it all made perfect sense:
this little play-world was the most natural of toy microcosms. It wasn’t dreamy nostalgia; it was as real as
the scene outside the windows of my childhood.
But
that was a generation ago, and the days of the family farm’s presence in the
landscape – and in the memory – have faded.
In the process, we’ve been cut adrift from a tangible link to our
past. We’ve lost our ancestral homes and
collect antiques to fill the void, to
give us some trace of heritage. We read shelter
magazines that sell us carefully aged “heritage”
by the roomful: a reproduction past on
every page.
And yet
the constant struggle to define a quiet place in the maelstrom of urban life throws
us headlong into perplexity: where to
put the antiqued implements that will give our lives meaning?
Grampa’s
farm no longer cuts it because, for starters, Grampa was unlikely to have been
a farmer. And though many Canadians need
only cast back two or three generations to identify their equivalent of the
ancestral home, chances are the old place is now in strange hands, the solid
farmhouse a ghostly ruin, the land subdivided beyond recognition.
We are
largely a nation of transplants, many with only the tenderest of green roots in
this country. We are also a
predominantly urban people now, modern nomads following schooling, jobs and
recreation. We breathe portable technologies;
we live portable lives.
So what
are we left with? The family farm has
lost its potency, but replacing it is a new manifestation of the ancestral
home, a weekend summer place, a haven from modern life.
The
family cottage has become, over the past few decades, the gathering place for
the generations. Unencumbered with the
complex realities of the rural farm economy, the cottage has not been squeezed
from the grip of a struggling family whose livelihood depended upon its
production. Its image is not synonymous
with work, quotas or barnyard smells – it is a summer place, a setting for
dreams, the centre of a memory-world of dog-days, sunshine and docks. The cottage looms much larger in the
imagination than a city home ever could.
One
family I know, who live spread across the nation, own an island that is the
scene of a massive annual homecoming.
Generations have built a carefree summer architectural continuum. One family elder, in a moment of solemn
reflection, told me: “Catastrophe?
Nuclear war? We’ll all head for The Island, no matter where we are; we have an
‘understanding’”.
There
is really nothing odd in such a notion:
every family would like to have a place to make the ultimate retreat.
I have
visited cottages on the Muskoka lakes that seem out of sync with the apparent
needs of their owners – great, sprawling lakeside structures, many a century
old or more, whose floor area is more in keeping with that of an Adirondack
lodge. “This is a family hotel for most
of the season”, I’m told dockside as an antique boat rocks gently in the
evening breeze. “This is our summer base
of operations.” The family, coming home
from Pittsburgh or Toronto, Los Angeles or Vancouver, throw their formality to
the smog-free wind, put their feet up and sigh:
They’ve made it back home once again.
For the
architect, the phenomenon of “cottage as family seat” presents its own daunting
problems and tests one’s diplomatic skills.
One such place, for which I was hired to design a large addition, is the
summer home of one of Canada’s wealthiest families. And even though expansion eventually leads to
some sort of change, the most frequently heard comment when drawings were
presented was “No, no – that would be changing it!” The collective memory of an outspoken family was
wrapped up in a certain configuration of wood, stone, water and vista.
Other
clans, such as my wife’s, built a tradition on a more realistic budget, but the
“never quite completed” cottage, decorated with dog-eared castoffs, sits on a
rocky outcrop as proudly as any baronial castle. It once looked like the cottage would never
be completed; the very presence of builders and architects in the family
practically guaranteed it. But that
hardly matters. The idea of retreat is
what counts, the quiet place at the end of a hectic Friday-night drive. Its pristine setting has been the nursery for
my wife’s fondest memories, her family’s best times and the larger-than-life
stories that come with days spent between water and woods.
The
fleeting summers of childhood claim a large share of our memory – summer places
tend to underline that. We are perhaps
more honest and less guarded as we sit on docks together, half-naked in the
twilight; we are less concerned with pretence and ostentation. We are truly at home with ourselves.
The
cottage has given us that home-fire of refuge we thought we had lost, and has
become in the process a guarded and cherished family seat – Grampa’s Farm for future generations.
(first published in The Globe And Mail)
David Gillett
