Grampa’s Farm for a New Generation
When I was a child, I had a toy farm that I played with; a miniature homestead in enamelled steel – barn and barnyard, livestock collection and a little red brick farmhouse. Emblazoned on the barn’s tiny gable wall was the simple title that for generations has evoked vivid recollections: “Grampa’s Farm.”
To a farm boy like me, this little play-world was the most natural of toy microcosms. It was not some sort of nostalgic icon; 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 we collect antiques to fill the void; we acquire things of age to give us some trace of heritage. We read design magazines that sell us carefully aged heritage by the roomful: a reproduction past on every page; a new style that could be called “Neo-Homestead.”
And yet the constant struggle to define a quiet place in the maelstrom of urban life pitches us headlong into perplexity: where to put the antiqued implements that will give our lives meaning?
No longer can it be Grampa’s farm 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 or worse, 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 depend on portable technologies; we live portable lives.
So what are we left with? The family farm has lost its potency, and Grampa’s (actual) house might now be a condominium in Florida.
The ancestral home is increasingly becoming something else: a weekend summer place, a haven from urban life.
For many, the family cottage has become the gathering place for the generations. Unencumbered with the complex realities of the rural 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, hard times 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 often looms much larger in the imagination than a city home ever could.
One family I know, who live spread across the nation, own a private island that is the scene of a massive annual homecoming. Generations have built a carefree summer architectural continuum, much of which has only a passing acquaintance with building codes. No architect has ever muddied the waters of the family’s clear vision of paradise. But the resulting structures are rich with weekend innovation and up-cycling genius, organic designs that have evolved over a lifetime of summers. One family elder, in a moment of solemn reflection by a blazing campfire, told me: “If there is ever a 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 (apart from the nuclear holocaust detail): 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 a small resort. “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, gathering 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.
The architecture of 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 degree 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.
New versions manifest themselves on lakefronts everywhere, and many are ground-breaking in their design ambition. The tamed wilds of cottage country give wings to flights of architectural hubris. But even these places will, with time and use, morph from The Architectural Statement into a place called simply The Cottage. They will become less about design and more about tradition.
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. Many such cottages will never be completed; the very presence of builders and designers in the family practically guarantees it. But that hardly matters. They are perennial works in progress, the final resting place of repurposed windows and refinished furniture, macaroni art and framed pie recipes. The idea of retreat is what counts, the quiet place at the end of a hectic Friday-night drive. Its pristine setting was the nursery for my wife’s fondest childhood memories, and the larger-than-life stories that come with days spent between water and woods. Every rock has a name, every creaking floorboard a signature note.
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 the next generation.