“Old Ontario Houses”, by Tom Cruickshank

Cruickshank, Tom, and de Visser, John. Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture. Richmond Hill, Ont.: Firefly, 2009. Print.

This is a beautiful book, well illustrated with large (filling most of a page each) colour photos by John de Visser.  Houses from all across Ontario are illustrated, with one from as far north as Thunder Bay.

The text is poorly filled, unfortunately.  There are a dozen places where line breaks occur unnecessarily.  This, however, is just an annoyance compared to the bigger problem, which is missing text.  When the text overflows the space available on a page, it just stops – mid-sentence – without any explanation or continuation.  I haven’t asked for the original edition from the library to see if this is a new problem with the 2009 edition.

This is an affectionate look at a hundred or so houses, without too much in the way of pretension – a log cabin is included, and an abandoned farmhouse.  Mostly they are not famous houses.  Only a few interiors are pictured.

In the introduction they define the style of “Ontario farmhouse”; a one-and-a-half storey house with a gable peak over a central front door, and a symmetrical arrangement of windows.  However, in the glossary they refer to it as an “Ontario Cottage”.  The glossary and line drawings of styles are the weakest part of the book, but there is a reasonably extensive suggested bibliography.

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