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Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006)
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Material Culture Review
Revue de la culture matérielle
Editorial Board /
Comité de rédaction
Editor in Chief / Rédacteur en chef
Gerald Pocius
MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND
Managing Editor / Directeur administratif
Richard MacKinnon
CAPE BRETON UNIVERSITY
Associate Editor / Rédacteur en chef adjoint
Laurier Turgeon
UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
©
Cape Breton University Press 2006
ISSN 1718-1259
The contents of contributions to Material Culture Review are solely
the responsibility of the individual authors and are not to be attributed
to Material Culture Review, its editors, production staff or Editorial
Board, or Cape Breton University.
La teneur des articles publiés par la Revue de la culture matérielle
n’engage que les auteurs desdits articles. La responsabilité n’en
saurait être attribuée à la Revue de la culture matérielle, à ses rédacteurs et réviseurs, à son personnel de production ou à son comité de
rédaction, ni à l’Université de Cap Breton.
French Language Review Editor  / Responsable des
comptes rendus en français
Production
UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
Production Co-ordinator / Coordonnatrice de la production
Cape Breton University Press
Tania Martin
Exhibition Review Editor / Responsable des comptes rendus d’expositions
Annmarie Adams
McGILL UNIVERSITY / UNIVERSITÉ McGILL
English Language Review Editor / Responsable des
comptes rendus en anglais
Garth Wilson
CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM / MUSÉE DES
SCIENCES ET DE LA TECHNOLOGIE DU CANADA
Advisory Board / Comité consultatif
Jeremy Aynsley
ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART
Yves Bergeron
UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL
Joy Davis
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
Bernard Herman
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
Matthew Johnson
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
Rhona Richman Kenneally
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY / UNIVERSITÉ CONCORDIA
Brian Osborne
QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY
Pravina Shukla
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Dell Upton
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
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Marie MacSween
French Editor / Réviseure de langue française
Anne-Hélène Kerbiriou
Cover: Sam Borenstein. Sainte-Lucie, Winter. 1964. Oil on panel.
Web site: http://culture.capebretonu.ca
Site Web: http://culture.capebretonu.ca
Material Culture Review gratefully acknowledges the support
of the Dean of Arts and the Department of Folklore, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, Canada Science and Technology
Museum and the Canada Research Chair in Intangible Cultural
Heritage, Cape Breton University.
La Revue de la culture matérielle est reconnaissante de l’appui qui
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de folklore de l’Université Memorial de Terre-Neuve, Musée des
sciences et de la technologie du Canada et la Chaire de recherche
du Canada sur le patrimoine culturel intangible de Cape Breton
University.
Formerly Material History Review
Formerly published by
CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM
Autrefois Revue d’histoire de la culture matérielle
P.O. Box 5300, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, B1P 6L2
Tel: 902.563.1990 Fax: 902.563.1910
Autrefois édité par le
MUSÉE DES SCIENCES ET DE LA TECHNOLOGIE DU
CANADA
Material Culture Review provides a venue for refereed
articles and research reports encompassing a range of
approaches in interpreting the past through an analysis of
Canadians’ relationships to their material world. Critical
reviews of books, exhibitions, and historic sites, artifact
studies and reports on collections encourage the use of
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Table of Contents / Table des matières
Editorial / Éditorial
Transforming Places, Transforming Things Transformer les lieux, transformer les objets
3
Articles
Loren Lerner The Aron Museum at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal
Kenneth Donovan 20
Imposing Discipline Upon Nature: Gardens, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry in Cape Breton, 1713-1758
8
Research Reports / Rapports de recherches
Robert Tremblay 39
Pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Éévolution du paysage architectural le long de la route transcanadienne, de 1949 à nos jours
Gloria Lesser The Treimane Art Pottery
48
Exhibition Review / Compte rendu d’exposition
Cynthia Hammond Sense of the City
Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006) 59
Book Reviews / Comptes rendus de livres
Shelley McKellar The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future
66
Lianne McTavish Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science
67
Randall Brooks Taking the Stars: Celestial Navigation from Argonauts to Astronauts
69
Franz Klingender Country Fairs in Canada
70
S. Holyck Hunchuck The Elements of Style: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Architectural Detail
71
Contributors / Collaborateurs 75
Editorial
Éditorial
Transforming Places
Transforming Things
Transformer les lieux,
transformer les objets
When an object is created, its form and design
reflect the cultural concerns of the particular time
and place. Objects endure over time, however, and
are brought to other places and, in both situations,
are often transformed by new values and beliefs,
adding multiple meanings to the original intent of
the creator. The essays in this volume of Material
Culture Review deal with the transformative powers
of time and space and how things are thought of
in different ways depending on the nature of these
new contexts.
Some of the most important work by material
culture scholars has dealt with how objects influence or reflect major transformations of a culture.
Henry Glassie (1975) and Rhys Isaac (1982) both
wrote about the changes that occurred in Virginia
society, each relying on material culture to chart
changes in thought. Matthew Johnson (1996) has
done the same for the transformations that occurred
in English society from medieval to modern times.
The essays in this particular volume of Material
Culture Review deal with transformations on a
more micro level, and reveal how the local can
reflect broader cultural concerns of a particular
people and place.
One of the pervasive transformations of material culture often relates to place: transformations
due to migrations, transformations due to increased
wealth and mobility, factors that encourage a
postmodern globalized world of tourists who
are eager to engage with commodified culture.
Objects move across space and through time to
new places, to be appropriated, adapted, consumed,
aestheticized and displayed.
The issue of the movement of things (essentially the movement of ideas) has long been a focus
of material culture researchers. For many years
cultural geographers and folklife scholars—largely
in Europe and later in North America—have documented where certain things were originally found
and then charted how they moved from one place
Lorsqu’un objet est créé, son design et sa forme
reflètent les préoccupations culturelles d’un temps
et d’un lieu particuliers. Mais les objets traversent
le temps et sont amenés en d’autres lieux ; dans
les deux cas, ils sont souvent transformés par de
nouvelles valeurs et croyances, qui ajoutent de
multiples significations aux intentions premières de
ceux qui les ont créés. Les articles de ce numéro de
la Revue de la culture matérielle se penchent sur ces
pouvoirs de transformation du temps et de l’espace
et sur la manière dont les choses sont pensées de
manière différente en fonction de la nature de ces
nouveaux contextes.
Quelques-uns des travaux les plus importants
réalisés par les chercheurs en culture matérielle ont
abordé la manière dont les objets influencent ou
reflètent les transformations majeures d’une culture.
Henry Glassie (1975) et Rhys Isaac (1982) ont tous
deux écrit sur les changements sociaux qui se sont
produits en Virginie, chacun d’entre eux se fondant
sur la culture matérielle pour « cartographier » les
changements dans les mentalités. Matthew Johnson
(1996) fit la même chose pour les transformations
qui se sont produites dans la société anglaise, depuis
les temps médiévaux jusqu’à l’époque moderne.
Les articles de ce numéro spécial de la Revue de
la culture matérielle se penchent de près sur ces
transformations, et révèlent comment le « microniveau local » peut refléter les préoccupations
culturelles plus larges d’un groupe de gens en un
lieu particulier.
Les transformations les plus profondes de
la culture matérielle sont souvent dues à des
changements de lieux : transformations en raison de
migrations, ou en raison de davantage d’opulence
et de mobilité, facteurs qui encouragent une
mondialisation postmoderne du tourisme où les
individus sont avides d’entrer en contact avec une
culture mise en marché. Les objets se déplacent
dans l’espace et à travers le temps vers de nouveaux
lieux, où ils sont appropriés, adaptés, consommés,
Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006) to another. The pioneering work of scholars such
as Iorwerth Peate (1972) and H. J. Fleure (1951)
documented diffusion and transfer, research driven
by concerns with more fundamental issues: cultural
contact, cultural borrowings and cultural adaptations. These issues remain important.
Kenneth Donovan’s essay on structuring the
agricultural landscapes of Cape Breton focuses
squarely on this spatial transformative process.
Plants and animals were quite literally brought to
the new Cape Breton colony from other cultures
who raised animals and grew their own crops.
Wherever European cultures appropriated spaces
in their colonial adventures, the initial settlement
impulse involved attempts to reproduce familiar
landscapes and cuisines through the planting of
species brought from the homeland. This was,
quite literally, a colonization of the landscape, for
settlers ignored or removed indigenous varieties of
vegetation in efforts to replace them with the fields
and gardens of back home. These attempts, then,
often became exercises in adaptability to determine
whether what was used in one environment could be
sustained and flourish in new circumstances.
While such attempts at agricultural transfer
and colonization may seem somewhat draconian
and simplistic from our present-day context, they
perhaps are the first signs of the cultural attachment
to a globalized material world that marks our
current condition. As people travel and relocate,
the disruption of that spatial displacement is often
countered by the desire to keep important elements
of the material world constant. This frequently
involves the material culture of food—a culture’s
cuisine—so that people eat what they are familiar
with in their new place. The concerns of the settlers
of New France to retain the eating habits they
brought from France are similar, in many ways, to
immigrants replicating their own cuisines in their
new homelands today. The disruptions of new
spaces are lessened by this impulse to keep the
familiar—an impulse that makes possible a visit
to Starbucks around the corner from Canterbury
Cathedral, to McDonald’s in the heart of Warsaw (a
multistoried version) or the twenty-four-hour outlet
at the Rio de Janeiro airport.
These transferred cuisines are fixed with new
meanings as they have transformed their new spaces.
In a similar vein, the entire museumizing endeavour
has as its fundamental mission the recontextualizing
of objects from their initial cultural niche to one
now framed by issues of representation and display.
Loren Lerner’s essay on the Aron Museum at
« esthétisés » et exposés.
La question du mouvement des choses
(essentiellement le mouvement des idées) fut
longtemps au cœur des recherches en culture
matérielle. Pendant de nombreuses années, les
chercheurs en géographie culturelle et en arts et
traditions populaires—la plupart en Europe, puis
ensuite en Amérique du Nord—ont documenté les
lieux de découvertes originelles de certains objets
et ont cartographié ensuite leurs déplacements
d’un endroit à l’autre. Les travaux pionniers de
chercheurs comme Iorwerth Peate (1969) et H. J.
Fleure (1968), tout en documentant les questions
de diffusion et de transfert, étaient animés par des
préoccupations plus fondamentales : les contacts,
les adaptations et les emprunts culturels. Ces
questions restent importantes.
L’article de Kenneth Donovan sur la structuration des paysages agricoles de Cap Breton aborde
de front ce processus de transformation spatiale.
Des plantes et des animaux furent importés quasiment tels qu’ils étaient dans d’autres cultures qui
pratiquaient l’élevage et des cultures qui leur étaient
propres dans la nouvelle colonie du Cap Breton.
Partout où des Européens se sont approprié l’espace
dans leurs aventures coloniales, le premier mouvement de la colonie initiale consistait en tentatives
de reproduire les paysages et les usages culinaires
familiers en plantant des espèces apportées de la
mère patrie. Ce fut, littéralement, une colonisation
du paysage, puisque les colons ignoraient ou
enlevaient les éléments de la végétation indigène
dans le but de les remplacer par les champs et
les jardins qu’ils venaient de quitter. Par la suite,
ces tentatives devinrent souvent des exercices
d’adaptabilité, pour déterminer si ce qui était utilisé
dans un certain environnement pouvait se maintenir
et croître dans de nouvelles circonstances.
Si de telles tentatives de transferts agricoles
lors de la colonisation peuvent, dans le contexte
d’aujourd’hui, nous paraître quelque peu draconiennes et simplistes, elles constituent peut-être
néanmoins les premiers signes d’un attachement
culturel à un univers matériel mondialisé qui est
la marque de notre condition actuelle. Alors que
les gens voyagent et s’installent en de nouveaux
lieux, la rupture qu’entraîne ce déplacement spatial
est souvent contrée par le désir de conserver à
l’identique d’importants éléments du monde
matériel. Ceci implique fréquemment cette forme de
la culture matérielle qu’est la nourriture—la cuisine
d’une culture—qui fait que les gens mangent ce qui
leur est familier à leur nouvelle domiciliation. Le
the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom synagogue
provides a case study of how the ordinary objects
of everyday life are selected through the lens of the
collector. The importance of this essay comes from
the insights it sheds on how one collection of objects
is recontextualized over time, dependent on the
messages considered important to the viewer. While
initially these objects spoke to an audience unaware
of Jewish cultural values, in more recent times the
same objects convey messages more related to the
stories of individual and family history.
Gloria Lesser’s essay deals with many issues,
but her investigation centres on how the objects
made by one particular pottery maker reveal transformations of particular regional landscapes—just
as the objects in a museum acquire new and multiple
meanings. Lesser’s Latvian potters do not fit easily
into the stereotype of a Francophone Quebec. Yet,
the region she focuses on—Val-David—became
a regional craft centre with artists from many
backgrounds. The lack of attention to ethnic
productions in Quebec—such as the Treimane
Art Pottery—reflects a popular perception of a
culture believed to be characterized by the iconic
activities of a dominant Francophone group. As
that culture has changed, scholars have begun to
turn their attention to the objects of diversity that
characterizes much of Quebec. The landscape of
the Val-David region itself has been transformed,
becoming an ethnic art and craft enclave and, what
is more important, an enclave for tourists.
Transformative geographies are most evident
in the paths that we travel in our everyday lives.
The advent of new modes of transportation and
with them new routes for travel, are some of the
most subtle, yet fundamental, changes that alter
both landscapes and their attendant artifacts. Robert
Tremblay’s report on the Trans-Canada Highway
provides insight into that most symbolic of all
Canadian routes. From its inception, the creation
of this automobile route brought with it an entire
world of things—fast food chains, gas stations,
motels and other forms of lodging. While none of
these forms were new, they did provide a common
vocabulary of a Canadian material world that
would be known in the many diverse regions of
the country. Those forms as well, have gradually
evolved as the expectations and needs of travellers
have changed. The material vocabulary of forms of
the highway—the A&W Restaurant or the Esso Gas
Station—may be one of the few languages that all
Canadians share no matter where they live.
souci qu’avaient les colons de la Nouvelle-France de
conserver les habitudes alimentaires qu’ils avaient
apportées de France sont similaires, en de nombreux
points, à celui qu’ont les immigrants d’aujourd’hui
de reproduire leurs propres cuisines dans leurs
nouvelles patries. Les ruptures qu’imposent les
nouveaux lieux sont atténuées par ce mouvement
spontané de conservation du familier—mouvement
spontané qui fait qu’il est possible de prendre un
café dans un Starbucks au coin de la cathédrale
de Canterbury, d’entrer dans un McDonald’s dans
le cœur de Varsovie (l’une parmi d’innombrables
versions) ou dans la galerie commerciale ouverte
vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre de l’aéroport
de Rio de Janeiro.
Ces traditions culinaires transférées se voient
assigner de nouvelles significations en même temps
qu’elles transforment leurs nouveaux espaces.
Dans une veine similaire, la mission fondamentale
de l’intégralité des efforts de muséification réside
dans la recontextualisation d’objets, de leur niche
culturelle initiale à une autre, façonnée aujourd’hui
par des questions de représentation et d’exposition.
L’article de Loren Lerner sur le musée Aron, à la
synagogue du Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom,
fournit une étude de cas de la manière dont les objets
ordinaires de la vie quotidienne sont sélectionnés
à travers le point de vue de celui qui en fait le
collectionnement. L’importance de cet article
provient de l’éclairage qu’il apporte à la manière
dont une collection d’objets se recontextualise
au fil du temps, en fonction des messages que
le spectateur considère importants. Alors qu’à
l’origine ces objets « parlaient » à un public non
initié aux valeurs culturelles juives, à une époque
plus récente, ces mêmes objets véhiculent des
messages plus étroitement liés aux narrations de
l’histoire individuelle et familiale.
L’article de Gloria Lesser aborde de nombreuses
questions, mais son investigation se concentre sur
la manière dont les objets réalisés par un potier en
particulier révèlent les transformations dans les
paysages de sa région—tout comme les objets d’un
musée acquièrent de multiples nouveaux sens. Les
potiers lettons de Lesser n’entrent pas vraiment dans
le stéréotype d’un Québec francophone. Cependant,
la région qu’elle examine—Val-David—est
devenue un centre d’artisanat régional comptant
des artistes de provenances diverses. Le manque
d’attention envers les productions ethniques au
Québec—telles que celles de l’atelier de poterie
Treimane—reflète une perception populaire de
la culture que l’on pense être caractérisée par
Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006) These four essays, then, speak to how things
are transformed by new places and by how places
transform things to communicate new messages.
Objects are never static, nor are their meanings
fixed for very long periods of time. Subsequent
users, consumers, viewers of objects bring new
meanings to them, as the initial intentions of
creation give way to adaptations to new concerns
and appropriations by new groups. As these objects
are carried forward in time and to other places, they
are transformed endlessly to suit the needs of the
moment.
Gerald Pocius
Editor in Chief
les activités iconiques d’un groupe francophone
dominant. Comme cette culture a changé, les
chercheurs ont commencé à se tourner vers les
objets de la diversité qui caractérisent une grande
partie du Québec. Dans la région de Val-David, le
paysage lui-même s’est transformé en devenant une
enclave d’art et d’artisanat ethnique et, ce qui est
plus important, une enclave touristique.
Les géographies en transformation sont plus
visibles le long des chemins que nous parcourons
dans nos vies quotidiennes. L’avènement de
nouveaux modes de transport et, avec eux, celui
de nouvelles routes, sont quelques-uns des changements les plus subtils, et cependant fondamentaux,
qui altèrent à la fois les paysages et les artefacts qui
les accompagnent. Robert Tremblay, en évoquant la
Transcanadienne, nous procure un point de vue sur
cette route canadienne symbolique entre toutes. Dès
le début, la création de cette route pour automobiles
amena avec elle tout un univers de choses—chaînes
de restauration rapide, stations-service, motels
et autres modes d’hébergement. Aucune de ces
formes n’était nouvelle, et cependant elles ont
fourni un vocabulaire commun à un monde matériel
canadien qui se ferait par la suite connaître dans
les nombreuses et diverses régions du pays. Ces
formes, elles aussi, ont progressivement évolué au
fur et à mesure des changements dans les attentes et
les besoins des voyageurs. Le vocabulaire matériel
des formes de l’autoroute—les restaurants A&W ou
les stations-services Esso—pourrait bien être l’un
des rares langages que partagent tous les Canadiens,
où qu’ils vivent.
Ces quatre articles évoquent donc la manière
dont les objets se transforment en de nouveaux lieux
et de la manière dont les lieux transforment les objets
afin de communiquer de nouveaux messages. Les
objets ne sont jamais statiques, non plus que leurs
significations ne sont fixées pour très longtemps.
Les usagers ultérieurs, les consommateurs, ceux
qui regardent les objets, leur attribuent de nouveaux
sens, de même que les intentions à l’origine de leur
création cèdent la place à des adaptations, à de
nouvelles préoccupations et à des appropriations
par de nouveaux groupes. En même temps que ces
objets s’acheminent dans le temps et vers d’autres
lieux, ils sont indéfiniment transformés pour
convenir aux besoins du moment.
Gerald Pocius
Rédacteur en chef
References
Fleure, H. J. 1951. A Natural History of Man in Britain.
London: Collins.
Fleure, H. J. 1951. A Natural History of Man in Britain.
London: Collins.
Glassie, Henry. 1975. Folk Housing in Middle Virginia.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
Glassie, Henry. 1975. Folk Housing in Middle Virginia.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
Isaac, Rhys. 1982. Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Isaac, Rhys. 1982. Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Johnson, Matthew. 1996. An Archaeology of Capitalism.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Johnson, Matthew. 1996. An Archaeology of Capitalism.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Peate, Iorwerth C. 1972. Tradition and Folk Life: A Welsh
View. London: Faber.
Peate, Iorwerth C. 1972. Tradition and Folk Life: A Welsh
View. London: Faber.
Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006) Articles
Loren Lerner
The Aron Museum at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal
Résumé
Lorsque le musée Aron ouvrit ses portes en 1953,
au temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom à Montréal,
il était le premier musée d’objets cérémoniels
juifs au Canada. Durant ses premières années
d’existence, le rabbin Stern, avec sa conception
de la collection, les membres de la famille Aron en
tant que bienfaiteurs et l’artiste Sam Borenstein,
qui contribua à sélectionner les objets, jouèrent
des rôles significatifs dans son développement.
Cet article explore la description originelle du
musée Aron afin de montrer la manière dont les
valeurs humanistes et esthétiques attribuées aux
pièces exposées suivaient le schéma des musées
et expositions juives d’avant l’Holocauste.
Pour des raisons variées, les interprétations
religieuses, ethnographiques et historiques des
objets cérémoniels du musée Aron était initialement
minimisées dans l’exposition publique. Aujourd’hui,
la provenance et les associations mémorielles de
ces objets, aussi bien que l’explication des rituels
juifs, expriment plus pleinement la signification
multi-niveaux de l’art cérémoniel juif.
Abstract
In 1953, when the Aron Museum at the Temple
Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal opened it
was the first museum of Jewish ceremonial objects
in Canada. In its early years, Rabbi Stern—in
his vision of the collection, the Aron family as
benefactors and the artist Sam Borenstein who
helped to select the pieces, played significant
roles in the development of the museum. This
article explores the original description of the
Aron Museum to show how the humanistic and
aesthetic values attributed to the items followed
the pattern of pre-Holocaust Jewish museums and
exhibitions. For a variety of reasons the religious,
ethnographic and historical interpretations of
the ceremonial objects of the Aron Museum were
initially minimized in its public display. Today,
the provenance and memory associations of these
objects as well as an explanation of Jewish rituals
more fully express the multi-layered meaning of
Jewish ceremonial art.
In Europe and the United States, Jewish museums
have been a visible part of Jewish life since the
late 19th century. These museums often originated
with collections of Jewish ritual objects that were
owned by wealthy Jews and donated to synagogues,
seminaries and Jewish educational institutions.1 In
Canada, the collecting of Judaic artifacts began
much later, in 1953, when the Aron Museum opened
at Temple Emanu-El in Montreal, now called the
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom.
The inauguration of the Aron Museum took
place on September 4, 1953. A photograph (Fig.
1) bearing the caption “This is the first time that
a Museum of Religious Art Objects has ever been
established in Canada” shows a single display
cabinet containing five objects (Temple Emanu-El
Weekly Bulletin, 1953). Standing next to the cabinet
are the donors, Mr. and Mrs. Josef Aron and Rabbi
Dr. Harry Joshua Stern. On the top shelf is a kiddush
cup of Austro-Hungarian origin, dated 1858), and
8
Fig. 1
Inauguration of Aron Museum, September 4, 1953. Display cabinet with
donors: Mr. and Mrs. Josef Aron and Rabbi Dr. Harry Joshua Stern.
Fig. 2
Chanukah menorah
(chanukiah) crafted by
Hans Boller of Frankfurt
for the House of Rothschild.
German. Late-19th, early20th century. Silver. From
the house collection of the
Rothschild residence in
Frankfurt. Gift of Josef and
Anna Aron in memory of
Ignatz Aron.
Fig. 3
Large kiddush cup with cover
and matching stand. Vienna,
Austria. 1897. Silver. Gift of
Mrs. Anna Aron in memory
of Josef Aron.
two early 20th-century pidyon haben trays from
Poland. On the bottom shelf is a Chanukah menorah
crafted in the late 19th century by the silversmith
Hans Boller of Frankfurt for the House of Rothschild
(Fig. 2). Next to the menorah is a pewter Passover
Seder tray from 1770. In the centre of the tray is a
design of an urn holding flowers—on its rim, the
maker identifies himself in Hebrew: “I am the writer
Leib bar Zalman from Mansfort in the year 5530,
twenty-fifth day in the month of Nissan, according
to the abbreviated way of counting the year.” With
the exception of the tray, these ritual objects were
crafted in Europe between the 18th and early-20th
centuries, mainly by Christian silversmiths.2 They
were commissioned by Jewish individuals or
community representatives to be used in religious
ceremonies both in synagogues and homes.
Josef Aron was a German Jew who immigrated
to Canada from Frankfurt in 1904. As the story is
told, Rabbi Stern3 was so impressed with Aron’s
Chanukah menorah, which Aron had received as
a gift from his brother Paul, he asked if he could
borrow it for the Temple’s Chanukah festival
(Stern 1961). He subsequently convinced Aron to
donate the menorah, along with four other objects
in his collection, to the synagogue, thus creating a
museum. During the next seven years the museum
acquired more than forty Judaic objects.4 They came
from three main sources: the Judaica collection that
Josef’s brother Paul had accumulated in Germany
before the Second World War; items Josef and other
Temple members purchased from Sam Borenstein,
an artist and antiques dealer whose wife Judith
was Josef’s niece and Paul’s daughter; and the
Jewish Cultural Reconstruction commission, whose
mandate following World War II was to find homes
for Jewish ceremonial objects that had been stolen
by the Nazis and dispersed throughout Europe.
In recalling her childhood home, Judith remembered that her father, a Frankfurt businessman
and Jewish scholar, had a substantial collection of
Judaica as well as a large library of Hebrew books.
The objects in the collection were displayed in
glass wall cabinets in the living room.5 While they
made a handsome display, they were also used by
the family for the Sabbath and religious holidays.
There were candlesticks that were lit to welcome
the Sabbath, kiddush cups for each child for the
blessing over wine at the Sabbath meal (Fig. 3) and
spice boxes for the Havdalah prayers that marked
the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the
work week (Fig. 4). There was also an etrog for
holding the special fruit used in blessings during
Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006) Sukkot, the annual harvest festival, and a Passover
plate, which held the assortment of foods referred
to in the pre-dinner Seder readings recalling the
Exodus from Egypt. In the family dining room
was the Shabbat lamp which was lit every Friday
night before sunset (Fig. 5) and a special washbasin
called a lavabo (Fig. 6). The lavabo was filled with
water by the children in preparation for Shabbat and
was used by the family to ritually wash their hands
before her father recited the blessing over the bread.
Judith immigrated to Montreal in the mid
1930s with her sister Gella, and in 1938 she married
Borenstein. In the meantime, Hitler had come to
power in Germany and decreed that Jews leaving
Germany could not take their possessions with
them. Realizing that his collection of Judaica was
at risk, Paul devised a plan to save it. He entrusted a
long-time employee, a non-Jew named Baum, with
the task of taking one precious object at a time to the
home of a friend who lived in Zurich, Switzerland.
Over the next several years Baum made many such
trips. When Paul was forced to leave Frankfurt, he
retrieved the objects and took them with him to
Palestine. Over the years he gifted some of them
to his family in Montreal and they in turn
donated them to the Aron Museum.
With an interest in collecting even
more objects to donate, Josef turned again
to Borenstein, who made many visits to
Jacoby’s auction house on his behalf.
Jacoby’s was well known for its brisk
trade in European antiques. Although Josef
died June 2, 1956, he secured the future of
the museum by stipulating in his will “a
Memorial Fund in the name of Josef and
Anna Aron, the income of which is to be used
for the purchase of Jewish Ceremonial Art
objects and display cases, for the Museum
in the said Temple founded by myself and
my said beloved wife.”6 The Memorial Fund
fell under the care of the museum committee,
which was headed by Josef’s wife Anna. The
committee continued to look to Borenstein for
recommendations and to solicit donations by
Temple members.
Fig. 4
Spice tower modelled after
the Eschenheimer Turm.
19th century. Frankfurt
am Main. Gift of Josef and
Anna Aron.
10 In 1960, Anna Aron wrote a short article about
the museum in a commemorative monograph
entitled The Emanu-El Story, 1882-1960 (n.p.). In
it she explained that the “Jewish art objects” were
“reminders of a Jewish past, as evidenced in the
religious symbols of our people.” She also outlined
the two objectives of the museum: “for our members
and children of the Jewish faith to view the beauties
of Jewish life through the ages,” and to explain
Judaism to “persons of the non-Jewish faith, who
come through the portals of Temple Emanu-El,
that they too may learn the
aesthetic side of our people,
that these symbols dramatize
the great ideals in Jewish
life and teach the meaning
of our great heritage and
tradition.” As a permanent
Fig. 5
Sabbath hanging lamp. German.
19th century. Brass. Gift of Mrs.
Nathan and Miss Molly Aron in
memory of their parents Paul
and Karoline Aron.
Fig. 6
Lavabo and basin from the home of Paul
and Karoline Aron in Frankfurt am Main.
Polish. 19th century. Copper. Gift of Molly
Aron and Gella Bing in memory of their
parents Karoline and Paul Aron.
exhibition of Jewish ritual objects, the museum
was both an affirmation of Judaism and a means
by which Christians could become familiar with
Jewish culture, religion and history and thereby
learn about Judaism.
Jewish Emancipation and the Science
of Judaism
Correcting misconceptions about Jewish beliefs
and practices by explaining Judaism to non-Jews
was considered an important defence against
anti-Semitism. This defence grew out of a way
of thinking that had developed almost two
hundred years earlier in France, with the gradual
emancipation of the Jews (Mendes-Flohr and
Reinharz 1980,101-102). Following the French
Revolution, Jews were granted citizenship and the
full equality of each individual before the law. As
Napoleon’s conquering armies marched east to
Germany, Poland and Russia, citizenship in these
countries was also granted, but this did little to alter
the negative attitudes with which most non-Jews
regarded their Jewish fellow citizens.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, a mounting
wave of anti-Semitism in Germany led to the
“Hep! Hep!” anti-Jewish riots of 1819. In resistance, Jewish university students joined together
to establish a sort of anti-defamation movement
(Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1980, 182-83).
They called themselves Verein fuer Cultur und
Wissenschaft der Juden and were responsible for
creating the “Science of Judaism,” a new historiography that through an objective methodology
would correct misinformation about Jews and thus
stop non-Jews from making slanderous accusations
and taking anti-Semitic positions.
The principal aims of the Verein were to defend
the right of Jews to participate fully in culture and
politics and to expedite Jewry’s integration and
assimilation into European society. Although the
Verein dissolved in 1825, these objectives endured
as central concerns of modern Jewish scholarship.
It was believed that by approaching the Science
of Judaism as an academic discipline based on the
textual study of Jewish literature, Jewish learning
would be released from theology and religious
practice. In this way, intellectuals sought to depict
Judaism from a historical and philosophical point
of view. By striving to show how the Jew was
like the rest of humanity, the strangeness of Jews
and Judaism in relation to the larger world would
disappear.
At the Temple Emanu-El in Montreal, Rabbi
Stern shared these ideas. His ideological motives
for reaching out to the non-Jewish community were
premised on the belief that ignorance and misinformation were the primary sources of discrimination.
He believed that prejudice would disappear if
factual information were clearly communicated. In
1927, before coming to the Temple Emanu-El from
Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Stern had already started
on his ecumenical campaign with the production
of a short publication entitled Jew and Christian
(1927). From the time of his arrival in Montreal
until his death in 1984, interpreting Judaism to
the Christian world and speaking publicly against
injustices were an important part of his rabbinical
activities.
In keeping with Rabbi Stern’s ideas, it was
decided that the religious use of the objects at the
Aron Museum would not be a dominant feature in
their presentation. Rather, ritual practices would be
described in normative terms with an emphasis on
finding commonalities within the larger categories
of Western culture and universal beliefs. This was
clearly delineated in Anna Aron’s description of
the collection in The Emanu-El Story, 1882-1960:
“The various Ceremonial Art Objects are used in
the functions of daily living. Their functioning
encompasses all the senses, including hearing,
since the intonation of blessings is a necessary
accompaniment to the ceremonies” (Anna Aron
1960, n.p.).
What mattered most to Rabbi Stern and the
Museum Committee was the cultural designation of
the “Ceremonial Art Objects” as authentic artistic
works in relation to their wider historical and philosophical significance in Western civilization. As
described by Anna Aron (1960) the “precious silver
seven-branched candelabra” was a reminder of the
Temple in Jerusalem where the menorah played an
important role. The lavabo was “handmade copper,”
more than a hundred and fifty years old. The basin
had a symbolic relation to the “act of purification
which was required of everyone who entered
the Sanctuary in Jerusalem.” The “rare Shabbat
Lamp with a dove of peace carved thereon” was
expressive of a “religion in which light and the
act of lighting play a dominant role.” The items
were primarily characterized according to Biblical
history, the techniques used in their crafting, the
materials they were made of and the motifs that
decorated them. How they were used in ceremonies
and what they symbolized in terms of Judaism was
given less attention.
This type of analysis was not only based on he
scholarly traditions established by the Verein, it was
consistent with a long tradition of displaying Judaic
objects in public exhibitions (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
1998, 79-80). In Paris in 1878, in the first public
display of Judaica at the Exposition Universelle at
the Palais Trocadéro, Jewish ceremonial objects
were carefully described as works of art. According
to those who mounted the display, if Judaism was
to be considered part of the history of the Western
world, Jewish ceremonial objects needed to be
classified in a hierarchy that included art works
created by civilized people everywhere.
The display consisted of eighty-two objects
that belonged to Isaac Strauss, an Alsatian Jew
who arrived in Paris in 1827. A musician and chef
d’orchestre to Napoleon III, Strauss purchased the
objects during his extensive travels throughout
Europe, especially Germany. When the collection,
now somewhat larger, was exhibited nine years
later at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition in
London, the presentation again stressed the artistic
sensibility of the objects rather than their ritual
significance (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 85-86).
In the 1890s, art historians and scholars
throughout Europe were increasingly interested in
the research and display of Jewish ritual objects
(Grossman with Ahlborn 1997, 11-14). In 1895,
the Society for the Collection and Conservation
of Jewish Art and Historic Monuments was
established in Vienna. Thirteen years later, Heinrich
Frauberger, a Catholic art historian and director of
Duesseldorf’s Museum of Applied Arts, curated
the first exhibition of Jewish ceremonial objects in
Germany and founded the Society for Research of
Jewish Art Monuments in Frankfurt.
Frauberger was the first trained art historian
and museologist to have an interest in Jewish art.
He amassed a private collection of Judaica that was
purchased at about the time of the Duesseldorf exhibition by Salli Kirschstein, a Berlin businessman
who displayed the objects in a private museum in
his home. The reason Kirschstein gave for showing
the collection sounds very much like the rationale
behind the Aron Museum. “A museum must
concentrate [on making the past] come alive and
serve as a source of contemplation and knowledge.
A Jewish Museum can be of great value in keeping
our people together. It can also considerably
influence the attitude of non-Jews towards Jews and
Judaism, because the meagre knowledge of Jewish
life is and has been one of the strongest motives for
anti-Jewish attitudes” (Gutmann 1991, 176).
12 Regardless of these efforts, anti-Semitism was
on the rise in Germany and in 1925 Kirschstein
sold his collection to the Hebrew Union College in
Cincinnati (it is now housed at the Skirball Museum
in Los Angeles). Other collections did not fair so
well. The Vienna Jewish Museum, founded in the
late 1890s, was destroyed by the Nazis during
the Second World War. Other museums were also
plundered, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin,
that was bequeathed by the Dresden collector Albert
Wolf after World War I, and the Frankfurt Jewish
Museum, established in 1922.
The Loss and Recovery of Judaica
More than thirty years passed before some of
the lost treasures were retrieved by the Jewish
community. In 1956, the bulletin of the Canadian
Jewish Congress announced: “Congress has been
made the trustee of a number of ceremonial objects,
recovered in Germany after the last war and which
in many instances are the only remnants of the
once flourishing Jewish communities in Europe.
Congress made available some of these objects
to the newly built congregations in Canada as a
permanent link between these congregations and
the Jewish communities in Europe which were
destroyed.”7 This entry explains how, in 1956, the
Aron Museum came to acquire ceremonial objects
through the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, a
supranational commission administered in Canada
by Congress.
In The Rape of Europa (1995), Lynn Nicholas
chronicles the plundering of art across Europe
and the difficult restitution process. She explains
that one of the problems at the conclusion of the
Second World War was deciding what to do with
“heirless” Jewish property. The traditional solution
of reverting unclaimed cultural property to the
state for distribution to museums and libraries was
unthinkable when the nation in question had attempted to exile or kill the entire Jewish population
of Europe. In late 1946, the American military asked
Captain Seymour Pomrenze, a former employee of
the National Archives in Washington, to go through
the million or so Jewish books and objects that
were sitting in Nazi depositories. He selected over
a thousand Torah scrolls, prayer shawls, paintings,
furnishings and ritual objects made of precious
metals and stones for distribution to synagogues
and museums worldwide by the Jewish Cultural
Reconstruction. Many of the less valuable items
were ultimately sold.
Countless stories exist of the loss and recovery
of Jewish artifacts. Soon after the war, Mordechai
Narkiss, director of the Bezalel Museum in Israel,
travelled through Europe and retrieved thousands of
Jewish art objects (Narkiss 1985). Closer to home,
Montrealer Yehuda Elberg, a Holocaust survivor
and private collector of Jewish ritual objects,
discovered the kiddush cup given to him by his
grandfather as a wedding present in 1939 at a New
York auction house.8 In a work of fiction based on
fact entitled The Iron Tracks (1998), Holocaust
survivor Aharon Appelfeld evoked the endless
search for remnants of the Jewish culture that had
flourished in central European towns and villages
for hundreds of years before the war.9
Since the 16th century, Jews had lived in
large numbers in the vast region that stretched
from modern Lithuania through Poland, Russia
and Ukraine. In this “pale of settlement,” Jewish
inhabitants developed an extensive shtetl village
culture whose landmarks were synagogues, study
centres and rabbinical courts. In Appelfeld’s story,
the narrator is a kind of travelling salesman named
Erwin Siegelbaum who rides the rails that were
used to transport Jews to labour and death camps.
Tracing the vanished outposts of Jewish life, Erwin
buys abandoned Judaica for a song and resells
it to collectors he meets along his route. On his
journey through emptiness, the objects, including
candlesticks, kiddush cups and sacred books, begin
to affect him, ultimately tying him to the shadows
of the lost Jewish world.
Montreal painter Sam Borenstein, who looked
for Jewish ritual objects on behalf of Josef Aron and
the Aron Museum, was one of those shtetl Jews.
He was born in Kalvarija, Lithuania, and at the
age of four moved to Suwalki, Poland, where his
father, a rabbinical scholar, had found a job with
the Singer Sewing Machine Company (Kuhnes and
Rosshandler 1978). By 1908, the Suwalki census
counted 13,002 Jews (Berelson 1989). Borenstein’s
life in Poland came to an end in 1921 when, at age
thirteen, he immigrated to Canada with his father
and a sister. The end of Jewish life in Suwalki came
later, on Saturday, October 21, 1939, when a Polish
official arrived at the synagogue and demanded that
Chief Rabbi David Lifshitz and two representatives
of the community accompany him to the German
authorities (Berelson 1989, 49-51).10
A photograph taken in a synagogue in Kalvarija
shows Chief Rabbi Lifshitz and another man
posing beside a menorah, several sacred books
and a cabinet of Torah scrolls, some without
covers, that had been smuggled out of Suwalki
(Fig. 7). These items had been hidden by the Jews
of Suwalki before their evacuation to the death
camps. When it was discovered that the Germans
had begun to find the objects and were selling the
Fig. 7
Rabbi David
Lifshitz and
another man
in front of a
cabinet full of
Torah scrolls
smuggled out of
Suwalki, Poland
and brought
to Kalvarija,
Lithuania
in 1940.
Washington:
United States
Holocaust
Memorial
Museum,
courtesy of
Chaya Lifshitz
Waxman, acc.
no. 35460.
scrolls to shoemakers for their leather, a campaign
was launched by some Suwalki Jews who had
escaped to Lithuania to pay non-Jews to retrieve
the remaining scrolls and take them to safety in
Lithuania. However, with the German invasion of
that country, both the Suwalki and Lithuanian Jews
were rounded up and transported to death camps.
The menorah, sacred books and scrolls of Suwalki
were never seen again.
Borenstein’s search for Judaica took place
in the context of a worldwide Jewish community
deeply affected by the Holocaust and by the destruction of Europe’s once rich Jewish culture. However,
even as the history of the objects and how they
arrived in Montreal were uppermost in the minds
of Borenstein and the members of the Temple, they
chose to present and describe the objects in a manner consistent with the public exhibition of Jewish
objects before the Second World War. In other
words, their particular historic significance was
overlooked in favour of an uplifting presentation
of their spiritual and aesthetic values.
At Jacoby’s auction house, Borenstein regularly found Jewish ceremonial objects that had been
acquired by dealers in Europe. Jacoby’s was also
a clearinghouse for precious possessions sold by
impoverished refugees and Holocaust survivors
who had made their way to Montreal. In effect, as
an immigrant from pre-war Europe, Borenstein was
finding items that belonged to his own past. His
most noteworthy discovery, which linked him to
his childhood in Poland, were the two silver pidyon
haben trays made in Poland that were part of Aron’s
original donation to the museum.
Ethnography and Identifying Jewish
Culture
Most of the objects in the Aron Museum collection are remnants of the once vibrant Jewish
communities of Europe. As such, they represent
the destruction of European Jewry and fall within
the central aim of early 20th-century ethnography,
which was to document and collect materials belonging to so-called disappearing peoples (Gruber
1959; Nurse 1997). The role of ethnography was
to preserve the remains of a dying or dead society
in the hopes they would reveal insights and values
that would benefit modern-day society. In the early
years, ethnographers did not imagine that genocide
would be one of the ways a people would come to
its end.
14 In fact, European Jewish scholars were studying shtetl Jews even before the Holocaust. The
culture of these Jews, which had been held together
by shared ritual and inter-community ties, was
being rapidly transformed due to secular influences,
modernization and the emigration of Jews to cities
in Europe and America. In 1912, a Russian Jewish
populist and playwright who went by the name of
Semyon Akimovich Ansky organized the first Jewish
ethnographic expedition into the towns and villages
of Volhynia and Podolia, two areas in the Ukraine
(Kampf 1984, 17-18). Members of the expedition,
which included a photographer, a musicologist and
students from the Jewish Academy of the University
of St. Petersburg, distributed a questionnaire among
the Jews that contained over 2,000 queries about
Jewish life. They also took photographs, retrieved
folk legends and songs and collected hundreds of
objects and manuscripts. Although the expedition
ended because of the First World War, Ansky
continued his work as a member of the Red Cross.
He visited destroyed villages on the fronts of east
central Europe and salvaged what he could from
synagogues and Jewish homes plundered by the
Czar’s cassocks. In 1916, he opened the Jewish
Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg, but it
was briefly shut down by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
The museum eventually closed in the 1930s, and
today Ansky’s collection is located in the Russian
Museum of Ethnography.
By representing Jewish folklore authoritatively,
Ansky and other Jewish scholars also sought to
counteract the offensive racial portrayal of Jews
that was emerging around the world in so-called
scientific academic texts. Their aim was to show the
commonalities that existed between the traditional
folkways of Jews and other Europeans. This interest
in Jewish ethnography did not make headway in
North America primarily due to the beliefs of Franz
Boas (1858-1942), an assimilated Jew who was
born and educated in Germany (Glick 1982, 546)
and was later the founder of anthropology in North
America. Boas’s dismissal of the ethnographic
study of the Jew stemmed from his beliefs that Jews
were not a race, that in any event there was no such
thing as a “pure” race and that Jews did not have a
unique culture and history. In some respects, Boas’s
views stemmed from the Science of Judaism, whose
objective was to integrate Judaism into the whole
of human knowledge, and by so doing identify it as
just another aspect of mainstream society.
Boas arrived in the United States in 1884 and
was the first person to occupy the anthropology
chair at Columbia University, where he introduced
a science-based approach to anthropology (Lesser
1968). This involved studying a unique culture in
all its aspects, including art, language, history and
religion. Boas had done this kind of ethnological
work among the Kwakiutl Indians of British
Columbia and had also worked on the Bella Coola
Indians collection at the Museum fur Volkerkunde
in Berlin. He also exerted a strong influence on
the theory and practice of anthropology in Canada.
Edward Sapir, who worked as an ethnologist at the
new Division of Anthropology of the Geological
Survey of Canada, was recommended and trained
by Boas. The principal aim of this division was to
examine the culture and languages of the native
races of Canada, gather and preserve all records
and set up an educational display in the ethnological
hall of the museum.
From Boas’s perspective, both Native Indians
and French Canadians qualified as a culture
with a specific history as a result of distinctive
historical, social and geographic conditions. In
1913, at a meeting of the American Anthropological
Association in New York City, Boas proposed to
Sapir’s assistant, an ethnologist by the name of
Marius Barbeau, that he embark on a study of
French Canadian culture (Nowry 1995, 141-42).
The suggestion arose from a comment Barbeau had
made regarding the presence of French Canadian
folklore in the legends of the Lorette Huron Indians.
To encourage the inclusion of this new element
in Barbeau’s research focus, Boas—in his role as
editor of the Journal of American Folklore—wrote
to the director of the Geological Survey of Canada,
Reginald Walter Brock, suggesting that Barbeau
become “an associate of the Journal, particularly
for French-Canadian folklore.”11 He had to convince
Brock to broaden the parameters of ethnological
research in Canada beyond the exclusive study of
the “native races.” In this way Boas expanded the
mandate of the division to include the study of the
traditional culture of French Canada.
At the same time Ansky was amassing evidence
of Jewish life in the Ukrainian countryside, Barbeau
was travelling to isolated communities in rural
Quebec to gather songs, legends, artifacts and
other physical evidence of his French Canadian
roots. By 1925, a minor project had expanded
into a comprehensive, lifelong investigation that
examined architecture, woodcarving, textiles,
pottery, silver and shipbuilding. The nature and
scope of the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition in the
Ukraine and Barbeau’s work in rural Quebec were
similar from the point of view of ethnography. This
similarity, however, was not recognized by Boas,
who never wavered in his belief that Jewish culture
was not unique.
In 1945, three years after Boas’s death, Raphael
Patai wrote an article in the Journal of American
Folklore that lamented the rejection of Jewish
folklore and ethnology as an accepted field of study
in North America. Why, he asked again in 1960,
has Jewish folklore “not figured so prominently in
American folklore research,” nor been “so integral a
part of American folklore as the study of the folklore
of other nationalities in this country” (Patai 1960,
12). A major reason was that Boas, while valorizing
the distinctive traits of the Native, African-American
and French Canadian peoples, denied the existence
of a Jewish cultural or ethnic identity. According
to Boas, the exclusion of modern Semitic folklore
was justified on the grounds that much of their
folklore was borrowed from other peoples and
was therefore not unique. Patai argued that “this
is true of the folklore of practically every people
even those who have lived until recently in relative
isolation” (13). Boas encouraged the study of the
folklore brought to Canada by European settlers and
the influence of European folklore on the American
Indian, but would not agree that Jewish culture
could participate in these kinds of exchanges.
For Boas, Judaism was strictly a matter of
adherence to an ancient religion irreconcilable
with individual freedom and humanism, which
emphasized common human needs. “My parents
had broken through the shackles of dogma,” Boas
explained. “My father had retained an emotional
affection for the ceremonial of his parental home
without allowing it to influence his intellectual
freedom” (Boas 1938, 201; Glick 1982, 555). Boas
was committed to a humanism and freedom
that repudiated Judaism along with other formal
religious doctrines.
Under the guidance of Rabbi Stern, the central
idea behind the Aron Museum was to show that
these humanistic ideals were in fact compatible
with Jewish beliefs. Although nearly all the objects
had been salvaged from the synagogues and homes
of destroyed Jewish communities in Europe,
this was not how the museum was presented to
Temple congregants and Christian visitors. In
describing some of the “choice ornaments” in the
museum, there was only one cursory mention of
the Holocaust: “varied types of Hanukkah Lamps;
some salvaged from the holocaust of the burning
synagogues in Germany” (Aron 1960, n.p.). It had
been decided that rather than convey the tragic story
of historical circumstance, the museum would act
as living proof of the positive universal qualities of
humankind. The last sentence in the description of
the objects states: “They reflect impressively the
Jewish idea of life, namely its sanctity.”
Although Borenstein contributed to the collection and respected the museum’s interpretation
of its collection, belonging to a synagogue and
observing Jewish ceremonies and customs was
incompatible with his personal and social beliefs.
He recognized that his background could only
be described in terms of a Jewish socio-historic
reality, but the authority of religious practice held
no meaning for him. Similarly, while Boas’s professional career was focused on documenting cultural
traditions, from a personal and social perspective he
considered identifying with a cultural group a relic
of the past, incompatible with panhuman values.
One of his central convictions, which arose from a
“fundamental ethical point of view,” was that the
“in-group” had to expand to include all of humanity
(Boas 1938, 203; Glick 1982, 555). Nonetheless,
Boas acknowledged that he could not abandon
his European roots and heritage. “My ideals had
developed because I am what I am and have lived
where I have lived” (Boas 1938, 204; Glick 1982,
555). For both Boas and Borenstein, Judaism
was a source of dogmatism and religious taboos
and, as such, was the adversary of a modernity
in which religious and ethnic distinctions were
minimized.
Borenstein’s paintings and his sympathy
with the presentation of the ritual objects at the
Aron Museum were motivated by a belief in
universal parallels. In his landscapes he merged
the particulars of the eastern European shtetl
and the traditional Laurentian village with the
cosmology of a perfect world (Fig. 8). The
expressive qualities of these paintings evoke a
composite paradigm, wherein the memory of an
ideal past is preserved in the humanistic values
of the present. This is also true of the descriptions
given to the Jewish objects at the Aron Museum,
which minimize the impact of the Holocaust and
stress universal and enduring truths.
As can be seen through Borenstein, Boas and
Rabbi Stern and his congregants, the interpretation of the Judaica at the Aron Museum was a
unifying force for Jews of different persuasions
despite the troubling origins of the objects and
the varying viewpoints about how they could
be defined. After the Holocaust, many Jews
believed that it was of the utmost importance to
16 communicate that the essence of a culture could be
preserved despite its terrible losses, and that this essence could be an operative concept in determining
the creative forces of modern living.
Conclusion
Today, there are various collections of Jewish ritual
objects in Canada and new ways of describing
these ceremonial objects. On September 23,
2000, the Royal Ontario Museum inaugurated its
first permanent collection of European Judaica,
consisting of more than sixty traditional objects
that celebrate Jewish life and history. Like the collection at the Aron Museum, this collection is also
a gift; the benefactors are Dr. Fred Weinberg and
Joy Cherry Weinberg of Toronto. The objects are
arranged according to life-cycle events and Jewish
holidays and include descriptive panels explaining
the purpose of each object. This emphasis on the
specifics of the Jewish religion corresponds to how
Fig. 8
Sam Borenstein.
Sainte-Lucie,
Winter. 1964. Oil
on panel.
91 x 122 cm.
Private collection.
Fig. 9
The Aaron Museum,
2003.
the objects of the Aron Museum, now numbering
230 (Fig. 9), were described in 1996 in a website
created by Percy Johnson titled Hidden Treasures,
Judaic Art in Context (http://collections.ic.gc.
ca/art_context).
The presentation of Judaic objects has changed
significantly since the Aron Museum’s inauguration
in 1953. These objects are now being displayed
with explanatory texts that provide a more in-depth
analysis of Jewish rituals and customs. For example,
the history of the objects that was overlooked in the
early descriptions of the Aron Museum collection
is now considered an important part of the object’s
significance. At the Montreal Holocaust Memorial
Museum a new permanent exhibition opened in
2003 that includes Judaic objects once belonging
to Montreal Holocaust survivors. The objects are
interpreted as an integral part of Holocaust history,
with each one being imbued with recollections of
life before, during and after the Holocaust. It was
important for the donors that the museum accept
these objects with the intention of telling their
personal stories of loss and memory.
Judaic ceremonial objects are now being
given multiple historical and symbolic meanings.
This extensive inquiry was apparent in 1990 in the
touring exhibition A Coat of Many Colours: Two
Centuries of Jewish Life organized by the Canadian
Museum of Civilization/Musée canadien des
civilisations and curated by Sandra Weizman with
accompanying publications by Weizman (1990)
and Irving Abella (1990). The Canadian Jewish
Virtual Museum and Archives (http://www.cjva.
org) follows a similar pattern. This website was
initiated in 2002 by Montreal’s Congregation Shaar
Hashomayim and partners Temple Emanu-El-Beth
Sholom, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue,
United Talmud Torahs of Montreal, Centre communautaire juif, Communauté sépharade du Québec
and the Holocaust Literature Research Institute of
the University of Western Ontario. Here, Judaic
artifacts are included among the many photographs,
records and archival materials that define the
personal and community history of the Canadian
Jewish experience. The topics are diverse, including
anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, religion, education,
immigration, philanthropy and voluntarism, as well
as entertainment, sports, the military and politics.
This expansive paradigm has also influenced
more recent interpretations of the Aron Museum’s
collection, which had originally been presented in
keeping with Rabbi Stern’s ideas surrounding antiSemitism, the Holocaust, the Science of Judaism
and Jewish ethnography. In those days, deciding
what not to say about the objects was as important
as deciding what to say, and from there flowed
the decision to use the objects to demonstrate the
humanistic values of Judaism in the modern era.
Today, these same objects, like in other Jewish
museums, are explored differently. In Andrea
Korda's (2004) Keeping the Faith: Judaica from
the Aron Museum (http://www.virtualmuseum.
cajewishmuseum.org), created for the Community
Memories website of Virtual Museums Canada,
the objects narrate the story of the person or family
who donated them to the Temple. The personal
significance of each one is also explained. Starting
with the Aron family, the website explores the
artifacts given by donors to the museum from
1953 until now and, as such, shows how diverse
objects carry unique family memories that coalesce
to create one community. For the first time, the
religious, historical, social and cultural contexts of
these objects have been given full expression.
Notes
1. In the United States, Cyrus Adler, curator and librarian at
the Smithsonian with a doctorate in Semitics studies, was
a pioneering figure. Adler was responsible for developing
the Smithsonian Institution collection of Judaica from the
1880s to the 1920s and for organizing exhibitions on religion
and Judaica at world’s fairs. In 1904, he helped establish
The Jewish Museum in New York, which began with a gift
of 26 Jewish ceremonial art objects given to The Jewish
Theological Seminary by Judge Mayer Sulzberger.
2. See Gutmann (1970). In most western European countries,
Jewish ceremonial objects had to be commissioned from
Christian craftsmen because Jews were prevented from
entering the guilds. The situation was different in eastern
Europe, especially Poland, where Jewish guilds existed and
Jews could also practice in non-Jewish guilds.
3. Rabbi Stern (1897-1984) was born in Lithuania and immigrated with his family in 1907 to the United States, where
they lived in Steubenville, Ohio. In 1922, he was ordained
at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. After serving at
Temple Israel in Uniontown he came to the Temple EmanuEl in 1927 where he was rabbi until 1972 and rabbi emeritus
until his death.
4. Mrs. Ellen Samuel, a longstanding Aron Museum Committee member, provided valuable recollections about the
early years of the museum’s history. Mrs. Samuel is the
committee’s correspondent and has maintained its records,
a key source of information on the museum’s growth and
development. Further information on the Aron Museum is
in files of the Aron Committee and in the Temple Emanu-ElBeth Sholom archives, located at the Jewish Public Library,
Montreal.
5. Judith Borenstein in conversation with the author, 15 May
1996.
6. Last Will and Testament of Josef Aron. 9 February 1954.
Klineberg & Klineberg, Notaries, Montreal, Que., no. 6572.
7th copy. Aron Museum Committee files.
7. Canadian Jewish Congress, Congress Bulletin, May-June
1956, from the files of the museum committee, Temple
Emanu-El-Beth Sholom.
8. Polish-born Yehuda Elberg, an ordained rabbi, was actively
involved in the Lodz and Warsaw resistance movements
during the Holocaust. He is a Yiddish writer whose work
documents shtetl life. Elberg gained recognition in the
English-speaking world after the 1997 translation of two of
his novels: Ship of the Hunted, a true story of a family torn
apart by the war, and The Empire of Kalman the Cripple, a
portrait of Jewish life in Poland prior to the Second World
War. Elberg’s kiddush cup is on view at the permanent
exhibition of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Museum.
9. Born in Rumania, Appelfeld was deported to a Nazi concentration camp at the age of eight. He escaped, spent two
years wandering in the forests of the Ukraine and eventually
joined the Russian army. Appelfeld emigrated to Palestine in
1946 and continues to live in Israel where he has served as
Professor of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University.
10.Berelson (1989) writes that when told the Jews had three days
to leave Suwalki, Rabbi Lifshitz pleaded for more time. In
the fourteen days that followed, about 3,000 Jews succeeded
in illegally crossing the border into Lithuania. The thousands
of remaining Jews were rounded up and put under guard in
the synagogue, hospital and jail, after which everything of
value was taken from them. The prisoners were then led
to the railroad station, put into sealed wagons and shipped
to Lukov and other towns around Lublin, from where they
were transported to death camps. Rabbi Lifshitz was among
the few who escaped. He fled to Japan from Lithuania and
finally arrived in the United States in 1941 (49-51).
11.See Nowry 142. The letter from Boas to Brock dated
14 January 1914, explains his “interest in the scientific
presentation of American aboriginal folklore and also in
the preservation of the folklore brought to this country by
the European settlers.” Boas continues: “...we ought to do
our share in preserving material that is collected with such
painstaking care at the present time in Europe. On the other
hand the matter is of considerable importance historically
as well as theoretically, on account of the influence that
European folklore has exerted upon the American Indian.”
Cited from Franz Boas, Correspondence: 1914-16, Salle
Marius Barbeau, Ethnology Division, National Museum of
Man.
References
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of Jewish Life in Canada. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys
Publishers.
Anon. 1953. Temple Emanu-El Weekly Bulletin 27 no.1 (4
September).
Appelfeld, Aharon. 1998. The Iron Tracks. Trans. Yaacov Jeffrey Green. New York: Schocken Books.
Aron, Anna. 1960. The Josef Aron Museum of Jewish
Ceremonial Art Objects. In The Emanu-El Story, 1882-1960:
Over Three Quarters of a Century of Dedicated Service.
Dedication volume commemorating the building of the new
Temple Emanu-El, April 1960, Nison 5720.
Barbeau, Marius. 1936. Quebec Where Ancient France Lingers. Toronto: MacMillan.
———. 1941. Backgrounds in North American Folk Arts.
Queen’s Quarterly 48 (Spring): 284-94.
———. 1946. Painters of Quebec. Toronto: Ryerson Press.
Berelson, Yeheskel. 1989. The Holocaust: The Destruction of
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Boas, Franz. 1938. An Anthropologist’s Credo. The Nation
147(6): 201-04.
Borenstein, Joyce. 1991. The Colours of my Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein. Animated film production. Montreal:
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Borenstein, Sam. 1968. [Unpublished memoir]. Borenstein
family archives.
Glick, Leonard B. 1982. Types Distinct from Our Own: Franz
Boas on Jewish Identity and Assimilation. American Anthropologist 84:545-65.
Grossman, Grace Cohen with Richard Eighme Ahlborn.
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the Smithsonian: Cultural Politics as Cultural Model, 4-16.
18 Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology no. 52. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
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Expanded version, 1968. http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/
033gruber.pdf.
Gutmann, Joseph. 1970. Beauty in Holiness: Studies in Jewish
Customs and Ceremonial Art. New York: Ktav Publishing
House.
Gutmann, Joseph. 1991. The Kirschtein Museum of Berlin.
Jewish Art 16/17:176-77.
Johnson, Percy. 1996. Hidden Treasures: Art in Context (The
Judaica Artifacts Collection of the Temple Emanu-El Beth
Sholom). Schoolnet, Industry Canada. http://collections.ic.gc.
ca/art_context.
Kampf, Avram. 1984. Jewish Experience in the Art of the
Twentieth Century. Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey Publishers.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Exhibiting Jews. In
Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, 79128. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Korda, Andrea. 2004. Keeping the Faith: Judaica from the
Aron Museum. Community Memories. Virtual Museums
Canada. http://www.jewishmuseum.org.
Kuhns, William and Léo Rosshandler. 1978. Sam Borenstein.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Lesser, Alexander. 1968. Franz Boas. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 2:99-108. New York:
Crowell Collier and MacMillan.
Mendes-Flohr, Paul R. and Jehuda Reinharz. 1980. The Process of Political Emancipation in Western Europe, 1789-1871.
In The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed.
Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 101-102. New
York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1980. The Science of Judaism. In The Jew in the
Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul R. MendesFlohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 182-85. New York: Oxford
University Press, 182-85.
———. 1960. Jewish Folklore and Jewish Tradition. In Studies in Biblical and Jewish Folklore, ed. Raphael Patai, Francis
Lee Utley and Dov Noy. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Narkiss, Bezalel. 1985. Judaica and Ethnography. Ariel no.
60:78-86.
Stern, Harry Joshua. 1927. Jew and Christian: A Collection of
Addresses. Uniontown, PN: The News Standard.
Nicholas, Lynn H. 1995. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of
Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World
War. New York: Vintage Books.
———. 1961. Entrusted with Spiritual Leadership: A Collection of Addresses. New York: Bloch Publishing.
Nowry, Laurence. 1995. Marius Barbeau: Man of Mana: A
Biography. Toronto: NC Press.
Nurse, Andrew. 1997. Tradition and Modernity: The Cultural
Work of Marius Barbeau. PhD diss., Queen’s University.
Weizman, Sandra Morton, 1990. Artifacts from “A Coat of
Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada”/Objets de l’exposition “La tunique aux couleurs multiples: deux
siècles de présence juive au Canada.” Hull, QC: Canadian
Museum of Civilization/Musée canadien des civilisations.
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and Ethnology. Journal of American Folklore 59 (JanuaryMarch): 25-39.
Kenneth Donovan
Imposing Discipline Upon Nature: Gardens, Agriculture and Animal
Husbandry in Cape Breton, 1713-1758
Résumé
Cet article sur l’horticulture dans l’Île Royale
(Cap-Breton) décrit les efforts des Français pour
subvenir à leurs besoins alimentaires au moyen
de potagers, de bétail et de petites fermes mixtes
(«ménageries»). Pour composer avec le climat
plus froid et le sol mince de Terre-Neuve, puis du
Cap-Breton, les Français ont appliqué diverses
solutions novatrices au problème de la pauvreté des
sols. Convaincus que rien n’était impossible s’ils y
mettaient la main-d’œuvre suffisante, les Français
ont construit des routes et des ponts, rempli des
marécages, épierré les sols, importé du terreau
fertile, aménagé des plates-bandes surélevées,
créé des étangs, des puits et des fontaines, utilisé
des cloches de verre, de l’engrais, des algues, du
calcaire et du compost, bref, ils ont plié la nature
à leurs besoins et transformé les terres les plus
pauvres en généreux potagers.
Abstract
This paper examines horticulture in Ile Royale (Cape
Breton) and focuses on the French attempt to grow
food through the introduction of gardens, animals
and small mixed farms (menageries). Adapting
to the colder climate and marginal soil of first,
Newfoundland, and then Cape Breton, the French
introduced innovative solutions to the difficulties of
land infertility. The French had confidence—given
enough manpower—that anything was possible. By
building roads, bridges, filling marshes, removing
rocks, transporting rich soil, making raised beds,
creating ponds, wells, fountains, using glass bells,
fertilizer, seaweed, lime and compost, they imposed
a discipline upon nature and transformed the most
barren ground into bountiful gardens.
Introduction
Widespread, intensive gardening had been introduced to Europe at the beginning of the 17th century.
By the 18th century, gardening had become a skill
and this development helped ease the occurrence
of famine and agricultural crises that had been so
common in the 16th and previous centuries (Le Roy
Ladurie 1971, 92-93). Unlike arable fields, gardens
were “artificial” creations since they required
intensive labour to transport soil, to plant seeds, to
arrange beds, to develop paths, to erect fences and
to add fertilizer and water (Weltman-Aron 2001,
20 1-13). A host of new gardens—vegetable, herb,
flower, fruit and medicinal—began to emerge in
Europe, making it possible to vary the everyday
consumption of cereals (Roche 2000, 223). Garden
cultivation allowed such new vegetables as carrots,
turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers, parsnips, peas and
potatoes to be introduced (Faucher 1959).
This paper examines horticulture in Ile Royale
(Cape Breton) and focuses on the French attempt
to grow food through the introduction of gardens,
animals and small mixed farms (menageries).
Adapting to the colder climate and marginal soil
of first, Newfoundland, and then Cape Breton,
the French introduced innovative solutions to
the difficulties of land infertility. The French
had confidence—given enough manpower—that
anything was possible. By building roads, bridges,
filling marshes, removing rocks, transporting rich
soil, making raised beds, creating ponds, wells,
fountains, using glass bells, fertilizer, seaweed,
lime and compost, they imposed a discipline upon
nature and transformed the most barren ground
into bountiful gardens. The physical manipulation
of the environment in Ile Royale, however, was
part of the broader context of fortress construction
that began in France under Sebastien le Preste de
Vauban in the late 17th century. The Louisbourg
fortifications, the largest in North America, were
modelled on the Vauban style. During the 1660s,
Vauban, the first titled military engineer in France,
began to build a system of defences that changed
the landscape of France. The geometric shapes
of fortress design had a significant influence on
the countryside, especially the surface geometry
of gardens “providing a model of discipline over
people and nature that testified to the power of the
state” (Mukerji 1997, 94).
In an attempt to cope with the shorter growing
season, the French in Cape Breton also developed
microclimates through use of high fences and the
walls of adjoining buildings. They introduced
aesthetic design elements in their gardens, incorporating geometrically-controlled spaces with a sense
of proportion, including the use of view planes
and vistas. The French modified the landscape to
suit their purposes—the decoration of the garden
began to change “making it a showplace for French
design” (Mukerji, 98). Besides experimenting with
plants, they also collected Cape Breton flora and
fauna and preserved rare botanical species. Finally,
the French cut vast tracts of forest for firewood
and raised a wide range of livestock. The governor
of Nova Scotia noted in 1775 that there was “no
wood whatever” in the vicinity of Louisbourg.1
The French cleared the forests of trees in all of
their outports, including Niganiche (Ingonish), the
second largest settlement on the island with 740
residents in 1737. By 1813 Augustus DesBarres,
the Attorney General of Cape Breton, had visited
Ingonish and reported that the land had been “originally improved by the French. They are still clear
of trees; the lands are generally covered with grass”
(DesBarres 1818, 80). The cleared land provided
hay and enormous communal pastures where the
animals roamed free because the gardens were
protected by fences. The animal manure, in turn,
was critical for the gardens, part of a symbiotic,
disciplined process of controlling nature.
Early Attempts to Promote Agriculture
Although French fishermen had been coming to
Cape Breton since the 16th century, the island was
only permanently settled by the French after 1713.
The Treaty of Utretch, which ended the War of the
Spanish Succession in 1713, gave Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland to Britain leaving France Cape
Breton and Prince Edward Island. According to
the treaty, the French were entitled to emigrate
to French territory within a year, taking their
possessions with them. The settlements on Cape
Breton were intended to replace Placentia as the
headquarters for the fishery and serve as a haven
for trading ships and privateers. Within a few years
the Cape Breton fisheries were substantial; by
1720 they produced about 150,000 quintals (one
quintal equals 50 kg) of dried cod a year. Migrants
and residents, fishing from many ports in eastern
Cape Breton, practised an inshore boat fishery.
Schooners, most of them based in Louisbourg
and Ingonish, also made voyages of twenty to
thirty days to the fishing banks (Donovan 1987).
Louisbourg was the capital of the colony of Ile
Royale but the French used the names Ile Royale
and Cap Breton interchangeably.2 The name Cape
Breton has been in use for 500 years.
Although the fishery was paramount, there
was an effort by French authorities, from the
earliest attempts to settle Cape Breton, to promote
agriculture, especially gardening. Most of the early
surveyors of the island stressed the agricultural
potential of the land, particularly in comparison
to Newfoundland. In 1700 the French surveyor St.
Marie made a reconnaissance of the coast of Cape
Breton and reported to France that “Baie St. Anne
is a good harbour and the surrounding area grows
fine cereals.” At St. Peter's he noted that the land is
of good quality and that Nicolas Denys (1598-1688)
“has planted wheat, two species of barley ... all of
which is coming to perfection and maturity, I am
sure that a minot of wheat will produce more than
twenty fold. As for gardens, all sorts of vegetables
are coming perfectly well, the same for pumpkins,
watermelons, and cucumbers.”3 (One minot equals
approximately 39 litres.) Nicolas Denys, who had
a fishing and fur trading post at St. Ann's and then
St. Peter's from 1652 until 1668, had noted that the
captains of fishing vessels cultivated gardens for a
fresh supply of “salads, peas and beans” (Denys
1672, 318).
Seeking sites for suitable settlement, Louis
Denys (grand nephew of Nicolas) wrote in 1713 that
he had visited St. Ann's and saw the wheat fields
that his grandfather Simon Denys had planted some
sixty years earlier. The Mi’kmaq maintained that
the fields produced the “most beautiful wheat in the
world.” He also saw “very fine apple trees, from
which we have eaten fruit very good for the season.”
He “strongly recommended” that a settlement be
established at St. Ann's because the codfish was
abundant and the land was good for farming.4
Several years later Philippe de Costebelle, the
island’s first governor, referred to St. Ann's and
its vicinity as the “garden of Ile Royale.”5 Barely
three years into settlement (1716), the French
harvested from the land a wide variety of produce
including “Wheat, beans, ... and peas, cabbages,
dock, chicory, celery, artichokes, lettuce and other
salads; in the woods, strawberries, raspberries,
blueberries, and small fruit called cranberries”
(Chancels 1959, 426).
Cereals and Vegetables in Historical
Context
The French had grown wheat, cereals and vegetables in their gardens at Placentia, Newfoundland,
during fifty-one years of permanent settlement
(1662-1713) prior to coming to Cape Breton. Once
on Cape Breton, they operated much the same as
they had in Newfoundland; they established gardens
in the outports, undeterred by the harsh climate
and relatively poor soil of the island. Thousands of
property transactions cited gardens, including the
type of garden, the dimensions, the condition of the
soil, the nature of the fences, the raised beds, the
wells, the value of the garden, if in vegetables and
other accompanying features.
Gardening in Cape Breton included growing
cereals as well as vegetables since black or white
bread was the staple food in France (Mandrou 1976,
14-15). Bread was also a staple in Cape Breton; the
dietary habits of the people of New France differed
little from the homeland.
Food shortages were a feature of life in Cape
Breton. Noting how such shortages affected her,
Marie Anne Peré, a Louisbourg fishing proprietor,
wrote to her supplier, Pierre Joubert, in Nantes
in December 1733, that she hoped for the timely
arrival of Joubert’s ships in the spring with “much
22 bread or flour, peas or beans some salt and other
items such as wine and brandy which are very
scarce here.” Madame Peré left detailed accounts
of the food she provided for three of her fishermen
during the winter of 1733. The essentials—bread,
peas, butter, molasses and olive oil—cost 133
livres. Bread, in the form of six-pound loaves, was
the number one ingredient; the men consumed 302
pounds during the winter (CAOM, G 2195, n 83).
Wheat and Cereals in Ile Royale
Since bread was vital to the French diet, there was a
continuous effort to grow wheat and other cereals in
Ile Royale. The island’s gardens provided individual
families with their necessary foodstuffs, cereals
included. Beyond the individual family, however,
cereal and vegetable production for fishermen and
soldiers was only possible with numerous men
and equipment as well as draft animals such as
oxen. With the exception of the best farm land and
resources, most gardeners throughout Ile Royale
were hard pressed to successfully grow wheat in the
short growing season. “Hitherto they have been able
to reap no sort of grain,” wrote Thomas Pichon in
the 1750s. “In some places they have begun to sow
wheat and rye but never could bring them to proper
maturity. I believe that oats would grow here, if the
small quantity the island is able to produce, was
worth sowing. It has been even observed that the
grain sown in this country degenerates in the second
year” (Pichon 1760, 14-15). Cape Breton has a good
climate for growing oats but wheat production,
in the short growing season, was difficult since it
required diligence. Louis Petitpas’s garden in St.
Fig. 1
Ile Royale (Cape
Breton) in 1742.
(BN, Cartes &
Plans, Service
Hydrographique
de la Marine,
131-2-6)
Fig. 2
Etienne Verrier’s Plan of the Town
and Vicinity of Louisbourg in 1730
showing more than 80 Gardens.
(AN, Dépôt des fortifications des
colonies, FC, No. d’ordre 164)
Peter's, for instance, produced turnips, cabbages
and wheat “of a quality above the ordinary.” The
garden—36 pieds square—only did well because
“the manure of the live stock rotted in during the
year, which had produced a hot bed six inches deep”
(De La Roque 1905, 36). (One pied equals 1.066
feet.) The Brothers of Charity also grew wheat and
cereals on their large farm at the mouth of the Mira
River. In 1751 Governor Jean Raymond sent four
bushels of wheat to France that had been produced
from a plain hat full of seed from the Brothers of
Charity’s farm (A N, CllB, 20 Nov, f 64). These
examples, however, were the exception, not the
norm. Louisbourg became an important export
market for Canadian grain. Jacques Mathieu
estimated that agricultural output in Canada
increased almost 450 per cent between 1706 and
1740, whereas the population had expanded by only
250 per cent. Much of the surplus production—12 to
25 per cent of the total grain harvest—was exported
as milled flour to Louisbourg and the French West
Indies. After the capture of Louisbourg in 1745,
the grain price in Quebec fell by half (Choquette
1997, 285-86).
The Flora and Fauna of Ile Royale
Throughout the 18th century scientifically trained
people in Ile Royale such as Pierre Boucher,
Guedeon Catalogne, François Vallée and former
naval officer Le Poupet de la Boularderie collected
flora and fauna and experimented with growing
plants in Cape Breton. Other engineers and cartographers such as Etienne Verrier, Louis Franquet and
François de Poilly, administrators and observers
such as Governor Jean Raymond, Thomas Pichon
and Joseph De La Roque wrote about agricultural
development and the botanical species of Cape
Breton. In 1723 Pierre Boucher, deputy engineer
at Louisbourg, reported on his journey around the
island. He sent fruit, fossils, shells and a stuffed
puffin to Jéan-Frédéric Maurepas, the minister of
marine. He also proposed to send drawings of other
birds when time and his duties permitted (AN, CllB,
1 Nov, v 6, f 320-3). Guedeon de Catalogne, another
cartographer and engineer at Louisbourg, had been
granted land on the Mira River which he sought to
improve because of its good soil and limestone.
After touring Cape Breton, Catalogne knew that
there were districts with fertile soil throughout the
island but agriculture was costly because labour
was in such demand. Nevertheless, he correctly
predicted that the Mira area could accommodate
500 families and that livestock could be imported
and do well there (DCB 2,121). Catalogne wrote to
the minister, Maurepas, in November 1727 noting
that he had carried out agricultural experiments.
Catalogne had grown some vegetables, melons
and tobacco which had “matured very well” and
he sent some wheat, barley and oats to France
that he had grown on his farm on the Mira (AN,
CllC, 19 Nov v 16, f 15). Always keen to hear of
agricultural experiments and to receive reports of
flora and fauna from New France, as well as other
areas around the world, Maurepas, besides being an
administrator, was an intellectual closely associated
with the Académie des Sciences (Stroup 1990). On
April 27, 1728, just a few months after receiving
Catalogne’s letter, Maurepas sent a memoir to
Governor Saint Ovide inviting the king’s subjects
in Ile Royale to collect objects of interest and to
write about them (AN, B, 52, f 570-1).
Another contemporary of Catalogne and
Boucher, François Vallée, was also trained in the
engineering sciences and he conducted agricultural
experiments much like Catalogne. Appointed deputy
surveyor for Ile Royale, Vallée had planted a small
flower garden in Louisbourg with “foreign plants”
as well as plants imported from Acadia in order
to send the seeds to France. Vallée’s reports and
plans are among “the best surviving documentary
evidence of town planning at Louisbourg” (DCB
3, 636-7). Vallée’s experiments growing “foreign
plants” were part of a commission from Maurepas
and Antoine Rondeau, resulting from his last trip to
France (CAOM, G 2, 27 June 1733, 182, f 1057).
Like Vallée and others, Le Poupet de la
Boularderie “kept a rare botanical collection”
of Cape Breton plants (Du Boscq De Beaumont
1975, 287). Botanic gardens had become commonplace by the 18th century, especially since the
total number of known plants was relatively small
(Schnapper 1991, 175-77). There were only ten
thousand species listed in 1713 compared to some
half million known today. By the 18th century the
botanic gardens evolved to become herbaria as well
because of the medicinal value of so many plants
(Tongiorgi Tomasi 1991, 81- 84). Thus, when the
surgeon left Rochefort for Louisbourg in 1718,
there were 102 different herbal medications sent to
the hospital. There were a total of fifty surgeons in
Ile Royale from 1713 to 1758 and the apothecaries
at the hospital grew herbal plants in their garden
(Hoad 1976, 299-302).
Seeking and identifying new species provided
the context for Boularderie’s collection of rare
botanical Cape Breton plants. Although not trained
as scientists, Boularderie and his son Antoine,
both well-connected in Versailles, were among the
most successful agriculturalists in Cape Breton. A
lieutenant at Placentia, Boularderie proposed the
establishment of an agricultural settlement at Ile de
de Verderonne (Boularderie Island) and the eastern
shore of Little Bras d’Or. Granted a seigneury at
Little Bras d’Or on February 15, 1719, Boularderie
travelled to Canada the following June seeking
workers to clear the land. He also bought animals,
stores and seeds in Canada for his establishment.6
In 1723 there were twenty men wintering at Little
Bras d’Or clearing land for the production of
cabbages and turnips (CAOM, G 2, 9 Oct 1726, 180,
f 364; CAOM, CllB, 10 Oct 1733, v 14, f 22-30).
24 Ten years later, eight men had sown a “considerable
field” of peas that had produced good results and
also harvested wheat that was well matured and
hardy. The following year Boularderie marketed
unmilled grain in Louisbourg and by 1737 he had
completed a water-powered mill (DCB 2, 418).
Production increased steadily at the farm so that
by 1737 Boularderie had produced 50 to 60 barrels
of wheat, 12 to 15 barrels of peas, some barrels of
oats and a little barley.7 By 1742 Boularderie had
35 square arpents of land in production at Little
Bras d’Or as well as three large gardens, barns and
stables. (One arpent equals 30 toise.)
Prior to coming to Cape Breton in 1739 to
take over his father’s farm in Little Bras d’Or,
Boularderie junior recruited agricultural workers
in Normandy and “all the utensils necessary for
the cultivation of the land.” Over an eight-year
period Boularderie employed twenty-five workers
who developed a successful farm including a fine
manor house, barn, stable, dairy, dovecote, oven,
windmill and watermill. He kept fifty sheep,
twenty-five cows, six oxen, six mares and one
stallion. “I had land in production,” he noted,
“which yielded beautiful wheat and vegetables as
in France, moreover I had brought fruit trees from
France, which also succeeded” (Du Boscq De
Beaumont, 287).
Apple trees, grown from seed, had been introduced to Cape Breton during the 1630s. The apple
trees of St. Ann's had been first planted in 1632 and
harvested in 1680.8 When Monsieur Melchin visited
St. Ann's in 1713 he reported seeing apple trees that
“had been thought to have been planted by the late
Mr. Denis” (CAOM, DFC, No. 271). Throughout
the 18th century the French in Ile Royale imported
apple cultivars from France and New England.
Eight apple trees, for instance, were brought to Cape
Breton from New England in 1732 (Moore 1975,
43). In 1752 43-year-old Maurice Leveque and his
family had apple trees in St. Ann's. “They had made
a clearing for a garden in which they have grown
all sorts of garden produce,” noted the census taker,
“and in which they have six apple trees bearing
fruit” (De La Roque, 42). The remains of these
French-regime apple trees can still be seen in the
Mira River area. Scottish immigrants who settled
on the Mira in the early 1800s took seedlings from
the French trees and planted them on most of the
farms from Hillside down to the mouth of the river.
Subsequent generations of apple trees found in this
area may still contain some of the genetic stock of
the original apple trees introduced during the French
regime.9 Known as the “French apple,” the apples
Fig. 3
Boularderie’s
Farm at the Mouth
of the Little Bras
d’Or in 1742.
(BN, C& P, SH,
124-4-3)
were small, had white flesh with a bright, red skin
and made excellent apple jelly. Florence McIntyre,
born 1927, noted that her great-grandfather, John
MacKinnon, planted the orchard on her property
from seedlings grafted from the French apple trees
(Florence McIntyre, personal communication).
Louisbourg officials toured Ile Royale and
reported on agricultural production, including
fruit trees, as well as exotic plants and animals.
Commissaire-ordonnateur François Bigot, for
instance, sent two cages of ducks and another
cage of passenger pigeons to the king’s menagerie
at Versailles on the ship Caribou during 1744.
Bigot specifically entrusted Captain La Saussaye,
commander of the vessel, with this special cargo.10
Established in 1662, the king’s menagerie was
actually a farm with a dual function since it had a
dovecote, barns, cowsheds and dairy as well as a
small residence sheltering exotic animals and rare
birds (Mabille 1991, 172- 74).
The Ile Royale ducks and passenger pigeon
were intended to be added to the royal collection.
Passenger pigeons, grouse, Canada geese and
other waterfowl such as black duck, eider, scoter,
long-tailed duck and blue-winged teal formed an
integral part of the Louisbourg diet, particularly
during the migration season.11 Other Cape Breton
fauna were sent overseas. On December 8, 1744, for
instance, Louisbourg metal worker Michel Vedrine
was paid 52 livres for the construction “of an iron
cage for a beaver sent from Louisbourg to the king’s
menagerie at Versailles” (AN, CllC, v 12, f 148).
(One livre was the approximate equivalent of one
British shilling).
Some new vegetables, such as potatoes,
were also introduced during the 1740s and 1750s.
Louisbourg officials, for instance, imported sixteen
bushels of potatoes in 1742 from Boston and by
1757 former Governor Raymond urged officials in
France to send seed potato, among other vegetables
and grains, to Louisbourg for planting by the
end of April 1757.12 The planting of potatoes in
Cape Breton reflected similar innovative efforts
throughout the region. The New Englanders who
had captured Louisbourg (1745-49) imported
hundreds of bushels of potatoes.13 Meanwhile, the
British had harvested potatoes in Halifax as early
as 1750. The Acadians, in turn, had grown potatoes,
on an experimental basis, in Acadia throughout the
1750s.14
Engineers and the Harmony of Design
in French Gardens
At least two other scientists, Etienne Verrier and
François De Poilly were among a total of fourteen
engineers who served at Louisbourg and filed
descriptions of Ile Royale’s gardens and agriculture
in their reports and especially in their maps and
plans. Engineers had played a vital role in the
design of gardens in 17th- and 18th-century France.
French gardens, noted for their sense of proportion,
were much like bastioned fortresses because they
applied much of the same principle—all parts
must harmonize. The gardeners were conscious of
geometrically-controlled space, the range of the
eye along view planes and the retention of vistas by
making the length proportionate to the surrounding
mass (Vérin 1991, 135-46). Etienne Verrier, the
chief engineer at Louisbourg from 1724 to 1745,
was responsible for the design of the fortifications
and the principal public buildings as well as the
lighthouse and the harbour front of the town.
At 31 years, Verrier arrived in Louisbourg with
a fine reputation as an engineer and an appreciation
for aesthetic design. Responsible for more than 100
Louisbourg plans, his colourful drawings include
the Dauphin Gate, the hospital, the lighthouse,
the royal and island batteries and the engineer’s
residence, to name a few. All of these plans survive
in the Archives Nationales, the Bibliothèque
Nationale, the Comité technique du Génie and other
repositories in Paris and many of them record, in
precise detail, the gardens of Louisbourg. Among
the plans are those of his beautiful residence with
well-designed garden, menagerie and garden pool.
Built at a cost of 28,000 livres, the engineer’s
residence was one of the finest buildings in the
town. When the excavations of block 1 were
completed in the 1960s, everything throughout the
entire block, including the king’s storehouse, the old
storehouse, the artillery shed, the bakery, the garden
pool and the garden were found exactly as Verrier
had drawn them. The garden, as shown in 1735,
measured 10 toise by 8 toise with six beds, four
of which were planted with completely different
and intricate designs. The garden was presumably
planted with vegetables, grains, herbs and flowers.
The 1735 plan, “an usually detailed record of the
yards and buildings” in block 1, was most accurate.
“Many of the seemingly incidental features, such
as the well in the Rue Toulouse, the terrace wall
in the Engineer’s garden, and fence lines in block
1, have been verified archaeologically” (Fortier
1972, no. 17).
Like Etienne Verrier, François de Poilly was a
military engineer who served in Louisbourg under
Louis Franquet from 1755 to 1758. Poilly assisted
in the planning for the repair and reconstruction of
the defences and public buildings of Louisbourg.
Following in his own footsteps, Franquet commissioned Poilly to go on an excursion around
Ile Royale in February and March 1757 in order
to correct the maps of the island, to propose road
improvements and to suggest repairs to public
building and fortifications at St. Ann's and St.
Peter's. Travelling on snowshoes, Poilly and his
party toured much of Cape Breton. He kept a
twelve-page diary describing the island’s resources
including the French and Mi’kmaq inhabitants and
the condition of the roads and buildings (DCB 3,
267-68). Poilly had specific suggestions for the
improvement of the island’s agricultural, game
and forest resources. On the Mira River he recommended increased manpower in order to develop
the good soil along the alluvial plain of the river.
For the settlements along the Bras d’Or Lake from
Boularderie Island in the north to East Bay in the
south, Poilly called for more oxen to pull ploughs
and to provide fertilizer in order to produce certain
types of grain. New farms at St. Ann's also required
new ploughs and cattle (Génie, 2 May 1757, man.
210 f).
Fig. 4
The Garden, Menagerie
and Garden Pool of the
Engineer’s Residence in
1735. (AN, Atlas Moreau
de S. Méry, F 3-290)
26 Material Culture Review 64 (Fall 2006) / Revue de la culture matérielle 64 (automne 2006)
Changing the Landscape
To ensure ideal conditions for proper cultivation,
property owners in Ile Royale transported topsoil.
It became commonplace to move rich earth to
improve marginal ground and thus soil was carted
in Louisbourg for all manner of gardens. As early
as 1723 block 18 in Louisbourg was reserved for
the ordonnateur’s garden. Built of transported soil,
the garden in block 18 was eventually taken over
as the parade square. In 1732 the king’s garden, a
“new garden divided between the the governor and
the ordonnateur,” was built in block 35 (AN, CllB
v13 f 92). By 1740 the quality of the soil required
further improvement and in the spring of 1741, 297
livres was paid to various workers to move soil from
the glacis of the fortifications to the king’s garden
(AN, CllB, 18 Oct 1741, v 23, f 173).
The movement of topsoil was not necessarily
a one-time affair because new soil and fertilizer
were often added yearly to replenish garden nutrients. Antoine De La Forest, an official with the
Louisbourg admiralty court, had a large property
75 pieds long by 100 pieds wide including a house,
storehouse, courtyard and gardens, all enclosed
by a picket fence in the Dauphin Fauxbourg just
outside Louisbourg’s walls (AN, CllB, 19 Oct 1742,
v 24, f 219-2). La Forest’s estate had a courtyard
in front of the house measuring 30 pieds by 70
pieds surrounded by a picket fence with a “grande
porte d’entrée.” The garden behind the house was
60 pieds square and was of high quality because
La Forest carted “soil and manure into it every
year” (AN, CllB, 20 April 1728, v 10, f 154v). At
the other end of the town, La Forest’s superior,
Louis Levasseur, judge of the admiralty court, also
ensured that his vegetable and ornamental gardens
were well established with soil and manure. During
the years 1730 to 1733, Levasseur contracted workers for the construction of his house and gardens on
block 23. Levasseur paid more than 730 livres for
the excavation and transport of soil to prepare three
large gardens for cultivation. With a total area of
1871 square pieds, 2892 cubic pieds of rich earth
were moved into the Levasseur gardens by various
contractors, mostly soldiers. Soil was excavated
from the front of the house line for the walkways
and twelve days was spent carting “good earth” for
the square garden beds. The workers also screened
rocks from the soil and rolled the earth in the garden
beds and outside the beds. Another man carted
seaweed as fertilizer for the gardens. Soil was also
excavated and transported to create a peat pile, a
“place des tourbes” for the garden, measuring 12
pieds x 1.5 pieds x 7 pouces (CAOM, G 2, 1734,
208, doss 479, pièce 25). Although the Levasseur
gardens were among the largest in Louisbourg, soil
was also moved to modest properties. A Monsieur
Poincu, for example, paid 12 livres 5 sols to some
soldiers “for seven barrels of rich earth” during the
1750s (CAOM, G 2, 1749 to1756, v 212, doss 540).
The Aesthetic Function of Louisbourg
Gardens
In terms of garden design and agricultural innovation, the French set the standard for the world during
the 18th century. Material culture, manifested in
the mobilization of nature and technique, was part
of the consolidation of French national identity
(Mukerji, 98). Although the Louisbourg gardens
were intended primarily to provide fresh vegetables,
they were also designed with a sense of proportion
and incorporated elements of beauty to enhance
their aesthetic appeal. The decoration of Louisbourg
gardens is evident in the hundreds of plans and
views showing elaborate designs. Of the 506 maps
and plans of Cape Breton from 1702 to 1758, 115
show the gardens of Louisbourg and other outports.
Admittedly, these plans have to be used with caution
but they send a powerful, visual image about the
significance of gardens in Cape Breton. At Versailles
and throughout the French countryside, planting and
building projects were emerging that were symbols
of a new French taste and style. This new style was
also appearing in art, music, dance, architecture,
clothing, food and numerous other endeavours
characteristic of the Enlightenment (Roche 1998).
As a symbol of the era’s aesthetic sensibility,
Louisbourg officials, for instance, completed the
beautiful monumental arch, the Frederick Gate, at
the foot of Rue Toulouse in 1742. There are other
examples of the tasteful design and proportion in
Louisbourg’s architecture, including the elegant
king’s bastion clock tower, the hospital spire, the
rococo design incorporated into the Maurepas Gate
and the Demi Dauphin entrance into the town.
Louisbourg’s formal and ornamental gardens—a
style of landscape architecture—were linked with
the broader social and political culture of France.
The classic garden, part of the transformation of
the environment, was “based on an exploitation
of the existing site and a knowledge of the latest
cartographic and geographic techniques of mapping
and inventory” (Mariage 1999, xiii). Louisbourg
gardens thus had an aesthetic dimension that was
and other climbing
plants (Russell and
Thorton 1999, 250).
The French
enjoyed their flower
gardens. Louisbourg
homes, for instance,
had flower vases,
boxes (G 2, 20 Sept
1753, 202, doss 287)
and containers for
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
bouquets of fresh
Detail from a 1731 View showing
The Fredrick Gate, an aesthetic monumental arch,
flowers (CAOM,
Louis Levasseur’s House and
welcomed visitors to Louisbourg in 1742. (Génie, 14
G2, 209, doss 507).
Gardens in block 23. Note the
Louisbourg tablette no. 5)
fences and ornamental gates in
Fresh-cut flowers
the front and back gardens. (BN,
sold for 20 sols
Cartes & Plans, Ge C, 5019)
per bouquet in
intrinsic to the wider cultural milieu. Writing in Louisbourg in 1737 (CAOM, G 2 , 28 July,
his memoirs Chevalier Johnstone, an officer who 184, f 236). Artificial flowers, especially those
lived in Louisbourg from 1750 to 1758, described representing individual species, were also popular
the pleasures of his garden:
in Ile Royale, reflecting the increased demand for
artificial flowers throughout France during the 18th
I have a small garden in front of the windows of my
century (Hyde 2005, 24). The church in nearby
chamber, which St. Julien [his servant] had cleared
Baleine, for example, had a garland of artificial
to serve me for relaxation, when I was fatigued,
and my eyes weakened by reading. I there enjoyed
flowers in December 1726 (CAOM, G 2, 179, p 458)
a true and perfect satisfaction from the esteem and
and the altar of the king’s chapel was also decorated
friendship of all my comrades, which was not an
with floral arrangement for Christmas in 1744
easy matter to secure. (Johnstone 1870, 179)
(CAOM, G 2, 189, f 199). One Louisbourg shop
Variation in design was a feature that contributed offered twenty bouquets of artificial flowers for sale
to the aesthetic elements of Louisbourg gardens. in 1743 (CAOM, G 2, 8 Oct, 198, doss 180). There
Jacques Boyceau, for instance, had published were also carved wooden picture frames depicting
his Traité du Jardinage selon les raisons de la flowers, as well as pictures of flowers (CAOM,
nature et de l’Art in 1638. The first French book G2, 1740, 197 doss 129). During their occupation
devoted to pleasure gardens and their decoration, of Louisbourg, the British also cultivated flowers.
the text called for variety in the design of the Louisbourg engineer John Bastide noted in April
garden and emphasised elements of relief such as 1748 that his wife was “very busy about the flower
bowers, ornamental groves, pavilions, fountains garden.”15
Other Louisbourg gardens were small and
and sculpture (Jellicoe and Jellicoe 2001, 69). Such
decorative design elements spread throughout the delightful, reflecting the more intimate character of
Western World, including Ile Royale. The Levasseur gardens under Louis XV, compared to the grandiose
gardens, for instance, were designed with a sense schemes of Louis XIV. As in France, there was an
of proportion to enhance their appeal. Levasseur’s attempt to integrate the house with the garden. Some
gardens had alleyways with an elaborate fence as homes had small adjacent rooms for such items as
well as a trellis and bower (CAOM, G 2, 25 July garden tools, work shoes and watering cans to be
1734, 208, doss 479). In 1731 “Maitre” Duval, a easily accessed on the way to the garden.16
One man had an elaborate jeu de bagues (ring
joiner, spent two-and-a-half days making a trellis
for the garden of Claude Desmarest, the royal notary game on a turning post, valued at 200 livres) in the
at Louisbourg (CAOM, G 2, 208, doss. 479, pièce courtyard adjacent to his herb garden. Bowling
5). Bonnaventure Le Brun, manager of a fishing (jeu de quilles) was popular in Louisbourg and was
company on Ingonish Island in 1726, also had a played on garden paths or on greens in the garden or
bower 15 pieds long in one of his 80-pieds-square adjacent to the garden. As early as 1630 the French
gardens (CAOM, G 2 27 Sept, 180, f 365). A vault- were playing skittles outside at St. Ann's. There
shaped trellis, the bower had creepers, vines, roses were at least thirteen billiard rooms in Louisbourg,
Fig. 7
A 1753 Plan showing two
Louisbourg houses of
Jeanne Lartigue. These
houses, in profile and
plan, complement the
courtyards and gardens
in a well-proportioned
and harmonious fashion.
(AN, Dossiers Personnels,
Séries E, no. 258)
many adjacent to the garden (Donovan 2007). Some
houses had windows or glass doors overlooking the
garden whereas others had fountains, view planes,
alley ways of coloured flint, sundials and flower
boxes. Garden benches provided places to look
along the alleyways, to take in the view planes and
to admire the beauty of the vegetables and flowers,
as well as allowing space for contemplation,
relaxation and conversation. Thus, in 1743 Antoine
Legras, a joiner, delivered four benches that he
had made for the king’s garden (AN, CllC, v 12
f 91-104).
Creating a Micro-climate: The Use of
Fences and Adjoining Buildings
Although Cape Breton has a harsh climate, the
island has a longer growing season and better soil
than Newfoundland. With their Newfoundland
experience, the French knew what to expect when
they came to Louisbourg and they took elaborate
precautions against severe weather, especially
the winds. In 1720 an ordinance was passed in
Louisbourg stating that fences separating yards
and gardens could be made of wooden pickets
and this became the standard practice (AN, CllC,
1720, vol 15, f 230). Although varying in width,
pickets were planted so that they were 5 to 7 pieds
above the ground in order to provide protection.17
All gardens were fenced and the walls of adjoining
buildings were used whenever possible to create
a microclimate. The French also drove stakes
between openings in picket fences in order to
protect the plants from the cold winds. Horizontal
wooden rails added strength and helped to keep
the fences straight (CAOM, G 3, 2047 suite, 4 April
1752, no 33).
Thousands of property transactions described
how the garden was surrounded with pickets,
usually listing the dimensions and condition of the
fence. As early as 1723 block 18 was reserved for
the Commissaire-ordonnateur’s garden (AN, CllC,
v 16, 31 May 1723). Block 18 was eventually taken
over as the Place d’Armes and in 1732 the king’s
garden, a “new garden divided between the governor and the ordonnateur,” was built in block 35
(AN, CllB, v 13, f 92v). Approximately one square
arpent in size, the garden was enclosed by pickets
from 1729 to 1733 (AN, CllB, 21 Oct 1733, v 14,
f 114-6). One plan from 1731-32 showed details of
this picket fence under construction. The outer wall
of the fence was straight, tied together with finished
planks. On either side of an ornamental gate there
were two gates used for everyday, practical use. The
gates each had two large square posts anchoring
the swinging door between them. The garden beds
adjacent to the fence were contoured away from the
entrance of the gates.
Since picket fences were expensive, the
contract specifications for building the fences were
often stipulated. Francois Duviver required 20 toises
of fencing around his house and garden in 1751. He
wanted the pickets to be four pieds, 10 pouces above
the ground and two pieds six pouces in the ground
and to be tied together by a rail embedded and nailed
into the fence. The cost was 14 livres per toise for
a total of 291 livres. (AN, CllB, 1751, vol 30, f
229). Given such significant costs, property owners
objected to individuals climbing over the palisades
and damaging their property. Citizens complained
in 1754 that hunters and others, under the excuse
of taking a short-cut, climbed over the fences
on the outskirts of Louisbourg and on the main
roads. “They have wounded and killed livestock;
ruined the forage and broke the fences,” noted the
preamble to one law. Therefore an ordinance was
passed on June 30, 1754, that hunters, soldiers and
seamen were “forbidden to fire guns in gardens
or enclosed fields or to climb over fences.” The
penalties called for damaged fences to be repaired
(AN, CllB, vol. 34, f 7).
Fig. 8
A 1743 Plan and View showing how the gardens are protected from the wind
on three sides by House A and B. This fishing property on Louisbourg’s North
Shore is located near the present-day post office. (AN, Dossiers Personnels,
Séries E, no. 258.
Gardeners and Animal Keepers
Although most people tended their own gardens,
there were also numerous hired gardeners and
animal keepers in Ile Royale. Louis Salmon, for
instance, a Louisbourg innkeeper, hired a gardener
in 1738. Salmon’s wife, Catherine, had died the
year before, leaving him with five young children,
the baby being less than two years old. Preoccupied
with caring for his children and running the
business, Salmon had little time for gardening and
thus he hired Antoine Heron to plant and cultivate
his vegetables. The contract, dated April 17, 1738,
stated:
I, Louis Salmon confirm that I have hired Marc
Antoine Heron dit Parisien to work in my garden
and I promise to pay him as salary the sum of 16
livres per month to begin on the sixteenth of this
month and to finish on the same day from month
to month; and I will also feed him the same as
myself. (CAOM, G 2, 185, f 313)
Heron worked in Salmon’s garden for six months
until October 16, 1738. A former resident of
Placentia, Heron and his wife had moved their family of six children to Louisbourg in 1714 (CAOM,
G 1, 466, 14 January 1715, pièce 51). A cook and
tavern keeper, Heron was also a gardener, since
most people had to provide their own vegetables.18
Moreover, in Louisbourg’s newly formed society,
30 Fig. 9
A 1725 perspective of the seven-foot high fence surrounding the Louisbourg
hospital garden. Note how the garden post on the left rises above the door of
the laundry building. There is a horizontal rail near the top of the fence. (BN,
Cabinet des Etampes, Vd. 20a, 55)
people tended to change occupations more readily
than in France but, because all manufactures were
imported, their occupational choice was narrow
(Donovan 1987). Heron was a capable gardener
since his garden at Placentia had been 92 pieds
long and 57 pieds wide.19 Although getting on
in years, Heron may have been helped by his
sons since Salmon’s garden was 98 pieds long
and 66 pieds wide, larger than Heron’s garden in
Newfoundland.
Hundreds of Louisbourg residents, such as
Salmon, hired gardeners to cultivate their gardens
inside the town and throughout the colony of Ile
Royale. Fifty people have been identified who were
described as “jardiniers, maitre jardinier, garcon
jardiniers and habitant cultivateurs.” Full-time
gardeners, including garden apprentices, ensured
bountiful gardens and therefore a secure supply of
vegetables, greens, herbs and ornamental flowers.
Fig. 10
The King’s Garden in 1732. The
ornamental layout of the garden
included parallel beds and topiary
around a circular centrepiece.
The beds were contoured away
from the garden gates. (Génie, 14,
tablette 8)
The Brothers of Charity, for instance, who operated
the Louisbourg hospital, had a full-time gardener
who was paid 400 livres per year, including his
board, by 1732 (AN, CllB, v 13, 17 March, f 42).
In December of the same year Governor Saint Ovide
attempted to have 300 livres per year allocated for a
gardener (AN, CllB, v 13, f 92). The following year,
on Saint Ovide’s initiative, a “maitre jardinier”
and an assistant were sent to Louisbourg but they
returned to France because of a lack of funds to pay
their salaries (AN, CllB, v 14, 21 Oct, f 115). The
governor, however, did have access to gardeners,
two of whom were soldiers (CAOM, G 2, v 184,
25 July 1737, f 376-8). As at Louisbourg, it was
common practice for soldiers at other garrisoned
towns throughout New France to tend gardens
during the summer months. At Fort Chambly, south
of Montreal, soldiers hired themselves out to people
of the area to cultivate their land so as to supplement
their monthly income (Gelinas 1983, 52). The
British soldiers at Annapolis Royal maintained the
gardens for the garrison.20
Although soldiers were not usually gardeners, some did have garden experience. Jean
Vadeboncoeur, for instance, was care taker of Major
François de Bourville’s petite ménagerie in 1728
(CAOM, G 2, 2 Oct, 178, f 527-8). Appointed the
Fig. 11
The large gardens
of the hospital in
1725. (BN, Cabinet
des Estampes, Vd.
20a, 55)
king’s gardener in 1741, Vadeboncoeur was paid
400 livres per year with Governor DuQuesnel and
ordonnateur François Bigot agreeing to share the
cost of the salary (AN, CllB, v 23, 20 Oct 1741,
f 109-10). A long-time soldier in Louisbourg,
Vadeboncoeur had been groomed for the garden
position. Permitted to marry Jeanne Toussain of
Louisbourg in 1740, Vadeboncoeur was eventually
discharged from the military and he and his wife
were granted land in block 41 and allowed two
rations per day in 1742.21 Thirty soldiers identified
themselves as gardeners in Ile Royale.
Petites ménageries and Animal
Husbandry in Ile Royale
Most members of the elite in Louisbourg including
senior colonial officials, garrison officers, fishing
proprietors and leading merchants had gardens in
town but also petites ménageries around Louisbourg
harbour and in the surrounding countryside. During
the years 1713 to 1758 there were 168 property concessions granted in Louisbourg harbour and many of
these had gardens and or small enclosures for sheep,
cattle, pigs and poultry (Fortier 1983, 51-219).
Within ten years of the settlement of Louisbourg,
there was also a vast, cleared countryside around the
town ranging from Baliene in the east to Gabarus in
the west, a distance fifteen miles long and at least
two miles inland from the seacoast. The trees had
been cut for firewood. There were enormous empty
spaces known as the plains of Gabarus, the plains
of Devil’s mountain and the plains of Big and Little
Lorraine down to Baliene.22
These vast plains offered opportunities since
they provided excellent forage for domestic animals
such as pigs, sheep, goats, cows, oxen and horses.
As early as 1717, Louisbourg authorities passed an
ordinance stipulating that no buildings or fences
were to be constructed or trees planted within 350
toises of the fortifications at Louisbourg, St. Peter's
and St. Ann's. The restricted area was to be used as
a communal pasture for livestock (AN, CllB, v 2,
12 Feb 1717, f 101-02). In effect, the land outside
fenced properties was free range, common pasture
land. By December 1721 Louisbourg officials
passed an ordinance warning soldiers not to kill
sheep, cows, oxen or other livestock belonging to
officers or citizens (AN, CllB, v 5, f 392). These
animals grazed in the common pasture outside the
town. Even within the town of Louisbourg pigs and
other animals often escaped from their pens and thus
the gardens within the town were vulnerable, unless
Fig. 12
This 1757 map showed the vast cleared
forests in the vicinity of Louisbourg. There
were no trees in sight. (AN, CllA, vol. 126, f.
247-8)
fenced. On June 5, 1724, Louisbourg authorities
passed a law forbidding pigs to run free within the
town because of the damage they caused to drying
codfish, chickens and the danger they posed to
children, in that order. Pig owners were required to
keep the animals in their yards or to put them out in
the country to forage. Free-running pigs could be
killed on sight (AN, CllB, v 7, f 10). The ordinance
was not effective since it was repeated four years
later (AN, CllB, v 10, f 56). Ordinances against
wandering animals in the town also were repeated in
1749 and 1752. The 1749 law noted that horses were
not “to wander freely in the town. They must be
kept in stables or taken to the country” (AN, CllB,
25 Aug, v 28, f 157). Three years later, a new law
noted that people were permitting their animals to
roam in the streets “which wears the streets so that
they become impassable. Livestock must therefore
be tended and prevented from doing damage” (AN,
CllB, 31 Oct 1752, v 32, f 21).
Seeking to take advantage of these open spaces,
Louisbourg officials such as Governor Saint Ovide
established a menagerie northeast of Louisbourg
during the 1720s, as well as putting livestock on
pasture lands at the head of Louisbourg harbour
and at the Mira River. Established northeast of the
intersection of the Louisbourg and Baleine road and
running along a stream that flowed into the harbour,
the governor’s menagerie in 1735 included a house,
a barn, a fountain, stables, sheep pens and gardens
measuring 75 toise by 100 toise. There was also 45
arpents of meadows running in a north northeast
32 direction that had been cleared since 1721 and that
marked the boundaries of the establishment.23 By
1741 Saint Ovide’s north shore property also had
eight cows and a steer together with five hens and
a rooster (CAOM, G 3, 2 July, 2046-2, pièce 24).
As an officer in the Placentia garrison for more than
twenty years, Saint Ovide, governor of Louisbourg
from 1718 to 1739, knew the necessity of having
one’s own garden plus a supply of fresh eggs,
milk and meat (DCB 3, 454). Like Saint Ovide,
ordonnateur Le Normant De Mézy also founded a
menagerie in 1720 but his was at the fond de la baie
of Louisbourg harbour (AN, B, 1 July 1721, v 44-2,
f 570-3). By setting up their own menageries, Saint
Ovide and De Mézy adopted a strategy that had
been followed in Placentia where external gardens
and menageries had been located within and outside
the earthwork walls of the fortifications.
Menageries could range in size from smallfenced gardens with one or two animals to largemixed farms with hundreds of animals. Although
they varied in size, the menageries usually had
a number of common elements including fenced
gardens as well as barns and stables for animals
such as cows, horses and oxen. The barns had to
be large enough to store the winter’s supply of
hay and feed for the livestock. There were usually
smaller outbuildings for chickens, pigs, goats, sheep
and doves and a meadow where the animals could
graze from the spring until autumn. Hundreds of
individuals were hired as shepherd or gardeners to
tend the animals, cultivate the gardens and cut the
Fig. 13
Detail of Plan showing Governor
Saint Ovide’s menagerie northeast
of Louisbourg in 1735. (AN, Atlas
Moreau de S. Mery, F-290)
hay on these small mixed farms. Laurent Nolan,
a public shepherd of sheep and goats, was paid
rations valued at 122 livres from October 1723 to
October 1724. In the margin besides Nolan’s name
De Mézy noted: “He is useful and necessary for the
good of the country” (AN, CllB, 30 Nov 1724, v 7, f
129v). In spite of De Mézy’s marginalia, Maurepas
refused in July 1725 to continue to pay for a public
shepherd (AN, B, v 48-2, f 970).
As in France, Louisbourg residents paid for
their own shepherds and animal keepers. Thus,
Major Bourville hired soldier Jean Champroux to
work on his menagerie in 1728 (CAOM, G 2, 2 Oct,
178) and Bernard Muiron employed 25-year-old
soldier Henry Goupy to look after his menagerie
at the fond de la baye during the winter of 1742
(CAOM, G 2, 198, n 164). Eventually, public
shepherds were reinstated at Louisbourg. Jean
Lambert, for instance, was a shepherd in the parc
du Roy during the 1730s and Louis Paget came
to Louisbourg in the 1750s as a shepherd for the
king.24 Sixteen-year-old Alexis Pinet also tended
cattle for Louisbourg as did Pierre Le Moule and
Louis Houry.25
Gardens and menageries ensured that
Louisbourg families had self-sufficient food supplies. Hundreds of transactions in the Louisbourg
archives document the efforts of Louisbourg
residents—from all social backgrounds—to
establish petites ménageries in Louisbourg harbour
and throughout the surrounding countryside. Some
individuals shared the cost of keeping their animals.
Rand Gillet, for instance, had one cow in 1723 and
he paid 1 livre 10 sols for the right to pasture his
animal (CAOM, G 2, 29 Nov 1725,178, f 506-08).
In a similar fashion, Blaise Cassagnolles sold three
cattle to Pierre Benoist, an officer in the garrison
in 1732. Benoist put the cattle out to pasture near
Louisbourg (CAOM, G 2, 4 Feb 1732, 184, f 79-80).
Eventually, at least one of the animals, a bull, was
wintered on De Mézy’s menagerie (G 2, 1732, 181,
f 35-44). In the meantime, Benoist had a garden
measuring 34 by 45 pieds behind his house in block
2 and another 90 square pieds garden in block 22
of the town. Benoist also had farm animals in his
block 2 residence and had a half share of an ox and
heifer. Benoit’s slave Charles tended his animals
in town and helped with the gardens (Donovan
2004). By buying three cattle from Cassagnolles,
Benoist was further diversifying his food supply,
as did Antoine Castaing who sent a cow to winter
on Scatary island in 1753 (CAOM, G 2, 30 March,
212, doss 540, pièce 2).
Ordonnateur Jacques Prevost also established
a petite ménagerie on Louisbourg’s north shore
during in 1753 in order to raise poultry to provide
“some comfort for life which is so difficult here”
(AN, CllB, 19 Dec, v 33, f 427v). With a family of
four children and a household staff of ten people,
including servants and slaves, Prevost required
numerous poultry to keep his house supplied
(DCB 4, 645). Governor Jean-Louis Raymond,
meanwhile, had also set up his own menagerie
on the Mira River, even though he and Prevost
had access to the king’s garden. Determined to
prove that Louisbourg could provide its own food,
Raymond’s farm was part of a larger experiment in
which he paid soldiers to clear land for agriculture
and he encouraged soldiers to settle in farming
communities, much like the coloniae of Roman
times, to bolster the island’s defences. In 1752
he discharged twenty-two soldiers who were
subsequently married and granted land in the village
of Rouillé on the Mira River. Other soldiers were
settled at Sydney, St. Peter's and on Ile Saint Jean
(DCB 4, 656).
These small farms helped to ensure a reliable
source of vegetables, milk, eggs, beef and pork and
any surplus produce could be sold in Louisbourg.
Thus, the surgeon major Jean Baptiste La Grange
had land granted for a working farm (metaire)
at Laurembec in 1727. By 1731 La Grange had
constructed a house on the property and at least
one gardener/agricultural labourer, Martin Guiar,
looked after the farm (CAOM, G 2, 1742, 198, n
164). On December 31, 1731, La Grange was paid
240 livres for vegetables supplied to the garrison
(AN, CllC, v 11, f 49-53). La Grange’s menagerie
also provided up to 300 quintals of hay per year
during the 1750s and was rented for 450 livres
per year in 1758. Since he had large family of six
children, La Grange, like Pierre Benoist, diversified
his food supply with properties and gardens in the
Barrachois of Louisbourg harbour and in block 11
(Hoad, 255-58).
La Grange, even though he owned a menagerie,
was a relatively small vendor, much like Joseph
Lartigue, who owned two large gardens and earned
300 livres per year selling surplus produce by 1735
(AN, CllB, v 17, f 290-2). The Louisbourg records
abound with sales of animals and foodstuffs from
menageries in and around Louisbourg. Judocus
Koller, for instance, supplied six live cattle to
the king’s ship Le Profond on 4 October 1741
for 540 livres (AN, CllC, v 12, f 73). Abraham
Dugas shipped eight live cattle from St. Peter's
to Louisbourg for the king’s service in 1750 (AN,
CllC, 13 Sept 1751, v 13, f 107-27). Innkeeper
Julien Fizel hired Giles Elain, a shepherd, to tend
the animals on his butchery at “fond de la Baye” in
1742 (CAOM, G 2, 20 Sept, 87, f 10v) and he raised
hundreds of cattle and sheep on his menageries at
Fourchou and Framboise for sale in Louisbourg
(AN, CllB, 8 June 1746, v 27, f 215-6).
In spite of having a sheep butchery on the
north shore of Louisbourg harbour and hundreds
of cattle at Fourchou and Framboise, Fizel also
kept three cows and a goose on his property in the
Barrachois just outside the walls of Louisbourg
(CAOM, G 2, 6 April 1757, 209, n 508). The three
cows provided a secure supply of milk for his wife
and their six children as well as the guests at his
inn on block 16, Rue Royale. Other households on
the street—approximately twenty in total—thought
much like Fizel since there were 13 cows for the
20 properties. The people on Rue Royale were
part of a comprehensive census, street by street,
of the townspeople and their domestic animals, as
well as the harbour of Louisbourg in 1752. There
were 67 cows, 79 pigs, 142 sheep and 28 horses
within the town, many more than the surrounding
harbour. Most people, including the elite such as
the governor, the ordonnateur and the engineer,
kept animals in their back yards as part of their
petite ménageries. Domestic animals were primarily intended to provide sustenance for individual
families and, as in the first years of the settlement
from 1713 to 1745, livestock had to be imported to
provide for the garrison and fishermen.
Together with the census of Louisbourg, Joseph
de La Roque also conducted a comprehensive
census of the inhabitants and livestock of the 19
villages throughout Ile Royale in 1752. When the
census of Louisbourg and the surrounding villages
were combined, there were a total of 573 cattle, 232
pigs, 223 sheep, 10 goats and 54 horses recorded
among a population of 5, 845 inhabitants. Excluding
the garrison, there were 4345 people on the island,
one cattle for every 7.5 persons, one pig for every
34 18.9 persons, one sheep for every 18.7 persons,
one goat for every 434 people and one horse for
each 80 inhabitants. By 1752 the French were still
attempting to rebuild their supply of animals and
breeding stock after their return to Cape Breton
in 1749. All of the properties around Louisbourg
harbour as well as the fishing villages throughout
Ile Royale—including their livestock—had been
destroyed during the 1745 siege.
Conclusion
Research and publication at Louisbourg over the
past thirty years have demonstrated that the elite
brought their world view, including their aesthetic
sensibility, their architecture, their music, their
books, their scientific curiosity, their elaborate
meals, their fine china, their delicate fabrics, their
servants, their slaves, their geometric gardens, their
gardeners and the whole range of their cultural
milieu to Ile Royale. The gardens in Cape Breton
typically began with the movement of soil as the
first step in a planned effort to develop fertile soil.
The demanding conditions of garden production in
Cape Breton called for the imposing of discipline
upon nature, part of a broader movement of garden
production that began throughout the western world
at the beginning of the 17th century.
Louisbourg’s gardens, as well as those of
the countryside, provided sustenance, in terms
of vegetables, for families throughout the year.
Besides fortress construction, other government
initiatives were part of the movement to impose
discipline upon nature. Thus, when the French
established two new villages along the Mira River
in the 1750s, soldiers were ordered to clear the land
for the settlers. A monsieur Denis was also paid for
the peas, beans and maize “that he provided in order
to seed the land of the inhabitants” along the Mira
(AN, CllC, 1753, v. 14, f 12-42). These gardens,
however, were not intended to provide food for the
garrison or for large numbers of fishermen, although
fishing proprietors and individual fishermen tended
their own gardens. The French persisted in their
attempt to grow wheat, in spite of the short growing
season. Subsequent generations pursued the same
ends. In May 1844, for instance, the schooner John
Thomas departed Sydney for Aberdeen, Scotland,
with 800 barrels of flour from James Anderson’s
steam grist mill: the first shipment of flour to be
exported from Cape Breton (Donovan 1990, 98).
The French persisted in growing wheat but
they also introduced vegetables such as carrots,
cabbages, dock, celery, artichokes, lettuce,
Inventory of
livestock on Ile
Royale - 1752 (De
La Roque, 3-172)
Place
Cattle
Gabarouse
St. Esprit “L’Ardoise“
18 St. Peter's 25 Isle Madame Petit-de-Grat “R.Inhabitants” Chapel Island Grand Narrows St. Ann's Little Bras d’Or Spanish Bay
Lingan Port Morien
Mira Scatarie I. Main-a-Dieu
Baleine Lorraine Louisbourg 79 TOTAL 122 Oxen
4
39 8
3
12 1
15 17 8
13 2
1
123 Cows
10 17 63 28 12 23 2
13 2
1
26 14 23 24 3
1
263 Calves
3
5
8
16 1
2
7
2
10 1
1
Bulls
1
2
1
2
1
2
Goats
Horses 2
4
3
1
1
3
4
34
11
3
7
2
13
8
56
9
10
34
54
4
87 232 turnips, cauliflowers, parsnips, peas, beans,
pumpkins, watermelons and potatoes.With their
bountiful gardens, Ile Royale citizens practised
a highly individualistic agriculture. Yet, at the
same time, some aspects of their agriculture were
communal since the pastures were held in common
and shepherds tended to the animals of neighbours
and friends. Communal pastures remained the
norm, especially in rural Cape Breton well into the
20th century. The gardens were enclosed and the
animals roamed freely throughout the countryside
in communities such as Ingonish in northern Cape
Breton as late as the 1930s (Gordon Doucette,
personal communication).
By the 1750s the French had almost one
hundred year’s experience in Cape Breton and
Newfoundland growing vegetables under less
Swine
6
14
22
7
1
9
2
29
Sheep
6
10
17
15
154
223
than ideal conditions. Louis Petitpas’s behaviour
was typical. A French interpreter for the Mi’kmaq,
Petitpas, who had a Mi’kmaq mother, lived on
Chapel Island, near St. Peter's, with his Mi’kmaq
wife, Madelaine Poujet, and one helper during the
1750s. Petitpas and his helper, 19-year-old Baptiste
Roma, spread approximately 646 cubic pieds
of manure to fertilize the garden (De La Roque,
36). The French had confidence in their ability to
transform marginal land into bountiful gardens.
The lessons of garden cultivation were hard
learned—part of the New World experience—and
yet they are still practised in Cape Breton and the
French Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The
agricultural innovations, part of the Enlightenment,
had long-term consequences.
Notes
This paper was delivered at the Atlantic Canada Studies Conference, Memorial University, St. John’s Newfoundland, 2- 4 May
2003 and the French Colonial Historical Society, University
of Toulouse, Toulouse, France, 14-18 May 2003. Bill O’Shea,
the recently-retired head of cultural resources at Louisbourg,
commissioned and inspired this study. Judith Romard provided
library resources. Vanessa Childs helped with cartographic research and Heather Gillis gave technical support. Special thanks
are extended to Sandy Balcom, Deryck Holdsworth and MCR
assistant editor Marie MacSween for their critical comments.
1. Journal and Votes of the House of Assembly for the Province of Nova Scotia, 5 July 1775, C.O. 220, vol. 11, p. 196,
Public Record Office, The National Archives, Kew, England
[PRO].
2. The colony of Ile Royale included the islands of Ile Royale
(Cape Breton) and Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island).
Louisbourg’s permanent civilian population was 633 in
1720; 813 in 1724; 1463 in 1737; and 2690 in 1752. These
figures do not include totals for the garrison, fishermen or
other transients who were in the colony on a seasonal basis.
By the late 1750s Ile Royale’s population, including soldiers,
approached 10,000 people (Johnston 1991, 75-86).
3. Report of St. Marie on Cape Breton, 2 March 1700, Dépôt
des Fortifications et des Colonies [D.F.C.], F 557, No. 130,
Centre des Archives d’Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France
[CAOM].
4. La Ronde Denys, “An Account of the Island of Cape Breton,”
English Harbour, 13 October 1713, CIIB, vol. 1, fol. 24,
Archives Nationales, Archives des Colonies, Paris, France
[AN].
5. Costebelle to the minister, Placentia, Newfoundland, 27
September, 1713, vol. 3, document 64, Nova Scotia Archives
and Records Management [NSARM].
6. The Council to Vaudreuil and Begon, 7 June 1720, B, vol.
42-2, p. 321, National Archives of Canada [NAC].
7. Maurepas to St. Ovide and Le Normant, 16 April 1737, B,
vol. 65, fol. 448v - 49v, AN.
8. Anonymous memoir, 1706, CllC, vol. 8, fols. 10-39, AN.
9. The French apple trees planted on the Mira and at St. Ann’s
would have bred true, providing nobody had planted a
different cultivar in the vicinity. The saplings taken to the
Mira would then be original stock but their progeny could
easily have been planted in proximity to other French or
New England imports. The next generation could well be
the products of various crosses, depending on which apple
trees the bees had visited. Pixie Williams, botanist, to Ken
Donovan, 6 June 1994.
10.Duck and pigeons sent to France on the Caribou, 1744, F 1
A, vol. 35, fol. 41, AN.
11.Louis Franquet, Memoire on Ile Royale, 10 December
1750, article 14, pièce 24, Comité technique du Génie,
Bibliothèque, Paris [Génie].
12.Raymond to the Minister, 3 March 1757, Valonges, France,
Series A 1, vol. 3457, pièce 9, Archives du Service Historique
de l’Armée. For the potatoes imported from Boston, see the
unloading of the ship Le Trialle from Boston, 16 October
1742, B, 272, f 102v-3, Archives départmentales, CharenteMaritimes, La Rochelle, France [ACM].
13.Charles Frost to William Pepperrell, Falmouth, Mass., 12
November 1745, p. 364, Pepperrell Papers, Massachusetts
Historical Society, Boston.
14.Clarence d’Entremont, ed., “Major Morris Report on His
Raid from Pubnico to Chegoggin, 1758,” Les Cahiers,
Societe Historique Acadien, vol. 2, no.4 (Mars, 1967), pp.
257-72. For the growing of potatoes in Halifax in 1750, see
letter of a British officer, Halifax, to Arthur Dobbs, Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, 13 August 1750, in D 162/50,
serial 8911072, PRO.
15.J. H. Bastide to Thomas Hancock, Louisbourg, 30 April
1748, Hancock Papers, Baker Library, Harvard University,
Boston.
16.Inventory of the estate of Claude-Joseph Desmarest, 13 April
1741, E 126, fol. 3v., AN.
17.For a garden fence seven pieds above the ground, see the
120 pieds square garden of Sieur de Boularderie south of
Little Bras Bras d’Or., “L’Affaire Le Brun-Boularderie,” 27
September 1726, G 2, vol. 180, fol. 365, CAOM.
18.For Heron described as a cook, see the census of 1724 and
1726, G1, vol. 466, pièces 67, 68, CAOM; for Heron as a
tavern keeper, see land grant concessions in Louisbourg,
1723, CllA, vol. 126, fol. 111, AN.
19.Marc Antoine de la Foret, Evaluation of the houses and
gardens in Placentia, Newfoundland, 27 August 1714, C.O.
194, vol. 5, B 208, fol. 351, PRO.
20.Mascarene to Governor Shirley, July, 1744, Mascarene
Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
21.For the rations given to Vadeboncoeur during the months of
July, August and September 1742, see 30 September 1742,
vol. 24, fols.192-96, A.N., Colonies. For Vadeboncoeur’s
wedding, see 1 February 1740, G 3, 2046-1, no. 233, CAOM.
For granting of land to Vadeboncoeur on 16 June 1742, see
21 October 1743, G 3, 2047-1, pièce 52 CAOM.
22.See Francois Boucher, “Carte Des Environs De Louisbourg”,
1738, CllA, vol. 126, fols. 253-54, AN, Colonies: “Carte Des
Environs De Louisbourg, 1757,” CllA, vol. 126, fols. 247-8,
AN.
23. Plan showing the limits of the governor’s menagerie, N.D.
(circa 1735-1740) Atlas Moreau de St. Méry, F 3-290, no.
48, CAOM. See also similar plan showing menagerie and
cleared land, CllA, vol. 126, fol. 241, A.N.
24.For Louis Paget, see passengers on the ship Le Comte de
Pontchartrain for Louisbourg, 1758, AN, CllC, F 5 B; for
Jean Lambert, see sale of land by Jean Lambert,G 3, 2046,
21 October 1738, CAOM.
25.For Pinet, see G 2, 1742, vol. 198, no. 164, CAOM; for Pierre
Le Moule dit Nauger, his wife, two children and servant, see
census of returning settlers to Louisbourg, G 1, 1749, vol.
466, no. 76; for Louis Henry, see G 2, 17 November 1755,
vol. 205, no. 386, fol. 46.
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Pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Évolution du paysage architectural le
long de la route transcanadienne, de 1949 à nos jours
Cet article s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une plus vaste
enquête, menée à l’initiative du Musée des sciences
et de la technologie du Canada, en vue d’explorer
certains aspects de la culture de l’automobile au
Canada, comme la démocratisation de la conduite,
l’apprentissage de nouvelles habitudes de vie axées
sur la vitesse, la promotion du tourisme motorisé
et la représentation symbolique de la route dans la
littérature, la chanson et le cinéma après 19501. Si
les phénomènes énumérés ci-dessus représentent
l’élément abstrait de cette culture de l’automobile,
la transformation du paysage architectural le long
des routes en constitue l’expression matérielle
la plus évidente. Comparativement à la situation
qui prévaut aux États-Unis, il semble que le sujet
n’ait pas encore suscité un intérêt réel auprès de la
communauté des historiens, des géographes, des
anthropologues et autres spécialistes de la culture
matérielle au Canada2. C’est un peu pour combler
ce vide que nous avons entrepris cette modeste
étude sur le paysage architectural le long de la route
transcanadienne depuis la fin des années 1940.
L’accroissement phénoménal du réseau routier
qui s’amorce en Amérique du Nord au lendemain
de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la prolifération
de bâtiments commerciaux qui s’ensuivit, montrent
à quel point le monde de l’automobile a modifié
le paysage naturel à l’échelle du continent. De là,
sans doute, l’importance d’étudier les paysages
non seulement pour leurs attributs physiques, mais
aussi pour leurs valeurs symboliques et culturelles.
Carl Sauer fut d’ailleurs le premier, dans les années
1960, à montrer que le paysage architectural était
avant tout une construction humaine, reflétant les
enjeux et les valeurs dominantes d’une société à un
moment de son histoire. Dans son esprit, le paysage,
en tant qu’écoumène, était un lieu investi de signes
et de symboles qu’il importait de décoder pour
mieux comprendre les relations de pouvoir entre
les groupes sociaux3. Voulant pousser plus loin la
définition du concept de paysage, J. B. Jackson
tentera de restaurer le rôle des gens ordinaires dans
le façonnage de leur environnement quotidien.
Refusant de réduire le paysage à un simple réceptacle de la vie sociale ou encore à une simple courroie
de transmission des valeurs issues du monde des
élites, il introduira la notion de lieu significatif. Pour
lui, un lieu ne serait significatif et ne deviendrait
symbolique qu’à travers l’expérience de ses acteurs.
À ce titre, les paysages aménagés en espaces publics
le long des routes (aires de repos, cinés-parcs,
motels, restaurants, stations-services, etc.) seraient
l’aboutissement d’un processus de socialisation à
deux voies. Oui, il y aurait bien entendu un agenda
social dans l’aménagement ou l’architecture de ces
lieux, mais ceux-ci n’auraient valeur de symbole et
ne seraient assurés d’une certaine pérennité que par
l’utilisation qu’en font les usagers4. C’est d’ailleurs
dans cet esprit que nous aimerions aborder l’étude
des paysages architecturaux le long de la route
transcanadienne.
Comme le faisait si justement remarquer
Gerald Bloomfield, dans une conférence intitulée
« The Automobile and the Canadian Landscape »,
la culture de l’automobile a marqué beaucoup plus
profondément le paysage architectural au Canada,
en l’espace de quelques décennies, que tout ce qui
a pu accompagner l’aventure du chemin de fer
depuis plus de 150 ans. On sait, par exemple, qu’au
Canada, une première vague de nouveaux bâtiments
commerciaux le long des routes est apparue à la fin
des années 1950, avec l’arrivée des restaurants fast
food, des chaînes de motels et des stations-services
affiliées. Puis une seconde vague aurait déferlé au
cours des années 1970 avec l’aménagement des
centres commerciaux et des parcs industriels de
haute technologie le long des autoroutes de banlieues. Qu’en est-il au juste du paysage architectural
le long de la route transcanadienne ? Comment
a-t-il évolué depuis les travaux de raccordement
inter-provinciaux commencés en 1949 ? À travers
la cacophonie architecturale de certains espaces,
est-il possible de décrypter un langage des formes ?
Jusqu’à quel point les développements en bordure
de la route transcanadienne diffèrent-ils, sur le
plan esthétique et visuel, de ceux que l’on retrouve
le long des Interstates aux États-Unis ou le long
des autoroutes ailleurs au Canada ? Pourquoi la
Transcanadienne semble-t-elle avoir été moins
affectée par les nouveaux courants architecturaux
qui se sont développés ailleurs à la même époque ?
Voilà autant de questions auxquelles cet article
tentera d’apporter un éclairage.
Pour ce faire, diverses sources seront mises à
contribution. Parmi les principales, mentionnons les
nombreuses monographies consacrées au paysage
routier et à l’architecture commerciale, parues ces
vingt dernières années aux États-Unis, sous la plume
de géographes et d’historiens de l’art, de même que
les rares thèses et articles qui explorent, depuis
peu, cette thématique dans le contexte canadien.
Les guides touristiques et les récits de voyages
évoquant les attraits de la route transcanadienne
seront également d’un précieux secours. Il en ira
de même de la collection de photographies du
Canadien National et de certains sites Internet
voués à la promotion de la Transcanadienne,
qui nous fourniront d’importants détails visuels
sur l’architecture des bâtiments et la nature des
attractions touristiques en bordure de cette route.
Brève histoire de la route
transcanadienne
Rappelons, pour les besoins de l’exposé, que l’idée
d’une route transcanadienne date de l’époque
des premiers chemins de fer au XIXe siècle. Le
projet fut relancé en 1910 par une association
d’automobilistes de l’Ouest (Canada Highway
Association), car il n’existait pas de routes au
nord du lac Supérieur, ni à travers les Rocheuses à
cette époque. Au lendemain de la Première Guerre
mondiale, le gouvernement fédéral commença
40 à subventionner les provinces—« les travaux de
voirie étant sous juridiction provinciale »—afin de
les aider à rationaliser leur réseau routier et dans le
but avoué de créer une grande voie qui traverserait
le pays d’un océan à l’autre. Faute de subventions
continues et de volonté politique commune, le
projet demeura longtemps en chantier. Bon nombre
de tronçons non pavés s’avéraient encore impraticables pour les automobilistes trente ans après
la mise en branle du projet. Ce n’est qu’en 1949,
lorsque l’administration fédérale adopta la Loi sur
la route transcanadienne, que le rêve d’une route
asphaltée entre Saint-Jean (T.-N.) et Victoria (C.-B.)
parut réalisable. Non seulement le gouvernement
d’Ottawa s’était-il engagé à financer 90% des
dépenses nécessaires à l’achèvement des travaux
pour la Transcanadienne, mais encore s’était-il
réservé le soin d’en déterminer le tracé. Une fois
terminée en 1962, la route avait coûté 825 millions
de dollars aux autorités fédérales. Chaque province
devint responsable de son propre tronçon de la
Transcanadienne. Hormis quelques exceptions,
cette route de 7 631 kilomètres est demeurée une
artère à deux voies non divisées5 [figure 1].
Nouvelles tendances de l’architecture
commerciale en Amérique du Nord
après 1950
Durant les années suivant la Seconde Guerre
mondiale, un nouveau style architectural est
apparu le long des routes. Il s’agit en fait du
courant moderne exagéré, fruit d’un étrange
compromis entre une conception utilitaire et une
vision tapageuse du bâtiment. Depuis déjà quelques
décennies, l’architecture commerciale faisait l’objet
d’un grand remue-ménage à l’échelle du continent
nord-américain. Insatisfaits de la tradition néoclassique et coloniale en matière d’agencement des
formes, de nombreux concepteurs de l’avant-garde
avaient commencé, dès le milieu des années 1920,
à proposer une imagerie architecturale mieux
adaptée au rythme de la vie moderne et à son cycle
ininterrompu de changements technologiques.
C’est ainsi qu’on vit fleurir durant la période de
l’entre-deux-guerres un nouveau vocabulaire
visuel, dont la facture était inspirée par les divers
courants issus des grandes écoles européennes :
Art Déco, Bauhaus International, Moderne
aérodynamique, etc. Force est de reconnaître qu’un
grand nombre d’édifices le long des routes—stations-service, restaurants « drive-in », salles de
montre d’automobiles—se prêtèrent facilement
Fig. 1
Tracé de la route
transcanadienne
en 1952.
Source: D.
Monaghan,
Canada’s New
Main Street: The
Trans-Canada
Highway as Idea
and Reality,
1912-1956
(Ottawa: Musée
des sciences et de
la technologie du
Canada,
2002 : 70).
à l’expérimentation des nouveaux styles. Le
Moderne exagéré, apparu après 1945, s’inscrivait
dans la continuité de ce mouvement de renouveau
architectural. Parmi les caractéristiques marquantes
du style exagéré, il convient de mentionner les
immenses panneaux de verre qui recouvraient la
façade des bâtiments construits selon ce principe.
Une autre particularité de ce style consistait à
amplifier certaines composantes structurales des
édifices. Plus souvent qu’autrement, on allongeait
démesurément l’inclinaison de la toiture de façon
à ce que la partie excédentaire puisse être soutenue
par de gigantesques colonnes en forme de V. De
colossales enseignes complétaient le portrait. On
rapporte à cet effet que la première génération de
restaurants Mc Donald’s avait été conçue selon ce
modèle architectural6.
Au début des années « soixante », le Moderne
exagéré commença à faire l’objet de sérieuses
critiques pour son style criard et pour le chaos
architectural qu’il créait le long de certains corridors
routiers. L’urbaniste américaine Jane Jacobs et
l’architecte américain Peter Blake furent parmi
ceux qui dénoncèrent avec le plus de véhémence
ce courant esthétique, dans deux livres cultes : The
Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
et God’s Own Junkyard (1964). S’ensuivirent de
nombreuses commissions d’enquêtes, de même
que plusieurs campagnes d’embellissement du
paysage architectural le long des routes. Du même
coup, on vit se dessiner deux nouveaux courants
esthétiques, en réponse au Moderne exagéré : l’un
Environnementaliste, l’autre High-Tech. Dans le
premier cas, des matériaux plus rustiques, tels que
le bois et la brique, prendront la place de l’acrylique
et des néons dans la conception des bâtiments
commerciaux le long des routes. Le principe de
la mansarde deviendra par la même occasion un
trait distinctif de nombreux motels et restaurants
fast food, au même titre que les aménagement
paysagers autour des bâtiments. L’idée derrière ces
diverses initiatives architecturales était d’envoyer
le message suivant : « Nous sommes en faveur de
l’environnement, nous ne polluons pas, nous voulons nous intégrer à la communauté locale, achetez
donc chez nous ». Quant à l’esthétique High-Tech,
elle se développera vers la fin des années 1970
à travers les lignes sobres des stations-service et
des sièges sociaux de compagnies informatiques.
D’ailleurs, le plexiglas foncé auquel on aura recours
pour les édifices à bureaux n’est pas sans rappeler
les écrans d’ordinateurs ou encore le néant des
espaces sidéraux7.
Le lent développement de la
modernité architecturale et de
l’imagerie commerciale le long de la
Transcanadienne
Contrairement à ce qui se produisit aux États-Unis
durant les années qui suivirent la mise en place
du programme de construction des Interstates en
1956, on relève peu d’indices témoignant d’un
bouleversement majeur du paysage architectural de
la Transcanadienne une fois achevés les travaux de
raccordement en 1962. Tout porte à croire que les
abords de cette nouvelle voie de circulation furent
davantage le lieu d’une continuité architecturale
que le théâtre d’un développement frénétique de
chaînes de motels et de restaurants fast food. Même
chose en ce qui concerne les nouvelles activités de
divertissement offertes aux automobilistes le long
des routes8. D’un océan à l’autre, peu de traces
de la modernité dans les bâtiments commerciaux
en bordure de la Transcanadienne. De quoi était
alors composée la trame architecturale jouxtant
cette artère ?
A. Le cas des gîtes
Ce qui frappe dans la gamme de gîtes offerts aux
automobilistes le long de la Transcanadienne, c’est
l’étonnante ubiquité d’une esthétique architecturale
datant de l’époque des diligences et des chemins de
fer. L’hôtel-relais pour touristes et commis voyageurs y règne en maître. Contrairement à ce que
l’on observe aux États-Unis et ailleurs au Canada,
le concept du motel ne semble pas y effectuer de
percée significative au cours des années 19501970. Plusieurs raisons expliquent ce phénomène.
D’abord, en privilégiant un tracé qui traversait (au
lieu de contourner) plusieurs petites et moyennes
municipalités, la route transcanadienne ne pouvait
faire autrement que d’encourager le secteur hôtelier
déjà en place et de défavoriser du même coup
la venue de motels. C’est le cas notamment des
trois tronçons ontariens de la Transcanadienne
qui ralliaient des localités comme Peterborough,
Sudbury, Thunder Bay et Kenora, de même que
des lieux de villégiature comme Orillia et Parry
Sound, où les hôtels de tous genres abondaient.
Par ailleurs, la réglementation en vigueur dans
les Parc Nationaux du Canada empêchait tout
développement immobilier le long des routes. Outre
certains sites d’hébergement sévèrement contrôlés,
nul ne pouvait ériger de motels, cabines ou chalets
à l’intérieur de l’enceinte des Parc Nationaux.
42 Or, il s’avère que la majeure partie du tracé de la
Transcanadienne dans les Rocheuses traversait les
parcs de Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Glacier et Mount
Revelstoke.
Sur le plan architectural, peu d’hôtels échappaient à l’emprise de la tradition anglo-saxonne.
Les styles Tudor, Queen Ann et néo-classique y
étaient particulièrement en vogue, compte tenu
que plusieurs des établissements hôteliers situés le
long du parcours de la Transcanadienne avaient été
construits au début du XXe siècle. Cet attachement
à la tradition et au passé ne signifiait pas pour autant
que la modernité architecturale ait été frappée
d’ostracisme. Ainsi, l’esthétique de certains hôtels
pouvait résulter parfois d’un savant compromis entre
l’ornementation rustique et les lignes modernes. En
témoigne la description du Domaine l’Estérel, que
livrait dès 1952 un automobiliste de passage dans
la petite localité de Sainte-Marguerite, au nord de
Montréal, non loin de ce qui allait devenir un futur
segment de la Transcanadienne:
Its ultra-modern main building looks, to our conservative eyes, rather like a Hollywood movie set,
and entirely out of keeping with its rustic background. The Esterel Lodge, built of logs, is quite
pleasing, but it appears somewhat incongruous to
us in its close proximity to the Blue Room and
Esterel Theatre of modern American design, where
movies and dancing supply the night life9.
Il arrivait aussi que d’autres hôtels épousent
carrément les caractéristiques du courant Art
Déco, par leurs formes géométriques en bas-reliefs
évoquant les usines modernes où les automobiles
étaient montées en série. Un exemple nous en est
fourni avec l’hôtel Brulé, érigé à Penetanguishene,
Ontario, près de la Transcanadienne, vers 1955
[figure 2].
Malgré l’existence de nombreuses versions
primitives depuis les années 1930, les premiers
motels ne seraient apparus sur le sol canadien
qu’après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Pour la seule
province de l’Ontario, leur nombre serait passé de un
à quatre-vingt-huit entre 1948 et 195810. Construits
en unités multiples, sur un ou deux étages, et
disposés selon un arrangement en forme de L ou de
U, la plupart d’entre eux offraient le stationnement
devant la porte d’entrée personnelle, l’air climatisé
central, la télévision dans chaque chambre et les
services d’un casse-croûte. Cherchant à attirer
une clientèle familiale, quelques-uns avaient une
piscine et accueillaient gratuitement les enfants de
moins de 12 ans. Rien n’indique toutefois que la
route transcanadienne ait été le théâtre d’un essor
important en ce domaine. Ainsi, sur les 150 motels
Fig. 2
Hôtel Brulé à Penetanguishene, Ontario, c.1955
Source: Musée des sciences et de la technologie du Canada, Collection du
Canadien National, 034577.
recensés en Ontario au début des années 1960,
seulement une vingtaine étaient situés sur le parcours de la Transcanadienne11. Même chose pour le
Québec, où l’on ne dénombrait qu’un petit nombre
de motels concentrés principalement à Montréal
et dans la région du Bas-Saint-Laurent12. Si, dans
la majorité des cas, les motels situés en bordure
de la Transcanadienne étaient des entreprises
indépendantes, il existait quelques exceptions à la
règle. C’est le cas notamment du Town & Country
Motel Court de Montréal qui, depuis 1953, était
affilié à la chaîne référentielle américaine Quality
Courts United. Fondée en 1941 par un petit groupe
d’hôteliers de Floride, cette organisation comptait
plus de 400 membres aux États-Unis et au Canada
durant les années 1950. L’idée derrière ce regroupement était d’établir des normes minimales de qualité
et de propreté parmi les membres, afin de détruire
la perception négative qu’on se faisait des motels
à cette époque13 [figure 3]. Pour le reste, il semble
que la route transcanadienne ne faisait pas partie
des sites les plus convoités par les grandes chaînes
de motels. Tel est le cas du moins des Holiday Inn
qui, au moment de leur implantation au Canada en
1963, cherchaient plutôt à s’installer le long des
autoroutes, près des sorties stratégiques menant
aux grands centres urbains.
Fig. 3
Première chaîne de motels, le long de la route
transcanadienne, à Montréal, c.1953
Source: Ontario Motor League, Road Book (1953): p.61.
B. Le cas des restaurants
Entre 1950 et 1970, la route transcanadienne
était parsemée de petits restaurants familiaux à
l’intention des automobilistes. L’un des prototypes
en ce domaine était le restaurant généraliste situé
habituellement dans le secteur commercial des
centres-villes. Réputés pour leur atmosphère
chaleureuse et leur aptitude à cultiver des relations interpersonnelles non codifiées, ceux-ci
constituaient un lieu de convergence pour des gens
issus de milieux sociaux différents, de telle sorte
qu’un voyageur venu de loin pouvait y éprouver
un sentiment d’appartenance à la communauté
locale. On peut en dire autant des cafés-restaurants
qui se répandirent le long de la Transcanadienne
durant les années 1950. Spécialisés dans la
préparation de repas légers, ceux-ci regroupaient
généralement un comptoir de nickel, des tabourets,
quelques « alcôves » munies de banquettes en cuir
et un juke-box. Leur capacité était toutefois bien
moindre que celle des restaurants généralistes. Plus
novateurs, les comptoirs routiers étaient de petits
bâtiments aérodynamiques, revêtus d’aluminium
ou de porcelaine émaillée, à la fenêtre desquels le
client pouvait commander son repas, pour ensuite le
consommer dans son automobile. Ce qui distinguait
ce type de restaurant des autres était le haut niveau
de mécanisation des cuisines: « Electric frying vats
and grills, and automated ice cream, shake, and drink
machines, as well as cup and plate dispensers, were
all arranged to effect assembly-line production » 14.
L’ajout d’une salle à manger à la formule
du comptoir routier devait donner naissance aux
premiers « diners » le long de la Transcanadienne
à la fin des années 1950.
Ancêtre de la restauration rapide, le « drivein » est apparu aux États-Unis peu après la Première
Guerre mondiale. Ce n’est toutefois qu’à partir de
la fin des années 1940 qu’il se convertit en un lieu
de socialisation de la jeunesse, hors du contrôle
des parents. L’élément le plus distinctif de cette
formule était sans conteste la présence de jeunes
filles qui assuraient le service à l’auto. Certains y
ont vu d’ailleurs une association préméditée de la
sexualité féminine au monde de l’automobile, en
vue de stimuler l’appétit masculin. Spécialisés dans
la vente de hamburgers, de boissons gazeuses et de
crème glacée, les « drive-in » étaient généralement
équipés d’immenses auvents et occasionnellement
d’un système de commande par boîte vocale. En
1964, au plus fort de la popularité des « drive-in »,
les États-Unis comptaient plus de 33 500 restaurants
de ce genre15.
Au Québec, les premiers « drive-in » remonteraient à l’époque de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
C’est ainsi qu’en 1940, la ville de Québec abritait
un restaurant jumelé à une station-service Red
Indian, où neuf serveuses faisaient la navette entre
les cuisines et la halte d’automobile [figure 4].
Une douzaine d’années plus tard, on en comptait
quelques-uns le long de la route Transcanadienne,
comme celui-ci, décrit par un voyageur de passage
dans la région de Sherbrooke :
West on Highway 1, there is a better than average
drive-in restaurant called Olivier’s, where you can
get almost anything, from a cup of coffee or an
ice cream soda to a full dinner. The dining room
is attractively panelled in pine, and there is ample
parking space all around the building16.
Dans la région de Montréal, il existait un certain
nombre de « drive-in » près de la Transcanadienne,
dont un Orange Julep, à l’entrée de la ville, et un
A & W à Vaudreuil. À ce jour, nous ne disposons
pas d’informations pouvant attester de la présence
de « drive-in » en Ontario, bien qu’il serait fort
étonnant qu’une telle formule ne soit pas parvenue
à s’y imposer durant les années 1950. Quoi qu’il
en soit, il appert que ce genre de restaurant était
en voie de disparition au milieu des années 1960,
faute d’avoir pu retenir une clientèle familiale. Il est
vrai que les « drive-in » étaient associés à tort ou à
raison à des lieux peu fréquentables, en raison de la
malpropreté, du tapage nocturne et du vandalisme
Fig. 4
Restaurant “drive-in” et poste d’essence Red Indian, à Québec, c.1940. Source: Archives privées, Louise Trottier.
imputables à des bandes de jeunes automobilistes.
D’ailleurs, plusieurs villes américaines avaient déjà
commencé à réglementer la présence de ce type de
restaurants dans leur enceinte17.
C. Utilitarisme vs esthétisme
Une enquête récente menée par des journalistes
de la Société Radio-Canada demandait aux
téléspectateurs d’identifier le lieu d’origine de
quatre grands boulevards commerciaux situés aux
abords de municipalités importantes du Québec18.
Je me rappelle qu’il était quasiment impossible de
distinguer quoi que ce soit, tant la ressemblance était
criante entre ces avenues surchargées d’enseignes
commerciales et peuplées des mêmes restaurants
fast food, des mêmes stations-service et des mêmes
centres d’achat. D’une certaine manière, l’arrivée
au Canada des grandes chaînes de motels et des
restaurants franchisés après 1970 a grandement
contribué à uniformiser le paysage architectural
le long des voies périphériques de banlieue. L’un
des premiers à avoir prôné la standardisation en
matière de bâtiments commerciaux aurait été le
groupe de restaurants Kentucky Fried Chicken,
dont plus de 80% des nouvelles franchises établies
après 1968 étaient construites par la firme Trachte
Company de Madison, Wisconsin, selon le même
modèle d’unité préfabriquée : toit en mansarde,
girouette avec l’effigie du colonel Sanders, murs
rouge et blanc, fenestration panoramique, etc19.
Le même concept avait d’ailleurs fait son chemin
auprès des chaînes hôtelières Howard Johnson et
Holiday Inn lors de leur implantation au Canada à la
même époque. L’idée derrière cette standardisation
architecturale étant de faire ressortir l’image de
marque et le caractère distinctif d’un établissement
par un ensemble de signes extérieurs : stylisation
uniforme des bâtiments, logo publicitaire aux couleurs criardes, etc. Dans un monde en perpétuelle
mobilité, sans ancrage fixe, cette récurrence en
matière d’architecture commerciale avait de quoi
rassurer les automobilistes à la recherche d’un
gîte pour la nuit, d’un couvert pour les repas ou de
ravitaillement en essence.
Bien qu’on ne puisse pas dire que ce soit
monnaie courante, on retrouve un peu de cette uniformité architecturale le long de la Transcanadienne,
notamment dans les corridors fortement urbanisés
de Vancouver-Richmond, de Winnipeg-Le Portage
et de Montréal-Laval. Au fil des années, le développement anarchique de ces symboles de la culture de
l’automobile incarnés par les restaurants fast food,
les chaînes de motels et les stations affiliées a fini
par encombrer, voire enlaidir, certaines sections
de la voie. Voulant remédier à cette banalisation
du paysage architectural, certaines institutions
prendront des mesures exceptionnelles. C’est le
cas notamment de la compagnie pétrolière Irving
qui encouragera ses concessionnaires de stationsservice, dans les villes du Nouveau-Brunswick
et de la Nouvelle-Écosse, à développer des
styles qui soient en harmonie avec la signature
architecturale des autres bâtiments commerciaux20.
Par ailleurs, certaines municipalités en bordure
de la Transcanadienne, comme Drummondville,
au Québec, adopteront des règlements pour
civiliser l’affichage commercial le long des routes
et pour inciter les propriétaires de commerces à
recourir à des matériaux nobles sur la façade de
leur bâtiment.
Un penchant pour le vernaculaire et
l’insolite
L’architecture vernaculaire et les objets insolites
parsemés le long des routes sont autant de
signes témoignant d’une certaine vitalité de la
culture populaire, dont la puissance d’évocation
contribue grandement à façonner les identités
locales. En abordant le monde de l’imagerie non
conventionnelle, notre intention n’est pas de nous
lancer dans une analyse exhaustive de cette forme
d’expression, mais plutôt de donner un aperçu de
ses manifestations les plus significatives le long de
la Transcanadienne.
Parmi les attractions routières les plus spectaculaires, il convient de mentionner les deux
maisons de verre en Colombie-Britannique. L’une
d’entre elles se trouverait à Duncan, près de la
Transcanadienne, l’autre à Sanca, en bordure de
la route 3. Nous ne disposons malheureusement
que de la description de cette dernière, dont on
peut présumer une certaine ressemblance avec
celle construite le long de la Transcanadienne.
Fabriquée avec plus de 60 000 petites bouteilles de
formol, la maison de Sanca, propriété d’un médecin
légiste, aurait été bâtie en 1952, sur le modèle d’un
château anglais du XVe siècle. Elle contiendrait
six chambres, en plus des commodités normales
d’une maison moderne21. Du côté de l’Alberta, on
retrouverait également une série d’objets insolites
le long de la Transcanadienne, comme ces murales
conçues sur des réservoirs d’huile, près de Calgary,
ou encore cette gigantesque botte de cow-boy
dépassant les immeubles de deux étages situés en
périphérie d’Edmonton. On ne peut passer sous silence non plus les immenses bornes d’arpentage qui
délimitent la frontière entre Lloydminster, Alberta,
et Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, sur le tronçon
Yellowhead Highway de la Transcanadienne22. Il
semble toutefois que ce soit dans les petites villes
du nord-ouest de l’Ontario, situées sur le parcours
de la Transcanadienne, que l’on rencontre le plus
d’artefacts routiers. Les animaux comptent souvent
parmi les objets mis de l’avant pour leur signification symbolique et leur pouvoir d’évocation. C’est
ainsi qu’à Wawa, une immense oie sauvage de huit
mètres de haut, située à l’entrée de la ville, rappelle
le sens du mot « wawa » dans le langage Cree. Plus
à l’est, l’orignal de Dryden et le maskinongé de
Kenora signalent aux automobilistes empruntant
la Transcanadienne l’importance des activités de
chasse et de pêche dans la région. D’autres villes
choisiront par ailleurs des emblèmes contribuant
à la mise en valeur du patrimoine industriel de
l’endroit. Tel est le cas du moins de l’immense
pièce de 5¢ en nickel placée à l’entrée de la ville
minière de Sudbury. De son côté, la colossale
hache qui jouxte la Transcanadienne à Nackawic,
Nouveau-Brunswick, rappellera aux visiteurs, non
seulement l’importance historique de l’industrie
forestière et de la construction navale dans la
province, mais aussi l’héritage professionnel de la
région en matière de taillanderie.
Conclusion
S’il y a un fil conducteur qui domine cet exposé, c’est
bien celui de la lente progression du modernisme
dans l’architecture des bâtiments commerciaux de
la Transcanadienne, de 1949 à nos jours. Au moins
trois facteurs sont à l’origine de ce phénomène.
L’un d’eux est dû au fait que l’essentiel du tracé de
la route transcanadienne parcourait l’arrière-pays
nordique et les Prairies, où l’attachement aux traditions esthétiques était beaucoup plus prononcé, où
l’on était moins perméable à l’idéologie utilitariste
américaine incarnée notamment par la restauration
rapide, les motels standardisés et le matraquage
publicitaire le long des routes. Dans un tel contexte,
il eut été surprenant qu’une architecture traduisant
des valeurs de mobilité et de vitesse puisse y proliférer. Autre facteur militant contre le modernisme,
le fait que le parcours de la Transcanadienne était
jalonné en grande partie de villes à faible densité
démographique, où la présence de chaînes de motels
ou de restaurants était difficilement justifiable sur le
46 plan économique. Il faut ajouter qu’au moment de
son ouverture, en 1962, la Transcanadienne n’était
pas pressentie pour accueillir un volume élevé de
trafic comme cela était le cas pour les autoroutes
situées dans le corridor entre Montréal et Windsor,
en Ontario. Or, c’est précisément là qu’aura lieu
l’essentiel du développement de l’architecture de
la mobilité, comme le démontrent entre autres le
Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), au sud de Toronto,
qui desservait depuis plusieurs années le flot de
touristes américains qui venaient chaque année au
Canada, ou encore l’autoroute 400 qui permettait
d’accéder aux divers sites de villégiature le long
de la baie Georgienne. La dernière raison qui
expliquerait la faible présence du modernisme
architectural en bordure de la Transcanadienne
résiderait dans la législation particulièrement
sévère à l’endroit de l’architecture commerciale sur
certains tronçons de la Transcanadienne. S’inspirant
d’une tradition qui remonterait aux années 1920, ces
contingences visaient à limiter le développement
commercial et à préserver l’environnement naturel
le long des routes. Tel était le cas en l’occurrence du
tronçon de la Transcanadienne traversant les parcs
de Banff, Yoho et Glacier, dont le pourtour était sous
juridiction fédérale. Une politique de Parcs Canada
datant de 1969 précisait à cet égard :
A townsite if required [...] should not provide the
extra entertainments and services common to urban living throughout Canada. Delicatessens, too
numerous curio stores, specialized clothing or dry
goods stores, are examples of services considered
to be over and above minimum requirement23.
Même chose pour la partie de la Transcanadienne
entre Montréal et Rivière-du-Loup qui, de 1972 à
1990, fit l’objet d’une loi provinciale interdisant
tout affichage commercial à moins de 300 mètres de
la voie publique. En vertu de ces différents facteurs,
il était donc difficile pour le modernisme architectural de s’affirmer le long de la Transcanadienne,
contrairement à ce qui devait se passer sur les
interstates aux États-Unis, à la même époque.
Même si elle lève un coin du voile sur un
aspect méconnu de la route transcanadienne, nous
sommes conscients que cette recherche ne constitue
guère plus qu’un survol de la question. Les résultats
sont souvent préliminaires, et les conclusions,
provisoires. Compte tenu de l’étalement de cette
route sur plusieurs milliers de kilomètres, des
investigations à caractère régional seront nécessaires pour confirmer ou invalider certaines des
idées énoncées dans cet article.
Notes
L’auteur tient à remercier ses collègues Sharon Babaian, Helen
Graves Smith, Louise Trottier et Garth Wilson, de la division
collection et recherche du Musée des sciences et de la technologie du Canada, pour leurs précieuses suggestions en ce qui a trait
au contenu de l’article, et pour leur support technique.
1. D
epuis une quinzaine d’années, le Musée des sciences et de
la technologie du Canada s’est engagé à mettre en oeuvre
un processus d’évaluation historique sur un ensemble de
thèmes reliés aux objets de sa collection. Cette démarche
vise essentiellement à produire la connaissance nécessaire à l’enrichissement des collections et à la poursuite
d’objectifs éducationnels. Ces derniers temps, le Musée a
cru bon d’amorcer un virage afin d’accorder une place plus
importante à la dimension socioculturelle du changement
technologique, d’où l’ouverture à l’endroit de ce vaste projet
sur la culture automobile.
2.��
Pour les États-Unis, signalons les travaux pionniers de W.
Balasco, Americans on the Road. From
��
Autocamp to Motel
(Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1979) ; de C. H. Liebs,
Main Street to Miracle Mile. American Roadside Architecture (Boston : Little Brown, 1985) ; de J. J. Flink, The
Automobile Age (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1988) ; de
J. Jennings, Roadside America. The Automobile in Design
and Culture (Ames, Iowa : Iowa University Press, 1990) ;
et ceux de J. Jakle et de K. Sculle, The Motel in America
et Fast Food. Roadside
��
Restaurants in the Automobile Age
(Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996
et 1999) ; pour le Canada, il convient de souligner les travaux récents de G. Donafrio, « Self Service. ��
How Gender
Influenced the Architecture and Technology of Gas Station
Design », communication présentée au Congrès du SHOT
(Toronto, 2002) ; de A. Adams, « Picturing Vernacular
Architecture. Thaddeus
��
Holownia’s Photographs of Irving
Gas Stations », Revue d’histoire de la culture matérielle,
61 (print. 2005) : pp. 36-42 ; de même que le mémoire de
maîtrise de B. Bradley, Roving Eyes. Circulation, Visuality
and Hierarchy of Place in East-Central British Columbia,
1910- 1975 (mémoire de maîtrise, département d’Histoire,
Université de Victoria, 2004).
3. C. O. Sauer, Land and Life (Berkeley, Ca. : University of
California Press, 1963).
4. J. B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New
Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1984).
5.��
Voir L. McNally, « Routes, rues et autoroutes », dans N. R.
Ball (dir.), Bâtir un pays. Histoire des travaux publics au
Canada (Montréal : Boréal, 1988), pp. 65-67 ; et D. Monaghan, Canada’s New Main Street (Ottawa : MSTC, 2002) ;
à partir de 1965, des tronçons secondaires seront ajoutés à la
voie principale de la Transcanadienne, notamment en Ontario
et dans les provinces de l’Ouest. Le premier d’entre eux
reliera Ottawa à North Bay, pour rejoindre la voie principale
à Sudbury. Un second, plus au nord, partira de Montréal,
atteindra la ville de Rouyn-Noranda, en Abitibi, passera par
Kirkland Lake et Hearst, en Ontario, pour rejoindre la voie
principale de la Transcanadienne à Thunder Bay (anciennement Port Arthur, Ontario). Un dernier tronçon secondaire, le
Yellowhead Highway, se séparera de la Transcanadienne à la
hauteur de Portage-La Prairie, au Manitoba, pour parcourir
les villes de Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper, et revenir sur la
voie principale à Banff.
6.��
Liebs, op. cit., pp. 53-62.
7.��
Ibid., pp. 67, 72-73.
8.��
C’est le cas notamment des cinés-parcs au Canada, dont
le nombre passa de 7 à 229 entre 1947 et 1957. La plupart
se trouvaient toutefois dans la péninsule sud de l’Ontario,
en dehors du tracé de la Transcanadienne. De leur côté, les
États-Unis comptaient déjà plus de 4 000 cinés-parcs en
1958, situés principalement à proximité des autoroutes ;
voir Facts and Figures of the Automotive Industry (Toronto,
1959), p.41 ; et P. Patton, Open Road. A
��
Celebration of the
American Highway (New York : Simon and Shuster, 1986),
p. 208.
9. J. & M. Mackenzie, Québec in your Car (Toronto : Clark,
Irwin & Co., 1952), p. 68.
10.Ontario Motor League, Road Books (Toronto, 1948-1958).
11.Ontario Motor League, Road Book (Toronto, 1960-1961).
12.��
Club automobile Québec, Guide de la route (Québec,
1963).
13.Ontario Motor League, Road Book (Toronto, 1953), p. 61 ;
International Directory of Company Histories (65 vol.,
Chicago et Londres : St. James Press, 1988-2004), vol.14 :
p. 105.
14.��
��
Jakle et Sculle, Fast Food, p. 57.
15.��
Ibid., pp. 54-55.
16.��
Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 258s.
17.��
Voir Jakle et Sculle, Fast Food, p. 57 ; Liebs, op. cit., p.
211.
18.��
« Québec : un long boulevard Taschereau ? », reportage
télévisé, Zone libre, Société Radio-Canada, 8 avril 2005.
19.C. Ahlgren et F. E. Martin, « How the Trachte Company
Grew Up with the Roadside », dans J. Jennings (dir.), op.
cit., pp. 111s.
20.A. Adams, loc. cit., pp. 36-42.
21.M. Kluckner, Vanishing British Columbia (Vancouver : UBC
Press, 2005), p. 22.
22.��
Site web: http://wwww.gbkphoto.com/pages/alberta.
23.Cité dans J. R. Cheng, Images of Banff and Canmore and
the Use of Banff National Park by Motel Visitors (Thèse de
doctorat, Université de Calgary, Alberta, 1978), p. 15.
Gloria Lesser
The Treimane Art Pottery
Introduction
The Treimane Art Pottery was active for about
forty years, from 1949 until the early 1990s, a
considerable time for a small but prolific cottage
craft enterprise. Excellent Treimane pots can still be
found in the country homes of the original owners
or among the possessions of their descendants. The
pots are still highly-admired personal decorative
art possessions that reflect the traditional Latvian
forms of their creators. Remarkably, the undertaking escaped the serious attention of art and craft
scholars throughout its lengthy life span. This
suggests an isolation of this venture from the official
organizations that advocate on behalf of the Quebec
craft industry.
A central theme of the history of the 20th
century appears to be the mass migration of
peoples, generally from repressive regimes to liberal democracies. These widespread demographic
changes took place in the midst of competing economic systems: democracy versus totalitarianism.
Historian and author, Latvian-born Modris Eksteins
(1999) writes about the Baltic nations against this
background of world history. His discussion about
the Latvian immigrant experience parallels the
experiences of numerous emigrants to Canada.
The Treimane potters, like other craftspersons who
fled their homelands during and following World
War II, operated within dominant cultures and
sub-dominant linguistic groups, often at a distance
from the official ideology and bureaucracy of
craft organizations and the established corporate
world. Nonetheless, these unsubsidized immigrant
potters can be considered among the corps of
48 Canadian/Quebec crafters, even though their
works may be better analyzed and compared to
craft production occurring elsewhere in Canada
and Europe than to the work of other Quebec
potters. This is because the artistic sensibilities and
motivations of immigrant potters generally differ
from the interests of local producers whose artistic
understandings are reinforced by regional academic
theories. Naturalized Canadians are reconciled to
the fact that their products are different because they
work from an orientation that reflects an outsider’s
perspective.
The Treimane Pottery represents an interesting
case for the study of Latvian pottery in Canada
and particularly in Quebec. It provides a frame
of reference for examining the role of crafts in
recreational tourism and serves as a benchmark
for understanding how a particular craft practice—Western ceramic art post World War II—fits
within the broader issue of location in rural Canada.
The range and distinction of the Treimane Studio
within the cottage craft industry is explored in
this study and an attempt is made to show how
traditional practices give character to the lives of
individuals by contributing to the creation of their
material culture.
For the author, however, this monograph about
the Treimane Pottery is an important opportunity to
focus on the ethnicity of one particular studio active
in Quebec throughout the latter part of the 20th
century. Attention to ethnicity is a matter absent
from the Canadian craft industry and within the
Canadian craft bureaucracy. This omission means
that not only does an all-encompassing analysis
of Canadian craft not occur, but in the case of
the Treimane Pottery that inattention could have
contributed to the demise of the operation.
In the interest of placing Latvian clay production within its ethno-cultural context and for lack
of a command of Latvian, a number of Latvian
people were interviewed. As well, The Canadian
Encyclopedia and the Dictionary of Art were
consulted.
Immigrant Crafters
The founders of the Treimane Pottery came to
Quebec as craftspersons in the post-World War II
period. They operated outside the academic milieu,
outside the two dominant linguistic groups—French
and English—and at a distance from the official
ideology and bureaucracy of Canadian and Quebec
craft organizations that sponsored, promoted and
advertised art. In the l950s, displaced persons—what
Canada of the 1950s called refugees—lived on the
margins of society and were expected by many to
stay there. At best, displaced persons were defined
by their difference and generally ignored by the
local populace. It is perhaps safe to say that the
cultural position, or identity, of the Latvian clay
potters was Latvian culture and clay culture—that
is they were identified as Latvian people and as
clay people.
There is no one clear and simple way to define
“identity.” It is not a closed issue locked into a cultural condition. During the 1950s and early 1960s
distinctions between emigrating groups were, for
the most part, considered unimportant. That notion
changed somewhat as Canada moved toward its
centennial year and the concept of multiculturalism
was embraced. There was still a perception, however, that identity could be slotted into a category
identified by the bureaucratic modernist structures
of Canadian multiculturalism, a phenomenon in
Canadian practice that has often been cited as a
form of exclusion, locking immigrants into cultural
categories and denying a definition of identity as
a continuing process. A politically-charged term,
multiculturalism has often been strategically used
to bring difference into conformity by countries,
like Canada, that are usually known to take pride
in absorbing differences.
The concept of multiculturalism, widely promoted throughout the 1960s and 1970s eventually
gave way to the 1980s “multi-ethnicity.” During
this period, craft also became politicized around
current issues of race, gender, sexual orientation
and class. Nonetheless, in that the face of crafts was
universal, craftworks from around the world were
utilized to demonstrate the inclusiveness of nations
in a common global order, a satisfying concept
during the Cold War.
Immigrant as Entrepreneur
Political events in the homeland of immigrant
groups and those of the host country are considered
when determining a suitable enterprise or occupation for immigrants. Traumatizing experiences of
atrocities and upheavals brought on by ideological
political polemics make way for existentialist
theories that displace Kantian romanticism. For
example, the artist-immigrant may face struggles
with assimilation due to conflicting understandings
about art. Caught between the superstructure and
the infrastructure of the host country, the post-World
War II artist-immigrant (indistinguishable from an
émigré who was a political exile) was a displaced
person who imagined a life in another country
(Canada) and who envisioned a market within the
hegemonic culture. If, as French philosopher Henri
Bergson1 postulated, an original life force is carried
through successive generations, (one would expect
it to be especially true in the craft atelier, where
the transmission of tasks, knowledge and skills are
transferred in a shared community of the extended
family) the Latvian potters had reason to believe
that through the Treimane Pottery a purposeful and
rewarding life could be achieved in their adopted
country.
It is not surprising that entrepreneurship was
the choice of many western and eastern European
craftspersons who immigrated to North America.
It was the preference of creative and independentthinking artisans whose utopian ideologies resisted
“industrialization.” Many who came to Canada
during the 1940s and 1950s arrived with theoretical
academic knowledge and highly advanced technical
expertise attained through rigorous beaux-arts
studies in their countries of origin. It might be assumed that one rationale for immigration under the
Canadian sponsorship quota system was that their
skills were required and that the newcomers were
perhaps at least as competent as local producers
trained in Canada’s art schools. In addition, during
this time there was a healthy local market for
country clay domestic wares.
For any immigrant or immigrant group, cultures
overlap: those of their country of origin and those
of the host country. For those settling in Quebec,
three or more cultures overlap—French, English
and the culture of the immigrant. In mid-20th-century Quebec, the craft forms of Latvia, transferred
through image, symbol, colour and design, were
part of Quebec craft practice. Notwithstanding
that social and linguistic differences isolated ethnic
practitioners and conditioned their markets, the
Latvian craft forms found resonance in a region
of the province where the tourist and craft markets
were being developed in the Laurentians. By
tapping into a renewed interest in cultural ethnicity
(including the old Eastern European folk traditions)
the Treimane potters found a market for the clay
wares common in their Latvian homeland.
Location, modes of production, iconography,
sponsorship and ideologies are among the issues that
confronted artisans wishing to practise their trade
after emigrating. Practitioners new to a country
typically conform to the customary organizational
structures and behaviours. During the period in
question pottery-making was romantically viewed
as a holistic process and the countryside studio
was considered a safe haven for craftspersons.
Although a few western and eastern European
immigrant artists were domiciled and active there,
the Treimane Pottery was the only immigrant
ceramics operation established during the 1950s in
the Val-David region of the Laurentians, a district
that became an enclave for artists and their creative
expression.
Latvia/Canada Connection
While the time frame of this study is the mid-to-late
20th century, the Latvian Canadian connection predates the 20th century. The first Latvian-Canadians,
mainly farmers, were 1890s refugees from Tsarist
Russia who settled mostly in Manitoba and
Alberta. Seeking work in Canada’s more populated
provinces, some moved east during the Depression.
The Canadian census of 1941 lists 975 Canadians
of Latvian ancestry.2 A much larger number of
Latvians left their homeland some forty years
later, again to escape the horrors of an oppressive
regime.
Latvia is a rural nation on the eastern shore of
the Baltic Sea. Neighbouring Russia, Latvia was
occupied by Russia for much of the 20th century.
It achieved independence from Russia in 1917 after
the overthrow of the Romanov regime only to be
again taken over by the Soviet Union in 1940. In
1941 Latvia was occupied by Nazi Germany until
50 the Soviet Union regained control in 1944. Russians
have lived in Latvia for generations, but the numbers
rose sharply after the country was annexed by the
Soviet Union. Only after glasnost under Mikhail
Gorbachev did Latvia regain independence, but by
the time the Berlin Wall fell, the Russian language
was dominant and ethnic Latvians had been reduced
to a thin majority in their own country.
In 1945, 110,000 Latvians fled to Western
Europe where they were classified as displaced
persons. Of these, 14,911 eventually immigrated
to Canada. It was during this period that those who
would eventually establish the Treimane Pottery
arrived in Quebec.
Latvian Artistic Cultural Legacy
According to Jeremy Howard, distinctive “golden
age” Latvian culture dates from the first millennium
BCE to the third century.3 The influence of Viking
art is conspicuous from the end of the 9th century.
Exclusive Baltic forms were developed that include
dotted lines, like woven patterns, form rectangles,
zigzags, small triangles, rhombs (parallelograms),
circles and striations. These ornamental motifs were
applied to virtually all metal surfaces. Archeological
studies reveal that the Latvian decorative and
household items of agrarian communities contained
geometric fertility symbols of the sun and moon.
Patterns inspired from designs in traditional decorative Iron Age architecture can be found on metal,
leather, wood, textile crafts and later in ecclesiastic
wares (the majority of Latvians are Lutheran).
The patterns are basic Latvian symbols
found in textile designs of utilitarian woven, knitted
and embroidered domestic cloths and carpets of
natural wool and linen. Borders were composed
of expansions of symbols used for traditional folk
costumes and were included on items such as sashes
or shirts, for example. Latvian fire crosses were
endemic with more than forty-eight variations in
existence. The designs of stars, rising suns, fire
crosses and harvest gods—common to Celtic/
Baltic/Nordic mythology—are most commonly
seen today in carved and painted Latvian leather
and wood crafts with landscape or peasant figures;
or wooden musical instruments with cut-out star
motif and carved geometrical bands. Their stringed
kokle of linden wood resembles a zither (sitar).
Traditional Latvian craft of the 20th century
is actually a homogeneous production based on a
variety of traditional colours achieved by Latvian
specialists who develop dye for the textile trade.
An art in its own right, this process has been
passed from one generation to the next generation
of individuals interested in dye as a craft form.
For most ethnics, including Latvians, this informal
training is augmented with studies in the art and
craft academy of the country of origin. As explained
by Rafina Mikelsons, a Latvian resident of Montreal
who was interviewed by the author, the consistency
of the Treimane colour palette in clay is probably
the result of the range of hues achieved by natural
dyeing for materials used in the textile field. The
colours are made from natural materials and acids:
grasses, local berries, fruits and vegetables; from a
variety of woods including maple, birch, linden and
aspen; or from scraped fungus or bark.
The use of folkloric and figurative motifs is
characteristic of Latvian craft products as well as
of European and Scandinavian craft wares. The
figurative tradition is also a feature of non-immigrant North American modernist clay craft and
is found in high-fired clay, earthenware clay or
folk-clay categories. While the North American
products might resemble their ethnic counterparts,
people who know and understand ethnic production
recognize the difference.
Fig. 1
Photograph of
Lilija Treimane
in the Showroom
of the Studio,
reproduced from
Les Nouvelles de
La Sapinière, Vol.
2, No, 1, April
l966.
Fig. 2 Vase
Chocolate brown
glazed interior
and green and
brown glazed
body
H. 4 inches x 2
3/4 inch diameter
H. l0.l6 cm. x 6.98
cm. diameter
Inscribed on
bottom Treimane
Ste-Agathe
Private collection.
Giles Rivest,
courtesy The
MacDonald
Stewart
Foundation
Zigfrids' Art Pottery in Ste-Agathedes-Monts, Quebec
In the latter part of the 1940s, a Ste-Agathe
potter known only by the surname of Elstermen
was recruiting experienced potters for his small
moulded-pottery factory, called Quebec Art Pottery
(1947-1951). Lilja and Zigfrids Jursevskis were
two of the people whose immigration to Canada
was sponsored by Elstermen. By entering Canada
as displaced persons the couple were freed from
Wirzburg, the German detention camp where they
were interred.
The Polish-born painter/sculptor, Zigfrids
Jursevskis was a former graduate and one-time
professor at the School of Applied Arts and Crafts
in Riga, the capital of Latvia. He also held a
degree from the Latvian Academy of Art.4 From
1936-1944 Zigfrids headed the ceramics department
at the Museum of History and Art in Liepaja. Lilja
(Murnieksj) Jursevskis, a talented painter and
ceramist and one of her husband’s gifted students,
also earned the equivalent of a Bachelor of Fine
and Applied Arts (Fig. 1). After coming to Canada,
Zigfrids Jursevskis stayed at Quebec Art Pottery
in Ste-Agathe for the compulsory first year. Lilja,
however, chose to stay with Elstermen long enough
to bring her mother “out” to Canada.
With his departure from the Quebec Art
Pottery, Zigfrids opened his own operation in
Ste-Agathe. Zigfrids’ Art Pottery offered to the
public stock dinner sets, decorative objects for
the home and corporate objects such as ashtrays
and coffee mugs. All products were adorned with
traditional Latvian motifs. Zigfrids’ monogram, ZJ,
was inscribed under the glaze. Zigfrids Jursevskis,
however, was not strictly a studio potter but rather
more a semi-abstract sculptor in the figurative
tradition who worked in stone and bronze as well as
clay. In 1957, when Lilja and Zigfrids legally ended
their marriage, Zigfrids relocated to Toronto where
he set up another studio located at 1425 Bloor Street
West. This too, he named Zigfrids’ Art Pottery. Here
he concentrated his efforts on teaching pottery and
producing sculpture. He remarried yet another one
of his students, who also happened to be Latvian.
The Treimane Art Pottery
In 1957, Latvian-Canadian painter and potter, Lilja
Murnieksj and John Jursevskis, one of her two sons,
built their studio/home/showroom in Val-David,
situated on the highway at 980 Route 117 North.
Fig. 3 Family Group
H.9 inches x W.7 inches x D.5 l/2
H.23. cm. x W. l8 cm. D. x l4 cm.
Inscribed on back Tremaine Val-David
Collection: Antiques Cove
Photograph courtesy Antiques Cove
Fig. 4 Jug (a)
Mottled turquoise and brown glaze tortoiseware
H.6 l/2 inches x 5 inch diameter (without handle)
H.l6.5 cm. x l2.7 cm. diameter (without handle)
Inscribed on base Treimane Val-David
Private collection
Bowl (b) H.2 l/4 inches x 5 l/2 inch diameter
H.5.7l cm. x l4.72 cm. diameter
Inscribed on bottom Treimane Val David
Private collection
Bowl (c)
H.l l/2 inches x 3 3/4 inch diameter
H.3.8 cm. x 9.52 cm. diameter
Inscribed on bottom Treimane Val-David
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy The MacDonald
Stewart Foundation.
(This old major local route has since been largely
replaced by Laurentian Autoroute 15 North to Exit
76). John was trained as a potter by his parents, Lilja
and Zigfrids. Lilja took her mother’s maiden name,
Treimane, for the new studio. In the basement of the
studio was a small gallery where the works of other
artists were exhibited. This entrepreneurial woman
also maintained an outlet in Ste-Agathe, the nearby
summer and winter resort area. Following Lilja’s
death in Quebec in 1991, John Jursevskis briefly
carried on the business.
Treimane Pottery initially produced vessels that
were almost identical to those produced at Zigfrids’
Art Pottery with the conventional Latvian warm-colour palette of rust, yellow, brown, honey and greens
(Fig. 2). The Treimane wares were distinguished
by the typical Latvian pictograms used by Lilja’s
former husband. Over time, however, Lilja added
animated figurative images of her Latvian fellow
countrymen that portrayed activities of everyday
life. By doing this Lilja was able to focus further
on the customs of her Latvian heritage.5 Cursive
script with the signature, Treimane Ste-Agathe,
Treimane Val-David or simply Treimane identify
these undated clay products.
The Treimane product line consisted of
kerosene or incense lamps, candleholders or lamp
bases, vases, wine sets, goblets, mugs, casseroles,
bowls of many varieties and sizes, dinner and
breakfast sets, dinner bells, planters, wall-pockets
for dried local wild flowers or weeds and tiles for
52 table inserts or fireplace surrounds. Fine individual
figurative and group sculptural works were also
produced, but whether they were commissioned,
produced as company specialties or promotional
wares is not known at this time (Fig. 3). The most
popular and least costly of the semi mass-produced
wheel-thrown Treimane country crockery was
“tortoise” tableware (Fig. 4). Lead-glazed, this
splotchy reddish-brown ware was low-temperature
fired at cone O 6.6 Oxidized copper glaze was used
for turquoise and mottled green tortoise vessels.
Another well-received line of decorative
staples for home display was glazed shiny caramel,
with white clay slip poured over the body to achieve
the uniformity of an opaque glaze (Figs. 5, 6, 7).
This ware was covered with sgraffito markings of
Fig. 5 Bowl
Caramel and rust glazes and sgraffito designs
H. 4 inches x 5 l/2 inch diameter
H. l5.5 cm. x l4.7 cm. diameter
The bowl is decorated with the Latvian sun and Austra's Tree design motifs, the
tree of light, or the dawn from which the daily sun rises.
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy The MacDonald Stewart Foundation.
Fig. 6 Vase
Caramel glazes and chocolate brown
glazes, with sgrafitto designs in
chocolate brown
H. 9 inches x 7 l/2 inch diameter
H. 24.4 cm. x l0.05 cm. diameter
This object is decorated with a variation
of the sun symbol, the Latvian fir twig
symbol and the common zigzag pattern.
Inscribed on base ZJ Ste-Agathe
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy
The MacDonald Stewart Foundation
Fig. 7 Vase
Caramel and chocolate brown glazes
and sgraffito designs
H. 6 l/4 inches x 4 l/4 inch diameter
H. l5.88 cm. x l0.8 cm. diameter
The ubiquitous Austra's Tree Latvian
symbol is one design element decorating
this vase.
Inscribed on base ZJ Ste-Agathe
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy
The MacDonald Stewart Foundation.
Latvian geometric symbols of ancient fertility and
was obviously oriented to naturalized Latvians
or their family and friends in Latvia, who could
decipher the cryptograms. For those outside the
cultural context the works appeared to be merely
charming geometrical repeat or all-over patterns.
As noted above, much of the Treimane product
line consisted of everyday items that served a
utilitarian function—lamps, mugs, planters, for
example. Another product category was decorative
pieces designed as art to be mounted on the wall.
In addition to satisfying an aesthetic sensibility,
such goods further enabled the artisans to illustrate
and prominently display aspects of their culture.
A series of decorative plates, bowls and small
dishes provided a surface for pastoral images that
were left unglazed (Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11). In contrast,
colourful glossy glazes were selected for the pieces
that portrayed people in traditional costumes, such
as youthful male singers in shirts and peasant
hats playing concertinas; other characters might
sport vests and breeches (Fig. 12). Such items
were generally glazed on the backs of each piece
with the Treimane shiny tortoise glazes meeting
the surfaces at the front edge to form a border
on the rim. According to contemporaries of Lilja
and John Jursevskis, these particular wares were
highly desired objects in Latvia where they were
sometimes taken as gifts.
Whether utilitarian or decorative, some of
the wares created by the Treimane potters were
considered unique. One novel candleholder is
kept in a private collection. The face, arms, hands
and torso of the three-dimensional figurative
candleholder were hand-modelled. A crown served
as a headpiece; the base, in the form of a skirt, was
wheel-thrown (Fig. 13). The prototype for the piece
can be traced to a German late-16th-early-17th
century Jungfrauenbecher—a type of wager cup
whose design took the form of a girl with a widespreading skirt holding a bowl above her head.
When inverted the skirt becomes the upper cup and
the bowl the lower one.
Clients who understood the cultural value
of the product purchased choice pieces. In recent
years some fine works have surfaced at estate
sales. For example, in April 2004 Antiques Cove of
Montreal was responsible for liquidating the estate
of Marcia Perlman. At this event some Treimane
pieces were identified, among them an exceptional
hand-modelled, figurative red clay conversational
group (Fig. 3) and an attractive decorative plate
with sgraffito design with a mother-and-child theme
(Fig. 14).
Fig. 8 Decorative Plate
This plate has an image of a farmer inspecting his lots
and produce.
Polychromatic, with sgraffito designs
9 inch diameter
22.8 cm. diameter
Inscribed Treimane on back
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy The
MacDonald Stewart Foundation.
Sgraffito design of maiden whose arms cross her chest,
on a mat light olive-green background
Mat and semi-mat glazes
10 inch diameter
25.4 cm. diameter
Inscribed on back Treimane Ste Agathe
Sgraffito design of maiden carrying a flower on a rose
mat background; with mat and
semi-mat glazes
10 inch diameter
25.4 cm. diameter
Inscribed on back Treimane Ste Agathe
Image of a maiden holding the ends of her scarf in
sgraffito, on a mat background of olive-green
background
7 1/2 inch diameter
19.05 cm. diameter
Inscribed on back Treimane Ste. Agathe
Fig. 12 Oval Fruit Bowl (or Wall Plaque) with Accordionist
H. 13 inches x W. 7 3/4 inches
H. 33.02 cm. x W. 13.47 cm.
Inscribed on back Treimane Val David
Private collection. Giles Rivest, courtesy The MacDonald
Stewart Foundation.
Fig. 13 Candleholder
Polychromatic clay, thrown and hand built
H. 10 1/4 inches x 4 1/4 inch diameter
H. 26 cm. x 10.8 cm. diameter
The triangle is a Latvian design element symbolizing God
and heaven. Other motifs on this object are the circle with
sunrays and a Latvian star.
Inscribed Treimane Val-David on underside of base
Private collection
Photograph courtesy Denise Melanson
Fig. 14
Large Oval Decorative
Plate with Mother and Child
Theme
Ochre mat ground; mat and
semi-mat glazes
H.13 3/4 inches x 11 1/2
inches
H.40 cm. x 29 cm.
Inscribed on back Tremaine
Val-David
Collection: Antiques Cove
Photograph courtesy
Antiques Cove
Fig. l5 Coffee Mug
Inscribed “Gray Rocks Inn”
in brown script on chocolate
brown glazed body
H.3 1/2 inch x 4 inch
diameter
H.8.89 cm. x 10.16 cm.
Inscribed Treimane on base
Private collection. Giles
Rivest, courtesy The
MacDonald Stewart
Foundation.
In the practise of their craft the Treimane
potters were in tune with the demands of the market.
Besides the pieces that specifically focused on
their ethnicity, they also produced stock ware for
commercial enterprises, such as hotels. The wellestablished Gray Rocks Inn in Mont Tremblant had
its name, written in cursive script, inscribed on the
belly of coffee mugs made for them by the Treimane
potters (Fig. 15). Private pottery commissions
were also common in the 1950s and 1960s, with
individuals personalizing mugs or other clay items
by having their family name etched into the clay.
The Treimane potters worked in a formalized
tradition in which the essential features of motifs
and pattern were reduced to conventional formulae
or stylizations. As previously noted, colouration
was in keeping with the Latvian practice of securing
colours from nature. Their highest firing was Cone
O 3. Wheel-thrown items were made of Nova Scotia
clay. The human figurative images that appear on
the Treimane pots vary in form, movement and
activity, but in their unity and consistency they form
a coherent, particular iconography which today,
could fall under the term “ethnic stereotypes.”
Ethnicity and Canadian Ceramics
Like “identity” the term ethnicity defies a simple
all-encompassing definition. The term brings to
mind a variety of associations—the shared cultural
characteristics of a people, religious or racial traits,
customs and patterns of behaviour, are examples.
Elliott Oring refers to the word as any “speech,
thought or action based upon this sense of [ethnic]
identity” (1986, 24). Flood defines ethnicity as
being “distinguished by national or cultural characteristics, customs and language” (2001, 10-11).
For purposes of this paper dealing with the material
creations of a particular ethnic group, Wsevolod W.
Isajiw’s definition is appropriate. Isajiw suggests
ethnicity refers to:
a group or category of persons who have common
ancestral origin and the same cultural traits, who
have a sense of peoplehood and Gemeinschaft type
of relations, who are of immigrant background and
have either minority or majority status within a
larger society. (1974, 12)
The Latvian immigrants who are the subject of this
monograph were a minority within Canada and
within the province of Quebec. It is understandable
that in their new country they would find comfort
in creating the material manifestations of their
ethnicity. Stern tells us that through symbols of
ethnicity, ethnics stand out in a multicultural world
by defining their place and position as it relates to
their ethnic past and present (1991, xii). One symbol
of the ethnicity of the Latvian potters was the
clay vessels they produced for sale. It is therefore
unfortunate that within the Canadian context, ethnic
crafts—of which ceramics is a subset—are seldom
identified as ethnic. (Of the few survey texts that
exist dealing with Canadian craft, cultural theorist
Sandra Flood is exceptional in that she addresses
craft within the context of Canadian culture.7)
The absence of a discussion about ethnicity in
Canadian craft—Native or aboriginal craft, it must
be said, has merited its own category—has led to
a situation wherein early-20th-century Canadian
anthropologists, social scientists and historians
set the nationalist framework whereby ethnic craft
became subsumed under Anglo-Canadian and
Franco-Canadian craft. In Quebec particularly, this
system was perpetuated by craft champions and
fuelled by bureaucratic and nationalist interests,
especially during the period known as the “Quiet
Revolution.” The inclusion of immigrant craft
production among Canada’s domestic offerings meant that the craftwork of newcomers to
Canada was not privileged—that is not presented,
acknowledged or judged—as the material culture
of an outside ethnic group. Within that context,
the uncertainty of a multicultural world (Stern
1991) can only be exacerbated when the cultural
voices of ethnic artists are silenced through a lack
of acknowledgement of their work. This pattern
of silencing, extended through l930s socialism to
Canada’s centenary, perhaps helps to explain why
so little is known of, or written about, the Treimane
Pottery enterprise.
56 Identity and Ethnicity Celebrated
The Latvian Centre situated in Lachine continues
to be the centre of community life for Latvians in
Quebec. Among other things, the Centre served
as the central depot for Treimane ceramics. It also
served as the structure through which week-long
festivals were organized and taken every two or
three years to community halls in Toronto and
Michigan. On such occasions choirs performed;
symphony concerts, recitals, folk dances and theatre
performances were held; art and craft exhibitions
were mounted and the Treimane wares were
prominently featured.
At such gatherings it was notable that the
images of dancers and singers on the walls of the
vessels exactly mirrored the festivities that were
taking place. In the decoration of the product line
there was no attempt to depict the worldly events
of modern society; instead the emphasis was to
consciously and deliberately reflect the culture
of their Latvian creators. While it often worked
to their advantage, the choice of peasants in folk
imagery on Treimane vessels was not specifically
intended to capitalize on the ethnic trend or to find
a clientele for folk clay per se. The imagery was
simply a continuation of traditional Latvian clay
production.
Conclusion
When they started their enterprise the wares of
the Treimane Pottery primarily decorated the
cottages and summer homes of Quebec’s more
affluent classes. While outsiders to Quebec’s
mainstream pottery culture as it emerged from the
Quiet Revolution, the Treimane potters witnessed
the changes in Val-David brought about by the
development of Quebec’s Laurentian area as a
tourist region. Because of their particular ethnic
focus they were excluded from the process of
development as the tourist became the focal point of
clay wares or, for that matter, of any other product
that could be cheaply produced and taken home
for souvenirs. Clearly, the Treimane potters did not
ignore the tourist market as a source of income—the
strategic location of their studio is witness to this
fact—but their focus was always to continue to
create craft wares from their ethnic perspective.
While not shunning the tourist, what distinguished
the Treimane Pottery from local and indigenous
production was that the Treimane product was not
pretentiously geared to tourists, the export trade or
to ceramics wholesalers. Rather, the objective of
the Treimane practitioners from the outset was to
sustain themselves economically as craftspersons,
producing objects that reflected their artistic and
cultural values.
The idea that immigrants carry an outsider’s
detachment from institutionalized power structures
in general may be especially true for the ethnic
artist. In the case of the Treimane Pottery, the
products were obviously craft items created by
a small minority within the larger Canadian and
Quebec hegemony. In operating outside of the
official craft world, the Treimane potters chose
not to underscore “otherness;” nor did they attempt
to promote themselves as subjects in a colonized
culture within the dominant culture. Rather, they
saw themselves as Latvians in a host country living
a life of purpose that embraced their ethnicity and
traditional practices. That ethnicity was conveyed in
the folk figurative images depicted on their vessels
and made available to the general population. It was
unfortunate that the wider public was not trained to
distinguish between clay objects produced by local
ethnic practitioners and the imports that flooded the
North American market after World War II. The
Treimane Pottery operation was further marginalized as a result of the Modernist tendency of the day
to distinguish art as more socially relevant than a
utilitarian craft product—such as clay wares. For
these reasons alone, it is not surprising that the
cultural value of certain craft practices became
less significant, a step that one could say led to the
creation and reinforcement of the craft ghetto.
The practice of categorizing all craft produced
in Canada as “Canadian” is a flaw within the
Canadian craft world that is compounded by design
and craft historians who accentuate the high-design
stylistics of global modernist factory aesthetics.
While “fine craft” is distinguished by its quality,
ethnic crafts are relegated to the background. Ethnic
craft is either misunderstood, deemed retardataire
or considered synonymous with folk art, which it
is not. (The problem of mis-categorizing is also
seen in Canada’s museums where the craft artifact
is often explicitly of ethnic origins as opposed to
being national or folk in character.)
Without the help of appreciative advocates
(e.g., historians or material culturalists) the experiences of ethnic artists in the diaspora are largely left
untold. Despite the desire to do so, ethnic artists are
often reticent about telling their story, to speak for
and to promote their work. Their products may rival
the creative work of the host community, but without an official designation as “ethnic,” “invisible”
artifacts become material culture without destiny,
unable to find their own place in Canada’s public
art or craft museums. Having no specific destination
or official home, “ethnic pop” or what could be
called “conceptual ethnic ceramics,” Treimane
clay vessels survive as mementos languishing in
transit between nebulous categories of “ethnic” or
“modern” ceramics, in the popular art museum, the
ceramics gallery of fine arts, the craft museum or the
craft fair. For this reason it may be said that a lack
of understanding on the part of the general public
about the Treimane artists—including the origins
of their work, what distinguished their wares from
mass-produced pottery and that the patterns and
motifs symbolized the values and customs of an
immigrant group—contributed to the invisibility,
if not certain oblivion, of the Treimane Pottery
within Canada.
Notes
The author would like to acknowledge the following potters who
played a role in the research for this article: Maurice Achard,
Kinya Ishikawa and John Jursevskis, son of Lilja and Zigfrids
Jursevski; members of the Montreal Latvian community including Rafma Mikelsons, Martin Stauvers and Dag Demandt.
This paper was originally prepared for Dr. Joan Acland,
Concordia University. I am grateful for her excellent guidance
and personal interest in the subject.
1. As noted in the 1958 edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language.
2. Statistical information on the Canadian Latvian community
has been taken from The Canadian Encyclopedia 2, s.v.
“Latvians.”
3. For a survey of Latvian art and iconography the author
consulted The Dictionary of Art, s.v. ”Latvia.”
4. Much of the biographical information about Lilja and Zig-
frids Jursevskis came from the author’s interview with their
son, John.
5. In 1955 and 1961 Lilja Jursevskis contributed to Canadian
ceramics exhibitions organized by the Canadian Handicrafts
Guild and the Canadian Guild of Potters. It is unclear how
contact with the organizers was established and why the
Treimane Pottery stopped consigning works.
6. [Pyrometric] cones are devices used to measure heatwork
during the firing of ceramic materials, providing a visual
indication of when the wares have reached a required state
of maturity, using a combination of time and temperature.
The cones give a temperature equivalent, measuring between
the coolest of 022 and the hottest of 42.
7. According to Flood, Quebec ethnologist Marius Barbeau’s
linking of craft with ethnicity and “folk” increased the profile
of material culture with peasant cultures, excluding formally
educated urban crafters.
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Howard, Jeremy. l996. Latvia. In The Dictionary of Art, ed.
Jane Turner, 846-53. UK: Macmillan Groves Publishers.
58 Isajiw, Wsevolod W. 1974. Definitions of Ethnicity. Ethnicity.
1(1): 111-24.
Oring, Elliott, ed. 1986. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres:
An Introduction. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Stern, Stephen. 1991. Introduction. In Creative Ethnicity:
Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life, ed.
Stephen Stern and John Allan Cicala, xi-xx. Logan: Utah
State University Press.
Exhibition Review
Compte rendu d’exposition
cynthia Hammond
Sense of the City
Sense of the City
Venue: Canadian Centre for Architecture,
Montreal
Curator: Mirko Zardini
Designer: Atelier In Situ, Tillett Lighting Designs
(light), Orange Tango (graphic)
Duration: 25 October 2005 to 10 September 2006
Accompanying publication: Zardini, Mirko, ed.
2005. Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach
to Urbanism. Montreal: Canadian Centre for
Architecture and Lars Müller Publishers.
ISBN: 0-920785-73-5
(Canadian Centre for Architecture)
ISBN: 3-03778-060-6
(Lars Müller Publishers)
Publisher’s address:
Canadian Centre for Architecture
1920 Baile
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3H 2S6
Price: $58.00 CDN (soft cover only)
I experience myself in the city, and the city exists
through my embodied experience. The city and my body
supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and
the city dwells in me.
Juhani Pallasmaa (2005, 32)
The current exhibition at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Sense of the City, has a heuristic as
well as a didactic purpose. Mirko Zardini, curator
and Director of the CCA, suggests that through the
exhibition’s key themes “we might learn to move
around the city in a different way, in a manner
that depends less on vision and more on the other
senses, emulating the animals who increasingly
share our cities with us.”1Accordingly, the exhibition addresses the multiplicity and heterogeneity
of human, animal and insect sensoria alongside
the ways individual cities reveal their mutability,
from cold to warm, from continuity to innovation
and from day to night. The exhibition explores
differences in aural and olfactory spaces, showing
them to be peculiar not only to each city, but also
to moments within a city’s past. Sense of the City
further reminds us of the formative contingency of
geographical specificity upon a city’s character, its
appearance, labour history and material culture.
The philosophical emphasis within Sense of
the City on the varieties of sensory and subjective
experience directs the viewer towards the haptic.
Eschewing the traditional architectural emphasis
upon the façade and the urban planner’s dependence upon the bird’s-eye view, Sense of the City
looks instead to the sky, puts its ear to the ground
and sniffs out the tracks of our often-unwanted
colocataires: garbage trucks, cockroaches, dark
alleys and municipal bylaws. Fundamentally, the
question driving the exhibition is: How do we, as
humans, engage with, understand and know the
city? The answers depend heavily, in a curatorial
sense, upon the interface between sight and site,
touch and surface, and the specificities of smell
and noise within a shared habitus. Rather than a
sequence of aesthetic misfires and successes, the
city in this exhibition is privileged, refreshingly and
engagingly, as a space of human responses. There
are moments of humour, lyrical delight, curatorial
daring and a worthwhile celebration of the quotidian
and the ordinary.
The famous essay—and declaration—of
Raymond Williams (1989) that “Culture is
Ordinary” proposed in 1960s Britain a radical
expansion of the term “culture.” Wishing to
incorporate within recognized scholarly fields
(art history, literature and music, for example) an
understanding of the social relations that helped
to produce them, Williams argued that culture is a
fundamental aspect of all social groups and that it
is inherently political. Denial, he explained, of the
culture of Welsh farming communities in favour of
the culture of Cambridge tea rooms privileged and
preserved the dominance of the ruling class. Thus,
Williams concluded, the writing of scholarship
and the curating of exhibitions about culture were
integral aspects of the mechanism by which those
dominant classes reiterated and maintained their
superiority.
Since Williams’s early work, material culture
studies have undergone several transformations
and expansions of their own but, according to
Geismar this field still fundamentally takes up the
“close examination of material forms and social
relations in which they are embedded” (2004, 43).
What insights, then, about the varieties of urban,
material culture does Sense of the City offer in
relation to understanding formative social, political
and economic conditions? How does it explore
and critique regimes of urban value? How does
the privileging of the haptic senses within Sense
of the City, in relation to the objects on display,
teach visitors something new about the material
culture of cities? Set up as a series of thematic
encounters, the exhibition considers the nocturnal
city, the seasonal city, the sounds, surfaces and air
of the city—themes which are echoed and expanded
on in Zardini’s (2005) accompanying publication,
Sense of the City: an Alternate Approach to
Urbanism. Loosely structured upon the traditional
identification of five senses, the exhibition also
contests this purported sensorial order. Sense of
the City and its accompanying publication may be
60 understood as critical contributions to the growing
body of interdisciplinary scholarship that takes the
city as a primary locus of investigation (Borden and
Rendell 2002; Watson and Gibson 1995; Hayden
1995; Leach 1997). As such, however, they face the
same methodological and epistemological hurdles
facing such scholarship and, accordingly, reveal the
ongoing challenges and rewards of interdisciplinary
inquiry. While the exhibition’s phenomenology
rests uneasily at times with its embrace of material culture and evocation of difference, it must
nonetheless be applauded for asking how the city
is made—in and through our daily, sensual and
affective lives.
Visitors enter the exhibition through a darkened,
matte-black tunnel, accompanied by the recorded
sounds of various cities. A single-channel video
projection by Alain Laforest—Montreal, 21 June,
12am-25 October, 12am 2005—in the adjacent
room represents a time frame of four months.
Filmed at different times of day (dawn, dusk and
night), all that is perceptible at times is a soft and
tiny mobile bluish-grey bird cutting an occasional
arc. Other times it looks as if Laforest filmed small
sections of Turneresque clouds of rose, ochre and
periwinkle and set them gently in motion. Devoid
of human presence and lacking any narrative other
than the passing of time, the beautifully-edited
result is a rubric for the exhibition as a whole that
introduces themes of mutability, specificity and
pleasure, gently setting aside architecture and urban
planning as preferred criteria for understanding the
city. It also proposes something about the nature of
the experiences visitors are about to have: reflective,
contemplative, solitary.
Fig. 1
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. Photo Michel Legendre.
27_10_05_ML_009.
An enormous black silhouette of a rat looms
on one of the low-lit, bluish walls of the first installation (Fig.1) while silhouettes of cockroaches,
large spiders, butterflies, bats, cats and dogs also
animate the surfaces of this room. Here, the visitor
is introduced to the notion that the senses are neither
given, nor universal, not even the standard five
accepted as given in Western culture. We are told
that the hearing capacity of rats lies between 1000
and 90,000 Hz, but the comparative ramifications
of this fact are untold. (The book accompanying
the exhibition does tell me that the human range
of hearing is limited to between 20 and 20,000
Hz.) More useful is the information that ants are
able to sense minute disturbances through a few
centimetres of earth. Philosophically, the most
engaging aspect of this room is its proposition that
animal, insect, even robot perceptions of habitats,
including urban habitats, are as worthy a subject for
consideration as the perceptions of human beings
when rethinking the urban experience. To foray
into recent theoretical territory which deconstructs
the humanist othering of “other” species in its
privileging of (even the benevolent) human, is to
set a quite brave tone of inclusivity and criticality,
especially for a museum dedicated to the built
environment.2
The challenge is how to register such differences and presences in a way that does not defer to
vision or other familiar “regimes of value” to quote
Graburn and Glass (2004). The deliberately low
lighting in this section of the exhibit may have been
too subtle a gesture of opposition to the “scopic
regime” (Rose 2001) for people struggling to make
out texts and shapes during my visit. Delightfully,
however, the silhouettes of ants and animals follow
us through the exhibition as a whole, turning up
above, beside and under vitrines and displays,
reminding us of what is so easily forgotten in urban
contexts: that we share this world with a multiplicity
of species.
The “Nocturnal City” complicates vision as a
prime or dependable vehicle for exploring urban
space. Velvety, barely-legible photographs of Berlin
streets at night by John R. Gossage and “audiotactile” guides to the city of Bologna, Italy explore
the ambivalence of the invisible city; we are not
permitted to muse only upon its visual beauty, nor
are we expected to embrace Manichean oppositions
of dark and light, evil and good. Images of Nazi
night-time rallies and light spectacles known as
“cathedrals of light” are hung alongside large-scale
reproductions of cities plunged into darkness, either
through power failure or for self-protection as in
the case of London during the World War II blitz.
A 2004 poster (TBWA/Chait/Day) produced by
the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation brings to
mind images of bodily safety. The poster depicts a
badly lit, rundown residential neighbourhood. The
image indicates that “it’s safer here” on a dingy
sidewalk “than here” in the only brightly-lit area
of the image—a second story window. In a rare
moment of consideration of specific embodied
differences among humans, the exhibition addresses
the physical safety of women and children and
points to the vacuity of civic measures to prevent
violation and aggression of such bodies.
Designer and environmental psychologist,
Linnea Tillett’s work on urban lighting design is
one of the strongest contributions to the exhibition.
Tillett writes that “instead of looking at how
pedestrian lighting could make the streets safer I
considered how it could increase the freedom of
movement and quality of life for people walking
on them … aesthetic and practical solutions were
treated as inseparable” (2005, 78). In a map and
series of photographs, Tillett shows how, between
1995 and 1998, Tillett Lighting Design (also the
lighting designer for the exhibition) collaborated
with residents of a neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New
York, to create a different character for its streets.
Tillett targeted sites of civic importance or sites
that posed a high risk for crime and implemented
what she refers to as precise and low-cost measures
(Fig. 2). Her firm installed Edwardian lamps, which
traditionally hang lower and have a more luxurious,
ornamental appearance than standard “anti-crime”
lighting. In addition to using this older lighting
style, which we associate with distinguished
heritage neighbourhoods, Tillett made subtle
changes to the illumination of an underpass and
to the facades of community buildings such as the
library and church. By simply altering the angle,
intensity and colour of their illumination, these
sites were transformed (Fig. 3). Tillett notes that the
process of community engagement contributed to
an enhanced quality of life as the places she altered
have not been vandalized in eight years (85), a fact
that is effectively illustrated with this display.
In the “Seasonal City” photographs of contemporary snow castles, ice sculptures and historic
postcards and prints of Montreal in winter explore
Montreal’s infamous capacity for “nordicity” and
hivernité (its character of northernness and winterness as expressed by Pressman (2005)). The labour
involved in removing the same snow and ice from
Fig. 2, 3
New York,
Brooklyn 19951998. By Tillet
Design for the
New York City
Department of
Transportation.
Photos Lynn
Saville & Carrie
Snyder. SENS_
0376R.01.
clogged winter streets takes almost equal billing to
the phenomenon of the “ice palace” or temporary
architecture built out of snow and ice. “The biggest
event of the carnival, the revellers’ mock storming
of the palace, occasioned a flood of light. Torches
in hand, thousands surrounded the castle, which was
protected by fireworks and simulated explosions,”
writes Latouche (2005, 116).
The feigned destruction of the castle kindles
a desire to quit the cold and dark of winter, whose
spirit is embodied in the icy yet ephemeral form of
the palace. The fires—or fireworks—symbolize the
return of heat, warmth and comfort. Zaha Hadid and
Cai Guo-Qiang’s contribution to the 2004 “Snow
Show,” Caress Zaha with Vodka/Icefire,3 refers to
this traditional understanding of the spectacle of the
ice palace. In that display Guo-Qiang poured vodka
over Hadid’s curving architecture of ice and snow
and set the sculpture on fire. The flames melted
into the blocks, changing and ultimately destroying
the sculpture, evoking the transitional nature of
the seasons. More importantly, as Hadid notes, the
flaming sculpture “[provoked] joy and a sense of
exploration in its visitors” (2004, no pagination).
That joy has historical continuity as the collection
of historical prints and postcards suggests.
What is less clear is the relationship between
labour, class, knowledge and release. In Montreal
as elsewhere, the creation of the ice palaces was
62 dependent upon masons’ knowledge and techniques
while the palace forms emulated the kinds of
buildings that average working people could never
expect to inhabit. Much as Canada’s National Film
Board’s 1956 documentary, Déneigement, points
to a history of labour within the seasonal city, so
too is that history hinted at with the popular ritualistic “destruction” of the ice palace. While we are
welcome to construct this genealogy ourselves, the
exhibition proposes very little in the way of a deeper
connection between the contemporary practice of
building ice sculpture and the historical, vernacular
aspects of ice palaces, the relationship and access
of working-class citizens to the winter festivals and
less still about the symbolic “destruction” of the
architectural forms of the dominant classes.
Canadian acoustic ecologist and composer, R.
Murray Schafer, figures frequently in the exhibition.
Schafer suggests “noise is unwanted sound … noise
is the wrong sound in the wrong place. This makes
noise, to be sure, a relative term” (2005, 163).
Accordingly, “Sound of the City” invites us to seat
ourselves on its oversized, off-white ottomans and
pick up one of the many gently swaying headsets
(Fig. 4), which offer “one-minute vacations” or
aural escapes to various locations around the world
including New York, Paris, Calcutta, Dhaka and
Fez.4 The visitor may also listen to differences
in sounds recorded from a given Canadian city
Fig: 4
View of the
installation
Sense of the City.
Canadian Centre
for Architecture,
Montréal
Photo Michel
Legendre. 28_10_
05_ML_014.
in the present and from the same city in the past.
One of the most powerful of these is a recording
of Vancouver from 1973 in which a First Nations
man speaks in his native language, a reminder that
such languages are part of a history of colonialism
whose official policy, until very recently, has been
assimilation. The Canadian recordings are of excellent quality and diversity. They come largely from
the World Soundscape Project directed by Schafer
at Simon Fraser University in the 1960s and 1970s.
From the shouts of people in parks to the hum of
buildings, these soundscapes offer a sense of the
city that succinctly and powerfully expresses the
differences between urban locations in a manner
that dramatically retains spatiality as a condition
of the gallery experience.
Spatiality is a quality that is comparatively
absent in other rooms whose themes, likely for
practical reasons, depend upon sight for their communication but whose densely visual expectations
of the viewer seem somewhat at odds with the
stated goal of the project. If the ensuing conclusion
one could draw—that vision is limited in terms of
understanding the city—was intentional, then the
“Sound of the City” installation would be a success,
if hard-won. But it is undeniably a great success
in the sense that it draws from such a variety of
locations, sounds and accompanying associations.
These recordings provide an unexpectedly rich
form of material culture, particularly in how they
historicize and contextualize sound. Asking how
and when certain sounds emerge (the internal
combustion engine, for example) and disappear
(the policeman’s whistle), the installation reminded
me of the distinctive, rhythmic sound that English
“steam engine” trains made before British Rail
converted to diesel. I realized how the loss of this
sound related directly to the decline of the English
coal mining industry after the Second World War
and its particularly harsh demise under Margaret
Thatcher’s anti-union, Conservative government.
My sisters and I used to sing a song to accompany
that special, now-silent cadence of the steam engine
which is evocative of our occasional childhood
travels. This installation taught me to think with
and beyond such nostalgic reminiscing to broader
economic, social and political losses as signified
by the absence of sound.
Where absence can be critically analyzed for the
missing sound’s inscription in changing economic
and social relations, presences can be critically
reflected upon as well. For example, the curator’s
passion for prosaic, ubiquitous, yet meaningful,
city surfaces such as asphalt is considered with
“Surface of the City.” Photographic documentation
of the history of asphalt, pamphlets and publications
dedicated to promoting and understanding asphalt
and physical contact with actual, satisfyingly-large
chunks of the material itself together create
“Surface of the City.” The smell of asphalt pervades
the room, not unpleasantly and I was immediately
drawn to touch the inky black matter in its various
forms. A basin of highly refined asphalt—smooth
and just slightly more resistant to the touch than
Plasticine—awaits visitors’ fingertips, the traces
of which swiftly vanish in its satiny, inky surface.
Large chunks of unrefined asphalt glitter in the
spot lighting, beautiful and dark, as if Barcelona
architect Antonio Gaudi and American modernist
sculptor Tony Smith had collaborated to produce
a work of art.
The surprisingly aesthetic qualities of asphalt
share the stage with a history of the material and
its implication in urban renewal and sanitation
movements. Overwhelmingly, however, the pleasure in this room lies in an engagement with this
highly tactile substance. Kate Busch (Acting Head
of Educational Services, CCA) advised me that
during the first weeks of the exhibition, the asphalt
samples were unfortunately damaged by visitors.
Likely, patrons took too seriously the Richard
Register quotation on the wall, “I love destroying
asphalt and maybe you’d like to join the party.”
Because of this overly enthusiastic treatment of the
displays, visitors may now only touch the basin of
asphalt. One wonders, however, whether a greater
politicization of the material in question would have
distracted those same visitors from their exertions.
Asphalt is present in most petroleums and, as such,
is embedded within crucial, current debates and
conflicts including First Nations’ land disputes,
the very controversial American occupation of
Iraq and the emergence of Venezuela as a new
socialist leader on the basis of its oil resources.
The installation does an admirable job of informing
visitors of the versatility, cost-effectiveness and
centrality of this black matter beneath our feet to
the modernization of cities worldwide. I believe
that this impact could have been strengthened by
acknowledgement of asphalt’s place within global
struggles and politics.
Regarding the question of global impact, if not
global politics, An Te Liu’s “Untitled (Complex
II)” is a concise meditation upon the verisimilitude
of modern architecture and its accoutrements.
Composed of a series of small air conditioning
units, the installation reads immediately as a scale
model of a somewhat bleak modern city—treeless,
white and isolated. The uncomfortably cool
temperature of the room is explained as soon as the
little “buildings” whir into action, expressing the
ways in which post-Second World War architecture
and industrial design slip aesthetically into one
another’s territory (Fig. 5).
The theme of air conditioning is reiterated
in a display of promotional catalogues from the
collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
work suggests, however, the consequences of the
broad adoption of air conditioning have hardly been
positive; the artificial cooling of entire buildings
has created a series of hermetic environments that
have the multiple detriment of being expensive,
environmentally demanding, uncomfortable and a
culprit in the increase of exterior temperatures.
The history of urban smell is the least explored
in the installation despite its strong presence in the
accompanying publication.5 The series of urban
scents produced for the exhibition by the New
York-based company Symrise and exhibited in
crystal flasks are synthetic versions of familiar
olfactory experiences: garbage, cut grass, rain,
subway cleanser and a bakery. Whether or not these
are completely convincing (“garbage” was undeniably pungent, while “grass” was quite lovely),
they provide a necessary museological counterpart
to the invoking of sound, sight and touch in the
city. Indeed, it is in its most touchable, listenable,
whiffable aspects that Sense of the City works as a
meditation on the materially embodied experience
of the city, if not its material culture. Yet, while
experience and response are heavily privileged,
there is little discussion of the ways in which our
highly differentiated bodies do experience the city
differently.
Fig. 5
Canadian Centre for Architecture,
Montréal. Photo Michel Legendre.
20_01_06_ML_020.
A Honeywell catalogue from 1946 deploys vivid
post-World War 11 imagery of the avenging hero
and the privileged site of both domesticity and
democracy—the single-family home. A muscled,
masked avenger hovers protectively over a
bravely modern little dwelling, reminding visitors,
obliquely perhaps, of the considerable marshalling
of resources between 1842 and 1950 in the battle to
purify urban and residential environments, both in
the western world and its colonial outposts. As Liu’s
64 As a series of subjective encounters, the
exhibition leaves unaddressed the ways in which
individuals experience cities in the company of each
other. Questions that lingered for me after leaving
the exhibition were not so much prompted by their
presence in the installations, but by their absence:
how do embodied specificities such as gender, race,
class and community affiliation affect the readings
that we make? And how might the material and
historical specificities of the objects on display be
pressed to reveal more of their contingency as seen
with Schafer’s work on sound? Even further, how
might the mess, dirt, unpredictable vitality of cities
be introduced into an exhibition in such a way that
retains a sense of the city’s dependence, not just
upon individual response, but upon individuals acting within a society together because, as Margaret
Olin writes, “people existing in the same space
are of consequence to one another. Our actions,
therefore, can have consequence on them. Looking
into their eyes, we take responsibility for what we
do to them, or more to the point, what we leave
undone” (1992, 97).
Notes
The author would like to thank Kate Busch for her helpful tour
of the Sense of the City exhibition, Andrew Mitchell for his
assistance with images and facts, and Annmarie Adams for her
comments and suggestions on this text.
1. The mission statement for the exhibition, Sense of the City,
at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
2. Derrida (2003) and Haraway (2003), while not expressly
concerned with architecture, are concerned with how the
human achieves definition—falsely—against the animal.
3. This annual collaboration between artists and architects took
place in Lapland, Finland in 2004.
4. The sound clips were downloaded from www.quietamerican.
org.
5. Essays by cultural anthropologists, David Howes and Constance Classen are essential companion reading to this aspect
of the exhibition.
References
Borden, Iain and Jane Rendell, eds. 2002. The Unknown City:
Contesting Architecture as Social Space. Cambridge and
London: MIT Press.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2005. Quoted in Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini. Montreal:
Canadian Centre for Architecture and Lars Müller Publishers.
Derrida, Jacques. 2003. And say the Animal Responded? In
Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Ed. Cary Wolfe.
Trans. David Willis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Pressman. Norman. 2005. The Idea of Winterness: Embracing
Ice and Snow. In Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to
Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini, 129-38. Montreal: Canadian
Centre for Architecture and Lars Müller Publishers.
Geismar, Haidy. 2004. The Materiality of Contemporary Art
in Vanuatu. Journal of Material Culture 9(1): 43.
Rose, Gillian. 2001. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to
the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage Publications.
Graburn, Nelson H. H. and Aaron Glass. 2004. Introduction.
Journal of Material Culture 9(2): 108.
Hadid, Zaha. 2004. The Snow Show. http://www.thesnowshow.
Haraway, Donna. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto:
Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly
Paradigm Press.
Hayden, Dolores. 1995. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT
Press.
Latouche, Pierre-Edouard. 2005. Quoted in Sense of the City:
An Alternate Approach to Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini.
Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture and Lars Müller
Publishers.
Leach, Neil, ed. 1997. Rethinking Architecture:A Reader in
Cultural Theory. London: Routledge Press.
Schafer, R. Murray. 2005. Quoted in Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini. Montreal:
Tillett, Linnea. 2005. Quoted in Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini. Montreal:
Watson, Sophie and Katherine Gibson, eds. 1995. Postmodern Cities and Spaces. Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell Publishing.
Williams, Raymond. 1989. Culture is Ordinary. In Resources
of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism, 3-18. London and
New York: Verso.
Zardini, Mirko, ed. 2005. Sense of the City: An Alternate
Approach to Urbanism. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture and Lars Müller Publishers.
Olin, Margaret. 1992. Forms of Representation in Alois
Riegl’s Theory of Art. Pennsylvania: Penn State University
Press.
Book Reviews
Compte rendus de livres
Shelley McKellar
Review of
Smith, Marquard and Joanne Morra, eds. 2005. The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a
Biocultural Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pp. 340, illus. Cloth $34.95, ISBN 0-262-19530-5.
The Prosthetic Impulse is a collection of commissioned essays written by scholars from various
disciplines that explore the body, modernity and
prosthetic technologies. In this volume, the authors
move beyond the common medical definition of
prosthesis (as an artificial device that replaces a
missing body part) to explore broader meanings
as an addition, a replacement, an extension, an
augmentation or enhancement and its nature
within body-technology interactions. In modern
Western culture, this contact between the body
and technology has led to a “prosthetic impulse.”
What is the prosthetic impulse? In answering this
question, the more conventional approach focuses
on “human contact with a modern world as ever
more mediated and determined by communication
technologies, biomedicine and information” (4).
Indeed, many scholars have studied body-technology contact and its impact (or the enactment
of the prosthetic impulse) on communication
technologies, biomedicine and information such as
the telegraph, computer, microscopes, laparoscopic
surgery, unmanned space travel, cameras, medical
transplantation and artificial organs—as well as its
presentation in culture, literature and the visual arts
(science fiction, horror movies and comic books
would be examples).
The authors of this volume, however, pursue a
less conventional answer to the question, suggesting
that “the point of prosthetic contact … is also a
part of a process that recognizes exactly how ‘the
prosthetic’ is an integral or ‘interconstitutive’ part of
the ‘human’” (7). Citing N. Catherine Hayles’s How
We Became Posthuman, the editors state that the
posthuman body, as an initial prosthesis, undergoes
66 manipulation from birth thereby identifying the
prosthetic impulse as a process already found in
humans. Their argument is: “the prospect of the
body and prosthesis are already of one another in
specific ways that are lived out and experienced
through material as well as metaphorical considerations that are embodied in and theorized directly out
of particular histories, bodies, objects and practices”
(11).
This volume is an eclectic collection of essays,
drawing from theories and methodologies in gender
studies and philosophy, to literary criticism and
visual culture, to psychoanalysis and deconstruction. Because of the variety of approaches to the
topic—which is arguably both a strength and
weakness of the volume—the editors provide a
short introduction to help the reader navigate this
interdisciplinary selection of works. They highlight
the question of the prosthetic impulse, which frames
this collection, and they emphasize how each
author’s work addresses the theme of material and
metaphorical figurations of prosthesis. Well-written
and succinct, the introduction could have expanded
further on the related literature and debates that
whetted this reader’s interest.
In terms of organization, the volume is divided
into two sections. Part one, entitled “Carnality:
Between Phenomenology and the Biocultural,”
includes essays by visual culture scholars Vivian
Sobchack, Marquard Smith, Lisa Cartwright and
Brian Goldfarb. Well-known disability studies
scholar Lennard J. Davis, philosopher Alphonso
Lingis, sociologist Gary Genosko and historian
David Serlin also contribute to part one.
The articles by Sobchack and Serlin were
of particular interest to this reader. Sobchack’s,
“A Leg to Stand On” sets a strong tone for this
volume. As the wearer of a prosthetic left leg, her
essay foregrounds the embodiment experience of
bodies with prostheses. She critiques and redresses
the metaphorical displacement of the prosthetic
by focusing on the lived-body experience (18).
Serlin begins his “Disability, Masculinity, and
the Prosthetics of War,” with the story of the
Amputettes—six veteran amputees who performed
in drag for recuperating soldiers at U.S. military
hospitals in the mid-1940s. He explores conceptions
of what constituted able-bodiedness and normative
masculinity during this period (159). Bringing his
study forward to 2004, Serlin links his argument
that able-bodied masculinity is culturally produced
during wartime first, to the positive newspaper
coverage of Iraq war veterans with their prosthetic
limbs and second, to the well-publicized incidents
of physical torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi
prisoners by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib
prison.
Part two of the volume, entitled “Assembling:
Internalization. Externalization,” includes essays
by gender studies scholar Elizabeth Grosz, critical
theorist Joanne Morra and visual culture scholars
Lev Manovich, David Wills, Raiford Guines
and Omayra Zaragoza Cruz. As the section title
suggests, these essays address the representation
and reception of prostheses and bodies. In her essay
entitled “Naked,” Grosz examines sexual spectacle
and sexual viewing and how the transformation of
the art of depiction, to functional art, to experimental art contributed to the transformation of the
body (191). Manovich, drawing from Marshall
McLuhan and media history in general, examines
ways in which the inside body is being externalized,
or “augmenting the body by extending it outside,”
through new visual and imaging technologies (216).
The other articles in this section explore related
themes.
The Prosthetic Impulse is a collection that any
scholar exploring themes of technology and the
body could find useful. If for no other reason, this
compilation will force scholars from a variety of
disciplines (this reviewer included) to think more
broadly about the body—historically, presently
and in the future—and its mediation with both the
biological and technological imperatives in modern
Western culture.
Lianne McTavish
Review of
Daston, Lorraine, ed. 2004. Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. New York: Zone
Books (MIT Press).
Pp. 447. Hardcover $34.50, ISBN 1-890951-43-9.
This collection of nine essays explores the relationship between objects and speech, noting how things
can both encourage and shape discussion. The authors—art historians and historians of science—met
three times at the Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science in Berlin to discuss their work.
Lorraine Daston, director of the Institute and editor
of the collection, refers to these sessions as periods
of “intensive collaboration” (7). Yet the resulting
studies are remarkably different, covering diverse
European and North American objects from a range
of historical periods. Some topics fit more or less
neatly into the discipline of art history: Joseph Leo
Koerner analyzes a 16th-century drawing by the
artist Hieronymus Bosch; Antoine Picon considers
the shifting meaning of the free-standing column in
18th-century French architecture; Caroline A. Jones
studies the mutual exchange of information between
paintings made by American artist Jackson Pollock
in the 1940s and art critic Clement Greenberg. Other
essays feature objects that are less conventional:
M. Norton Wise and Elaine M. Wise chart the
changing understandings of Peacock Island in
late 18th- and early 19th-century Prussia; Simon
Schaffer investigates how soap bubbles inspired
19th-century British scientists; Anke te Heesen
examines collections of newspaper clippings from
the 1920s.
According to Daston, these discrete case studies
are informed by a common goal; they consider how
matter both limits and enables meaning, recognizing
that “the language of things derives from certain
properties of the things themselves, which suit the
cultural purposes for which they are enlisted” (15).
This effort to appreciate the materiality of objects
has previously been undertaken, most famously
by art historian Michael Ann Holly (1996). Holly
argues that art works actively prefigure the histories
that can be written about them. The essays in
Daston’s collection similarly strive to avoid
approaching objects as blank screens on which
social meanings and values are projected. While
some authors achieve this goal, others produce
straightforward discourse analyses that explain
how an object was shaped within language during
a specific historical period.
Joel Snyder’s assessment of early photographs
is among the more successful accounts of the
reciprocal exchange between object and interpreter.
Studying the shifting legal status of 19th-century
daguerreotypes, the art historian argues that these
images were initially considered mechanical in
nature. That is, they were understood as manual
productions, though made by the sun rather than
by an artist. Daguerreotypes were thus inadmissible
as evidence because they repeated what the sun
said as hearsay, given that the original “speaker”
(the sun) was impossible to cross-examine. Yet
by the late 1870s, arguments were made in favour
of photographs as a form of direct evidence. The
images were still deemed mechanical in nature,
but some lawyers claimed that memory was itself
photographic because all witnesses essentially relied on mental pictures for their testimony. Clearly,
photography was changing the portrayal of human
vision and perception. As a result, photographic
images were increasingly accepted as eyewitness
testimony, able to speak for themselves.
In another notable essay, Daston, an historian
of science, examines the Glass Flowers made by
Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka for the Harvard
Museum of Natural History between 1886 and
1936. These delicate glass models of plants and
flowers were meant to display post-Darwinian
methods of botanical classification, bringing nature
inside for the benefit of both students and amateurs.
Now that the Glass Flowers have moved from the
category of specimen to that of artistic wonder, they
continue to amaze. Daston is primarily concerned
with how and why these objects have consistently
attracted admirers—admirers who seem compelled
to produce verbal descriptions and evaluations of
68 the Glass Flowers. She argues that the appeal of the
Glass Flowers is partly based on their chimerical
nature; they are neither purely art nor purely science. At the same time, the sheer materiality of the
Glass Flowers is fascinating. Unlike wax, which is
more amenable to mimicking natural forms, glass
is impractical, fragile and impressively difficult to
work with. The Blaschka’s method was unusual and
daring, making their Glass Flowers impossible to
copy and lending them an air of both authenticity
and preciousness that ensured the irresistibility of
the Glass Flowers.
Another historian of science, Peter Galison,
turns his attention to Rorschach blots. According to
him, since 1921 these diagnostic objects have talked
back to the subject. Though the cards seem random,
they are carefully constructed and standardized. As
a technology of the self, the Rorschach cards define
interior life by means of a “routinized procedure
followed in thousands of ordinary tests” (274).
Galison studies how a specific understanding of
self has been produced in relation to the cards, one
which presupposes a different ontology than that
of the 19th century. Unlike the earlier notion of
an “aggregate self” composed of various powers,
Rorschach’s test produced an “apperceptive self”
that refused separation between the faculties. This
self was unified, and its various components, such
as reason and cognition, were linked dynamically.
Galison claims that Rorschach’s test cards were only
part of the emergence of this changing sense of self,
which was also encouraged by new architectural
spaces and understandings of the family, among
other things.
These brief summaries reveal the sheer
diversity of the essays in the collection. It is
difficult to extract an overall theoretical approach,
method or message from the book, however,
despite the editor’s cogent introduction. I suspect
that readers will be attracted to particular topics,
finding some more useful than others. In the end,
Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and
Science offers intriguing case studies rather than
an historiographical reflection on, or revision of,
material culture studies.
References
Holly, Michael Ann. 1996. Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Randall Brooks
Review of
Ifland, Peter. 1998. Taking the Stars: Celestial Navigation from Argonauts to Astronauts. Newport
News: The Mariner’s Museum; Malabar: Kreiger Publishing Company.
Pp. xvi +222, colour illus. Cloth US $62.50, ISBN 1-57524-095-5.
During the last half-century there have been a
number of books dealing with the instruments
of navigation including Eva Taylor’s The Haven
Finding Art (1956), M.V. Brewington’s The
Peabody Museum Collection of Navigating
Instruments (1962), Jean Randier’s Mariner
Navigational Instruments (1980) and Jim Bennett’s
The Divided Circle (1987). Each of these volumes
has resulted in new understandings by focusing on
instruments for specific periods—though generally
mostly European technologies and pre-20th century
technologies. For depth of understanding of the
detailed procedures of navigation, Bennett’s book
stands out and remains so compared to the book
under review.
In Taking the Stars Peter Ifland has included
new illustrations of instruments—some from the
18th and 19th centuries. The variations of design
and the pure beauty of these instruments are well
demonstrated. While the 198 illustrations are well
produced, some of the diagrams are not as effective
as they might be. In some cases the captions for
the illustrations are lengthy, providing information
that, in most books, would have been reserved
for footnotes. What I found particularly useful,
however, were the photographs that illustrate how
minor innovations to navigational instruments
changed the way they worked, how they were used,
their efficiency and, ultimately, their accuracy. For
example, an early (ca.1900) spring-loaded quickrelease device for a sextant index arm is illustrated
(Fig. 69) followed by an illustration (Fig. 70) of
the helical gear on a Heath sextant (pat.1909);
together these two innovations improved the
efficiency of setting the sextant index arm and the
time to take a sighting. Other illustrated devices
made less of an impact, but if one is interested in
knowing when innovations were introduced and by
whom, or knowing about their use, Ifland’s book
is invaluable.
Many devices discussed are supplementary
to the forms of navigational instruments familiar
to most people, such as box sextants, “through the
glass” sextants, weather sextants, solar attachments,
various mounts, spirit-level devices and artificial
horizons, to name a few. These were designed to
overcome any number of problems encountered
by navigators or surveyors—both land and marine. The sheer volume and the ingenuity of the
innovations help to illustrate the importance of
navigational devices before the advent of radio and
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technologies.
The lengthy section on developments and
innovations in air navigational instruments
(Chapter 9) is a particularly useful addition to
our knowledge of modern navigation. Little has
been written on the historical development of such
instruments––those by the late Saul Moskovitz
come to mind. Having said that, the original papers
describing later advances are still relatively easy to
find while related patents can now often be viewed
on the Internet. Chapter nine focuses primarily
on American navigational devices although their
European origins are acknowledged and well
illustrated. Innovations subsequent to World War
II were mostly American and well-illustrated
examples are included in this publication.
I would like to have seen more details on navigational procedures and feel the book is deficient
in that area. This is unfortunate because Ifland’s
background makes him well qualified to explain
the intricacies of navigational procedures. This
is particularly so as the skills of observation and
mathematical computations are fast disappearing
with the proliferation of GPS devices.
This beautifully produced, well edited volume
is intended for non-specialists. All the same, there is
much that will be of interest to those with extensive
knowledge of navigational history. Although not
referenced, Taking the Stars, has useful appendices
on patents (with a short description of some of the
more significant patents included), a glossary of
terms and a suggested reading list. The appendices
will be helpful for those with modest knowledge in
navigational technology and methods. Specialists
may be frustrated at not being informed about the
location of private collections due to privacy and
security issues. However, for the person wanting
a well illustrated, well written reference on the
technology of navigational instruments spanning
several centuries, I highly recommend Peter Ifland’s
book.
Franz Klingender
Review of
Scott, Guy. 2006. Country Fairs in Canada. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside.
Pp. 232. $34.95, ISBN 1-55041-121-7.
Early in my career I learned about the role of
agricultural fairs in Canada’s history. Such fairs
often served as the vehicle through which new
technology was introduced, demonstrated and
promoted. It was likely at country fairs that many
people got their first glimpse of new technologies,
from internal combustion tractors to moving images.
In addition to that important role, country fairs also
provided an opportunity for the less mechanically or
technologically inclined to present their creations to
the community. As an aficionado of the numerous
products featured at country fairs, I have witnessed
the intense rivalry among entrants as they compete
for ribbons in categories ranging from chocolate
cake, to quilts or arrangements of gladioli.
In Country Fairs in Canada, Guy Scott traces
the origins of the North American country fair back
to the trade, cloth, horse and livestock fairs of 11thcentury England. He follows their development in
Canada from the first fair held at Windsor, Nova
Scotia, in 1765, to the beginning of their decline
in the 1940s. He points out that in 19th-century
Ontario, implement manufacturers took advantage
of local fairs to show potential customers the newest
piece of technology and how it would save both
labour and time. In the early-20th century, western
Canadians watched the first Winnipeg Tractor Trials
at Winnipeg’s 1908 country fair.
In this book Guy Scott accurately details the
reasons for the rise and decline of country fairs
throughout Canada. More importantly he highlights
changes to the profiles of the fairs and the people
who attend them. In the early 19th century, for
example, Fair Boards focused mainly on the needs
of the rural community with educational exhibits
intended to promote improvement and scientific
development. Changing demographics, however,
called for changes to meet the needs of Canada’s
growing urban centres. Over time the success of the
country fair came to be measured less by the size of
the farm equipment display and more by the size of
the midway. In that regard, Scott takes us past the
spieler and behind the curtain to shed light on the
lives of the sideshow denizens. Noting the impact
of the electric light bulb on the operation and appeal
of fairs, he points to the allure of the multi-coloured
70 lights on the Ferris wheel and flashing lights on
the various games of chance. Today, country fair
organizers focus on attracting urban dwellers to
the countryside to introduce them to the origins
of their food; the required entertainment sweetens
the deal.
Country fairs have changed in other ways as
well. Competition from other forms of entertainment with much better funding is decidedly a
factor in whether or not country fairs continue to
operate. While the volunteer has always played a
role in the local fair, Scott advises that volunteers
now figure more prominently than ever as they
assume responsibility for organizing country fairs
of all sizes. Throughout the years the success of
the country fair has often depended on assistance
from the various levels of government, particularly
in the face of economic disasters such as the 1930s
Depression; time will tell if that will continue.
Sadly, Scott points out that when country fairs
fail to measure up, organizers often watch their
fairgrounds become development lands (as was
the case in my hometown when a condominium
building was erected on the grounds where the fair
was once held).
Fairs have always been about “looking at stuff.”
The extensive use of photographs in his publication
enables Scott to maintain this notion of looking at
“stuff.” A wide-ranging selection of photographs
from public and private collections across the
country document all facets of the technology associated with the country fair’s operation, including
the midway equipment and the staff responsible
for transporting equipment from one fairground to
another. Other photographs highlight the Crystal
Palace-style architecture that was adopted by some
of the provincial fairs in the 1880s. A snapshot of
a group of 1920s young people in bathing suits,
sitting astride a bull in British Columbia, has appeal
for this reviewer. As a public historian who is
frequently called upon to select images to illustrate
interpretive products, I was particularly pleased to
find the sources for the images used in the book to
be thoroughly footnoted.
Although the author’s popular writing style
might have been out of place for some topics,
it works in this instance. Even his occasional
humorous side comments are perfectly suitable. I
do, however, have concerns about this book; I take
issue with some of the facts presented by Scott.
For example, he suggests that threshing machines
were not used until 1878 whereas they were already
being shown at country fairs in Upper Canada in the
1850s. Second, the point of the Winnipeg Tractor
Trials was to pit the established steam traction
engine against the newcomer kerosene and, despite
his assertion otherwise, archival records show
both were demonstrated at 1908’s inaugural event.
Third, given its pivotal role in Canadian agricultural development, most historians of cereal crop
breeding would accord Marquis wheat much more
stature than simply being “an offshoot of Red Fife.”
Fourth, although Scott touches upon the popularity
among urbanites of automobile demolition derbies,
such as that shown in the foreground of an image
taken at the Brandon Fair, he fails to mention the
preparations underway in the background for the
“combine crunch” that was equally important to
many farmers.
Having said that, Scott’s book should appeal
equally to historians of material history and to those
wishing to use it as a reminder of their youthful
excursions to the local country fair. Should the day
come when country fairs no longer exist, Country
Fairs in Canada will provide future generations
with an understanding of what they have missed.
S. Holyck Hunchuck
Review of
Calloway, Stephen, Elizabeth Cromley et al. 2005. The Elements of Style: An Encyclopaedia of
Domestic Architectural Detail, 3rd ed. Revised and updated by Alan Powers. Richmond Hill: Firefly
Books.
Pp. 592, illus., index, bibliography, glossary, biographies of designers, restoration and maintenance guide
and lists of suppliers. Cloth $75.00, ISBN 1-55407-079-1.
The Elements of Style is described on its inside
flyleaf as “the most comprehensive visual survey of
architectural styles ever produced,” but these claims
are exaggerated. The book was first published in a
smaller version in 1991 by Octopus in the United
Kingdom, and by Simon and Schuster in the USA
with the more accurate subtitle, “A Practical
Encyclopaedia of Interior Architectural Details of
1485 to the Present.” Stephen Calloway, curator
of Prints and Books at the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, and general editor of this third,
2005 edition under the Canadian imprint Firefly,
narrows the field even further by noting that it
is a “sourcebook for those who care about our
heritage of architecture in Britain and the United
States” (9). Within its limitations of geography,
chronology and subject matter, The Elements of
Style is an exhaustive large-format visual dictionary
of architectural details from the history of British
housing of the past 500 years, with reference to
some American examples. However, in part it still
reads as a work-in-progress.
Thirteen authors have contributed to The
Elements of Style. Its seventeen main chapters are
arranged in roughly chronological order and are
organized by architectural style, feature by feature,
according to a simple template: a dense, two-page
textual summary of a given architectural style is
followed by a visual breakdown of its details by
component. The narrative begins with the chapter
“Tudor and Jacobean, 1485 to 1625,” by Simon
Thurley, a British architectural historian and chief
executive of English Heritage, and concludes with
three chapters that discuss the 20th century: “The
Modern Movement (1920-1950),” “Beyond Modern
(1950-1975)” and “Contemporary Era (1975-present
day),” all by Alan Powers. He is Senior Lecturer at
the University of Greenwich School of Architecture
and Landscape, London, co-editor of The Elements
and a particularly thoughtful writer. As with The
Twentieth Century House in Britain: From the
Archives of Country Life (2004), Powers’s chapters
are dense but highly-readable discussions of one
of the most complex eras in architectural history.
Also included in this lengthy volume are separate
chapters on British and American vernacular
architectures, a glossary of architectural terms and
biographies of architects, designers and illustrators,
as well as practical guidelines for proper restoration
techniques and lists of suppliers of building parts
in the U.K. and North America.
The overarching theme that emerges from
this book is that visual literacy is the basis for
architectural literacy. In this linguistic model, the
built environment constitutes a visual language
in which the parts of a building comprise the
“vocabulary” of an architectural style, while “grammar” consists of the arrangement of the parts. While
this visual-linguistic approach to architectural
literacy is a familiar one to art historians, it may be
a new proposition for the generalist. The editors,
however, have ensured that even the novice to the
field of architectural history will be convinced
of the merits, as supported by the book’s superb
production standards. It is a beautifully-designed
volume and the uncounted thousands of illustrations
that form its bulk are almost uniformly excellent.
The colour plates in particular are of extremely high
quality. The composition, depth of focus and colour
saturation found in such images as the stairwell
detail in the London house of English Neo-Classical
architect John Soane (1753-1837) on page 186, for
example, remind the reader of the sheer pleasure to
be derived from the act of carefully looking at some
of the most ordinary objects. Such plates are found
throughout the book, in addition to black-and-white
photographs and line drawings.
The ensemble of illustrations seem to cover
every conceivable aspect of a British or American
house, with the result that each main chapter contains
a dizzying amount of visual detail, albeit arranged in
a clear and consistent manner. Colour-coded, tabbed
entries make it convenient for the reader to crossreference major building components from various
periods and styles. Walls, ceilings, windows, doors
and “services” (that is, toilets, drains, stoves and
washbasins) are all documented here, as well as
the minutiae of building construction, such as door
pulls, light fixtures, window hardware, fireplaces
and plasterwork. This organizational system adds
to the reader’s ability to recognize the forms of
architectural style via its details, but the result
is more than aesthetically pleasing: it illustrates
a chronology of material change, it allows for
the making of informed choices about sensitive
restoration of old fabric and provides a guide for appropriate new design. The use of a half-colour plate
combined with a half-line drawing is a particularly
useful analytical device. The illustration of the front
door of Red House, Bexleyheath (1859) (built by
architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) for William
Morris (1834-96), English designer and writer,
for example, tells much about the Arts and Crafts
movement in a single image (308).
72 Nevertheless, the reader is left uneasy at times.
As is to be expected from a collection of essays
by so many authors, the quality of contributions
is uneven from author to author and chapter to
chapter. The contributors, eleven British and two
American, include a cross-section of professionals
in the fields of architectural history, teaching,
practice and exhibition in the U.K. and the U.S.,
but the written text does not always do credit to the
quality of visual imagery. Among the authors are
four members of English Heritage, an agency of the
British government dedicated to research into, and
touristic promotion of, historic buildings and sites in
that country. While this may explain the preponderance of British examples in the book, there is no
explicit rationale provided for these cultural and
geographic choices, nor for the time frame chosen.
For North American readers, the Tudor starting
point of this history coincides with the earliest of
British colonial influence on this continent, but
the editors should explain these and other editorial
decisions. The complete absence from the book
of Canadian houses—or those from other British
Commonwealth countries—whose architectures
have been as deeply influenced by British examples
as has been the domestic architectures of the United
States, for example, are perhaps the most glaring
omissions. For example, William J. Macintire, the
Historic Sites coordinator for the Kentucky Heritage
Council contributes to the “Colonial (1607-1708)”
chapter, but it references only American houses.
Nevertheless, this book is more than a technical
manual for building restoration. Art historical
writing of the strongest order can be found in
several chapters. In addition to Powers’s very good
contributions, other chapters that deserve careful
reading and re-reading include Calloway’s “Early
Georgian (1714-1765).” This style was derived
largely from the ideas of Italian architect Andrea
Palladio (1508-1580), particularly his Four Books
of Architecture of 1570. The chapter describes
the influence of Palladio’s and other architectural
pattern books and builders’ manuals on English
building construction, explains the significance of
new by-laws after the catastrophic fire of London
in 1666 and notes the impact of changing building
materials such as the creation of brighter paints
during this period. A similarly cogent history is
found in “Arts and Crafts, 1860-1925,” a chapter
by the late Stephen Jones, a British art historian. In
a virtuoso display of scholarship, Jones manages to
delineate the path between the medieval vernacular
forms espoused by the English art critic John Ruskin
(1819-1900) and the dramatic modernity of the
“greatest American architect of the 20th century”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) (307), via such
disparate figures as Morris, the American firm
McKim, Mead, and White (founded 1879), the
British architect Sir Edward Lutyens (1869-1944)
and a dozen other notable individuals, all while
providing context by reference to allied art movements such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He
does so in a two pages of clear and elegant prose.
However, the unevenness of some of the
writing is most evident by comparing “British
Vernacular,” by medievalist and Professor Emeritus
of Architectural History at Greenwich University
Anthony Quiney, with “American Vernacular,” by
Elizabeth Cromley, Professor of Architecture at
Boston’s Northeastern University. While Quiney
notes that the term “vernacular” “embraces a
bewildering array of different styles” (526), his
examples are drawn from a rather limited definition of the term. The chapter is dedicated almost
exclusively to variations on the stereotypical
thatched-roof cottage of the English countryside
in the Middle Ages and it ends with the coming
of the Industrial Revolution, ca.1800. By contrast,
Cromley’s chapter is more inclusive; it begins with
the 16th century, explores the changes wrought by
industrialization in the 19th century and recognizes
the contributions of various ethnic groups. Cromley,
like Powers, is a writer whose other works are well
worth reading, including her Alone Together: A
History of New York’s Early Apartments (1990)
and the two volumes of the journal of the American
Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Perspectives in
Vernacular Architecture that she guest-edited in
1994 and 1995 for the University of Tennessee. In
The Elements, she defines vernacular architecture
in a way that is more useful and memorable than
is Quiney’s. She notes it is a
much-disputed [term], and in the United States is
best understood to embrace a number of different types of architecture: buildings produced for
lower budgets than those in the high style, and
therefore exhibiting notable ethnic and regional
differences; buildings made by traditional methods
for rural and provincial clients; and buildings in
which ethnic and regional traditions merge with
current styles to create interesting hybrids. In the
vernacular house there is likely to be a mix: some
new ideas, some tradition. (536)
Despite these two chapters dedicated to vernacular
architectures, the overall emphasis of The Elements
is on the high styles produced by name architects
for wealthy clients. While occasional references are
made to the differences between the ways the rich
and the poor live, little consideration is given to
issues of class as manifest in the forms and materials
of housing. In a more thorough study, each chapter
would pick up on such themes as that explored in the
“Lighting” entry in Calloway’s “Early Georgian”
chapter. In it, he points out that the quality of light
in an interior domestic space in mid-18th-century
England was determined by social stratum: large
windows and relatively clean-burning beeswax
candles were available in the rooms occupied by the
manor-born, while their tenants and servants had
to make do with small windows (or no windows at
all) and dirty-burning candles made of tallow, that
is, animal fat (103). Even within its largely British
context, The Elements of Style could use a chapter
that focuses on the dilemma of housing for the poor,
discussing for example vernacular architecture after
1800, the company housing and urban tenements of
the early Industrial Revolution, the housing estates
(social housing) of the post-World War II era and
the rise and fall and rise again of shelters for the
homeless.
A fourth edition of The Elements of Style
would be further enhanced by additional contributions by Powers and Cromley and Canadianists
would appreciate the inclusion by Firefly of
some Canadian content. Much solid research on
domestic architecture in this country has been
done by academics as well as researchers in the
federal government’s Department of Heritage and
the Province of Alberta’s Ministry of Culture and
Multiculturalism, to name a few. Titles in this field
range from such published surveys as Peter Ennals
and Deryck Holdsworth’s Homeplace: The Making
of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries
(1998), through stylistic studies such as Leslie
Maitland’s Queen Anne Revival Style in Canada
and Natalie Clerk’s Palladian Style in Canadian
Architecture (both 1984), to numerous unpublished
but publicly available studies and heritage reports
created by government bodies and community
groups.
Ideally, future editions of The Elements of
Style would also have dedicated chapters on
emerging and increasingly important aspects
of domestic architecture, such as Green design
(environmentally-conscious planning, a movement
that is much larger in the U.K. than in Canada and
from which Canadians could learn much), design
for handicapped accessibility and the problems of
building conservation in extreme climates.
Additionally, while the biographies in the 2005
edition describe a diverse cross-section of influential figures, from the romantic British Victorian
illustrator Walter Crane (1845-1915) to such titans
of European high style Modernism as Germany’s
Peter Behrens (1869-1940) and Marcel Breuer
(1902-1982), this chapter could be expanded by
Firefly in its Canadian edition to include Canadian
individuals and institutions who have made distinctive contributions to housing in this country, such
as architect Arthur Erickson (1924b), the Canada
Mortgage and Housing Corporation or the B.C.
Mills lumber company.
Minor corrections and clarifications would also
be needed in the next edition. For example, did the
editors really mean to state that the Richardsonian
74 Romanesque style (after 19th-century American
architect and medievalist H. H. Richardson (183686)) was not a revival style, as they seem to do
(560)? Similarly, on page 543 in the copy of The
Elements provided to Material Culture Review,
errors in the layout of this otherwise beautiful book
have rendered the text indecipherable.
At $75, most Canadian readers and collecting institutions might want to wait for the next
edition of The Elements of Style, when at least a
few Canadian references could be added and the
necessary corrections and clarifications made.
Contributors
Collaborateurs
RANDALL BROOKS is the curator of Physical
Science and Space and Assistant Director, Collection
and Research Division at the Canada Science and
Technology Museum, Ottawa. His professional
interests focus on astronomical, surveying and
navigational instruments and measurement of their
precision over time.
KENNETH DONOVAN is an historian with Parks
Canada at the Fortress of Lousbourg National
Historic Site. His latest work focuses on Canadian
golf course architect Stanley Thmpson.
CYNTHIA I. HAMMOND is a professor of
architectural history at Concordia University,
Montreal. She recently completed a two-year
SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the School
of Architecture, McGill, where she studied the
relationships between women philanthropists,
humanism, and the emergence of modern housing.
In addition to teaching and research, Hammond
maintains a visual art practice, and exhibits
regularly on the themes of home, architecture, and
the city.
S. HOLYCK HUNCHUCK is an architectural
historian and independent scholar in Ottawa. Her
interests include modern architecture and architectural education.
FRANZ KLINGENDER is Curator of Agriculture
at the Canada Agriculture Museum. He has attended
many country fairs in rural communities across
Canada, both in the course of business and pleasure.
As a young boy, through his elementary and early
secondary school years, he made an annual pilgrimage to the now defunct Welland County Fair.
LOREN LERNER is Professor of Art History at
Concordia University in Montreal. She is editor
of Afterimage: Evocations of the Holocaust in
Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature/
Rémanences: Evocations de l’Holocauste dans
les arts et littérature canadiens contemporains
(Montreal: Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies,
2002). Exhibitions she has curated with accompanying publications are Memories and Testimonies/
Memoires et Témoignages (Montreal: Leonard and
Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 2002) and Sam Borenstein
(Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2005).
GLORIA LESSER is an accredited independent
free-lance residential interior designer (l970-), art
historian and curator. She holds a BFA in Studio
Art and Art History and an MFA (Art History)
from Concordia University.She is a frequent
contributor to the Bulletin of the Canadian Society
of Decorative Arts and was active in the Society as
Vice-President from l994-2000.
SHELLEY MCKELLAR teaches courses in the
history of disease and the body at the University
of Western Ontario. She is the author of Surgical
Limits: The Life of Gordon Murray (University of
Toronto Press, 2003).
LIANNE MCTAVISH is an associate professor of
visual culture at the University of New Brunswick,
Fredericton.
ROBERT TREMBLAY est détenteur d’un doctorat
en histoire de l’Université du Québec à Montréal,
où il a enseigné pendant quelques années à titre
de chargé de cours. Depuis 1997, il exerce sa
profession d’historien pour le compte du Musée
des sciences et de la technologie du Canada, à
Ottawa. Ses recherches l’ont amené à explorer
divers domaines se rattachant à l’histoire des techniques au Canada, comme l’exploitation minière,
l’usinage des métaux, la production textile, les
transports terrestres, la téléphonie, l’imprimerie et
la photographie. Il est l’auteur d’un ouvrage intitulé:
Histoire des outils manuels au Canada, de 1820 à
1960: heritage européen, techniques de fabrication
et entreprises manufacturières (Ottawa: MSTC,
Transformation 10, 2001).
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MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND
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Cape Breton University Press 2006
ISSN 1718-1259
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Cover: Sam Borenstein. Sainte-Lucie, Winter. 1964. Oil on panel.
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F a ll 2 0 0 6 - Memorial University`s Digital Archives Initiative

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