Home design – Cynthia Reyes

A Good Home, Architectural Conservancy, Architecture and Design, Canadian Homes, Canadian life, Homes

The Fabulous Ravenscraig

June 30, 2015June 3, 2018 Cynthia Reyes

PHOTOS BY HAMLIN GRANGE

RESEARCH BY KIMBERLY VANEYK

Mrs. Strike lives in Bowmanville’s beautiful historic district, near Toronto. Her home, Ravenscraig, is outstanding – for its design as well as the people associated with it. Two former mayors lived here. This grand home hosted many receptions, dinner parties, Rotary gatherings and afternoon tea. Guests included prominent members of society.

How heartwarming then, that Mrs. Strike’s fondest memories focus not on those powerful people, but on the places in her home where her three sports-loving sons played. Historian Kimberly Vaneyk and I had the pleasure of visiting Mrs. Strike recently to learn more about her home. We loved the stories about her sons’ escapades. The grand entrance hallway where uniformed servants greeted dinner-party guests, took their hats and coats and ushered them inside? That’s where the Strike boys played basketball during winter, breaking only one piece of precious stained glass with their Nerf ball. The living-room/ballroom where guests danced? That’s where the boys practiced hockey. (They also played in the basement.) And why do you suppose Mr. and Mrs. Strike bought this grand home back in 1963? “Seems silly,” she says, smiling, “but our boys were in hockey and it was near the rink!”

The Strikes even built a skating rink for their sons and friends.

“Our own south lawn was always a big rink every winter since 1963. For the sides of the rink, we used doors, old boards, anything that could stop the puck! Everybody knew that rink.”

There was also the “Wounders’ Tournament” – won by the player who managed to throw most of his friends into/over the boards.

THE DESIGN

In a town of grand homes, Ravenscraig is one of the grandest. The house’s Queen Anne style is rare even here in the historic district. Its turrets are eye-catching. Interior features are also distinctive. Designed for wealthy families who entertained a lot, special attention was paid to the movement of servants – and the flow between hallway, kitchen, dining-room and living-room.

RAVENSCRAIG’S FABULOUS PAST

Ravenscraig attracted the famous and the fabulous, the wealthy and influential, the good and the great. Bowmanville’s former mayor, Dr. Hillier, and his family had Ravenscraig built in the late 1800’s. They entertained dignitaries from religion, medicine, law, business and politics. They hosted fundraisers and other projects to support the community. Mrs. Hillier herself knitted 500 pairs of socks for local soldiers during World War 1.

Subsequent owners of Ravenscraig included the Schon’s, who fled Austria just before World War 2.

Ravenscraig then became a focal point for the arts. Guests included well-known musicians, painters and European actress Methchild Harkness, the Schons’ houseguest.

A second mayor, Morley Vanstone, and his family lived here after the Schons. The Vanstones were a wealthy family who owned the local mill. Each family left its mark… especially true for Dr. Hillier, whose initials are carved in the fireplace mantel.

Warm thanks to Mrs. Strike for her gracious welcome, to historian Kimberly Vaneyk and to Hamlin Grange for the photos.

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EVERYDAY GLORY – Part 2

November 17, 2014November 20, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

*PHOTOS BY HAMLIN GRANGE*

Before the car accident, I was busy leading the big projects, travelling here and there. Running around trying to change the world can make a person miss the beauty of “ordinary” things.

Injuries and pain are indescribably worse. You finally have time to see, but barely have the energy to look.

But – oh – it’s worth the effort!

To see one’s surroundings with new and grateful eyes.

To take joy in the small moments.

To be open to small patches of everyday glory.

"Snow Cones" on Spruce Branch - Photo by Hamlin Grange — “Snow Cones” on Spruce Branch

Snow on evergreens. The first snow makes the garden beautiful, day and night.

The late sun. Late afternoon sunlight shining on wood floors is magical. And when the late sun hits the wavy glass sidelights in the front door of our old farmhouse, it’s wondrous.

My husband’s truant socks. He has tons of single socks and we spend time searching for their matches.I used to get irritated by this. Or by newspapers strewn across the breakfast table. (Or his overlooking my small attempts to ‘cheer up’ our house.)

Now, I call them “signs of life”. And I give thanks for having someone kind, funny and loving to share my everyday life with. (And I try to assemble the newspapers without muttering.)

Freshly washed sheets. There’s luxury in the smell and feel of freshly washed cotton sheets although they’ve been used and washed many times.

The old wool blanket. “Canadiana”, for sure, it would be worth something, unstained. Do I care about the stain? No. I love this blanket for its brilliant stripes – and for having survived decades of use.

Blooming Amaryllis. Bought for 6 bucks, it re-blooms (big red blooms) on long stalks each winter. ‘Nuff said.

Our family’s big mixing bowl. Many apple pies have been mixed up in that beautiful old bowl.

My daughter’s dogs. Sometimes, just the sight of them gladdens my heart. One brownish-black, one white, they’re both tiny dogs with personalities of their own. As I write, they’re stretched out beside me, fast asleep.

Julius and Dawson Fast Asleep — The Pooches

Slowing down by choice is great. Being forced to do so is awful.

But in the spirit of lighting a candle and finding my way out of darkness, I’ve been focusing on positives.

And keeping both eyes open for the everyday kind of glory.

This post is dedicated to the caring staff at the pain management centre of Toronto Rehabilitation Hospital. One of the techniques they teach their patients is mindfulness.

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A Man in Love With a House – Pt. 2 in the Ebor House Series

August 8, 2014October 15, 2020 Cynthia Reyes

The moment Ron Coffin saw Ebor House, he was smitten.

He hadn’t been house-hunting in Bond Head – a small historic area consisting of just a few country roads on Lake Ontario, east of Toronto. But Ron felt mysteriously drawn to both the house and its location.

“It’s like being in another world here. You even have to go through a series of entrances to get to this home. The first entrance is a bridge that you have to go under when you leave the highway. Then there are the gates to the property. Then there are 2 entry doors before you can come into the house.”

He also hadn’t planned to buy this house.

“It was for sale for a couple of years and a friend said I should see it. I saw it and said, ‘My God!’ I fell absolutely in love with it.”

Ron didn’t know the house’s history. He didn’t know that it had belonged to generations of an illustrious Bond Head family whose close relatives included two Lord Mayors of London, England.

What he saw was a house badly in need of repair. Outside, four acres of weed-choked land surrounded the grand old house and barn.

Inside, the rooms were derelict.

Cobwebs hung from the ceilings. The rooms were crammed with old contents.

And there was that stuffy, old-house smell everywhere.

But the house spoke to him and he answered. Ron was a man in love.

It was 8 years later when I knocked on Ron’s door.

As Ron welcomed me into his house, there were no signs that it had once been in disrepair. The place glowed from the love and attention he had lavished on its restoration.

We sat in the refurbished kitchen, sipping coffee. I had questions and the first was the most obvious.

“What possessed you — to take on such a daunting task?” I asked.

“In life there are things you have to do,” he replied. “Some people have to climb Everest. I had to do this.”

I understood, sort of. I remembered the magnetic pull I’d felt as I sat gawking at the house and surrounding property. It had drawn me back here today.

Ron, a single parent, has four children and a dog. He ran his own business. He also had “a huge interest in Canada’s architectural heritage and how it fits into its time”.

He hurried to begin the restoration.

“I made the common mistake of plastering the walls and painting, then realized the roof was leaking”, he said. “The house also needed all new plumbing, heating and wiring. So I had to rip out some of that work and start again.”

Luckily, the seller still had the architectural drawings from 1867, the year Canada became a nation. (Construction on Ebor House started the following year.) Those drawings convinced Ron that he was on the right track.

Fortunately, also, some chandeliers and furniture – such as this Jacques & Hay sideboard on the right – were still in the house, where they’d been since 1869. Ron bought other period furnishings – including lighting, paintings, mirrors, and other furniture — after meticulous research.

Sometimes he felt like a detective trying to solve a mystery.

The house and grounds provided clues that helped him along the way.

The pantry doors were found in the barn. Old pennies were found under the lawn. Ron thinks the pennies, found together, likely fell from someone’s pocket during a picnic.

The more Ron learned, the better he understood how people lived in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

“One thing I learned was how the double front doors were used. On days when the family was receiving guests, they’d open the outer door, while the inside door was closed. That would signal that visitors were welcome.”

Ron also became deeply interested in the Farncombs, who built the house and lived here for more than 130 years. He shared with me what he knew.

I should have stopped there, but I was already hooked. I needed to learn more. And that would lead me to a powerful story that was both joyful and heartbreaking.

**Click here for Part 3: The Farncombs.

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The Porch – by Guest Writer Heather Beveridge

May 17, 2014May 20, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

Dark green paint was the colour of almost every two-story house in Toronto’s east end.

If you were very bold, the house was painted deep red with an ecru trim. My mother didn’t want to stand out in a crowd or cause a row in the neighborhood, so she insisted that our house exterior be painted the standard dark green trim with a white porch. The porch floor was painted grey.

Painting the outside of the house was always a big job. First, the extension ladder was borrowed from my grandfather’s garage. Extension ladders in those days were not light aluminum ones; nevertheless, my father would walk to my grandparents’ home at the top of the street and come home carrying the wooden ladder while I sat on the porch and waited.

No one ever painted over the old paint. Perhaps there were too many layers. A blow torch was used to soften up the old paint. The torch had a brass barrel, never as shiny as the ones that I see at auctions.

Next came the lighting of the gas. This wouldn’t have stuck in my memory if my mother hadn’t been such a worrier. My mother expected an explosion whenever there was fire, gas, or even matches. My father would quietly ignore my mother’s admonitions, light the torch and begin peeling the paint. It gave off a beautiful smell like burning leaves on a fall day.

Peeling the paint was right up there with helping my grandfather shave wood. Over and over, my Dad and I would clean off the old paint from the porch. Twisting off those silky strips of glistening paint and pulling ever so gently and slowly to try to get the biggest curl of paint yet.

Our porch served many duties. The huge baby pram with its great big belly like a whale was always on the porch. My baby brother always slept outside during the daytime – even on the coldest winter days – buried beneath piles of blankets with an old coat thrown over the top of the pram. It was Nana’s idea of child-rearing: she insisted that children must sleep outside even in winter, and my mother had no choice but to follow her determined mother’s ideas.

The porch was also where I was put on house-cleaning day: “Here – take your toys and play on the porch. No, you can’t come in until the floors are dry.”

There was no furniture on our porch. At the time, I never questioned why – but I remember the Duncans’ house down the street had a glider on their porch with striped cushions.

Ours was a ‘playing porch’ – an open porch with steel-grey painted wood floor and bars of white cut-out shapes with a smooth enamel green railing on top. The railing was just the right height for me at five years old to imagine that I was standing on board my pirate ship and waving goodbye to all those scalliwag friends of mine.

Out I would go into my land of adventure, sticking my head in every so often for more toys. Especially on rainy spring days, my friends and I would gather on the porch.

Blankets dragged from the house and kitchen chairs became Indian tepees or, more often, a pirate ship. The enemy was hiding just around the corner in the alleyway and the tepee or ship had to be put in just the right place so the baby carriage wasn’t bumped, setting off wails. Occasionally, we ventured off onto the lawn to retrieve weapons tossed overboard in the excitement of the moment.

That porch served us well as children. I couldn’t imagine a house without one.

It wasn’t until our own home was built that a glider was installed on the porch. It wasn’t quite the same with railings that were laminate and no paint to peel. And a cement floor would never be as fine as the shiny warm planks that served double duty as a pirate ship.