When I’m driving through a rural area for the first time I take note of the farmhouses and the barns. They can tell you a lot about the people who farmed the land, and the land itself. Every area is different.
For example, in Renfrew County there are large brick houses built 100 years ago, houses built from stone, log houses, frame wooden houses covered in brick sliding or vinyl, and brick-clad and vinyl-clad bungalows. There isn’t one type of house that dominates the landscape. But drive up in farm country in northern Ontario and you’ll see mostly bungalows, but not brick clad ones. Drive through Mennonite country in St. Jacobs area of southern Ontario and you’ll see many stately brick homes. Other areas (east and west coast) have mostly wood frame houses.
To the casual observer, barns are a much neglected and ignored part of Canada’s agricultural legacy. To a non-farmer, a barn is a barn is a barn –a place to store hay in the loft and perhaps keep a few animals. Barns have always been the most important building on the farm, and the real soul of the operation. Soon after arriving on their new properties, the earliest settlers immediately set out to build a shelter for their animals. What strikes many of us as we drive along rural roads is seeing abandoned barns that age away quietly. There are still some North American barns of the last 150 years that are landmarks of beauty and culture –the simple and practical expression of a people, a way of life, and the land from which they sprang.
The mighty bank barn or banked barn still dots the landscape in some areas but many have come down with age. They were a popular 19th century barn style in Ontario and in the U.S. Often built into the side of a hill, or a bank, both the upper and lower floors area could be accessed from ground level. The top level of the barn could also be accessed from a ramp if a hill was not available. Mennonites are still building these types of barns.
The big barns tell me that the operation was a prosperous one, but not necessarily done on good soil. Farms on marginal land with a large acreage of good bush also prospered.
Just as the huge barns physically dominated the rural landscape the way skyscrapers dominate an old city block, the rural look has changed drastically in the last 20 years with the arrival of new types of cheaper barns – the fabric-covered one. The first time I saw this type of round barn it reminded me of the early settlers in America who moved west in canvas-covered wagons. Canvas was strung over five or six frames made from wooden bows that arched from side to side. How ironic that that simple technique is being used again –this time on a much wider span.
The interesting thing I’ve noticed about these new barns is that you don’t see them in the St. Jacobs, Elmira –that whole area around Kitchener-Waterloo. You don’t see many in northern Ontario.
In California you only see steel structures with open sides. Fabric-covered ones are not being used for storage. I didn’t see them in Oregon. There are a few farther north around Lynden, Washington. That’s dairy country. As you get closer to the Canada-U.S. border, more of them sprout up like giant mushrooms. There are fabric-covered barns 10-15 miles on each side of the border –probably because of their wet weather.
The area where I live west of Renfrew has 12 fabric-covered barns on an eight km stretch. One farm has four.
In my quest to see what area has the most fabric-covered barns, Admaston, Arnprior and Pakenham probably have the most -–maybe in all of Canada? The question is how will future historians view these structures? Will they still be around like the old bank barns?
