Historic homes on CFUW tour
Every house has a story, and although the walls can’t speak, some eventually give up their tales.
The Canadian Federation of University Women is holding its 43rd annual house tour on May 7. The tour will lead guests through five houses and the Ontario Paper Thorold Seniors Centre.
Visitors are in for a special treat when they visit the Munro House at 5 Ormond St. in Thorold. The construction of the house began in 1866 and completed in 1868. The house remained in the Monro family until the death of Ruth Munro, who subsequently willed the house to her caregiver. The current owners, Michael Bonk and Pascale Courchesne, are the first owners in the history of the house to actually purchase it.
“When we are looking for houses we are looking for ones of interest because of their historical relevance,” said Jean Tonogai, co-chair of the Canadian Federation of University Women of St. Catharines. “We started looking at the Welland Canal and looking for houses that were overlooking and maybe involved in housing workers for the Welland Canal and that led us into Thorold and then to here.”
Built three bricks thick and with parapets may speak to the fears of original builder James Munro. His family had been left homeless following a massive blaze in downtown Thorold in 1865.
“He had a store on Front Street and his family lived above but then it was all wiped out in the great Thorold fire of 1865. It wiped out downtown, so I guess the family lived in different houses and they bought this property and had it built,” said Bonk. “The parapets, like in row housing, are usually there to keep the fire away so it is built higher than the roof line, so even though it is not attached to anything, he still put the parapets there you know, just thinking, I don’t want fire coming close to me.”
The house was purchased by Bonk and Courchesne in 2011 and it underwent renovations until last December. “This one was a little different than conventional homes because it is built differently,” said Bonk. Small rooms took hundreds of dollars of wallpaper to finish, partly because of the high ceilings. The vast amount of trim work took gallons of paint to cover.
“Because it is so big, it takes so much time. Just painting the trim here, it’s two gallons of paint, for just this room,” said Courchesne. “It took me three months to do the front porch.”
Bonk and Courchesne put their skills together: Bonk with his experience in building and Courchesne as a designer.
“I design and he builds. That’s why we can do it because otherwise we wouldn’t have the budget to finish a house like this,” said Courchesne. “Michael will do the drywall and after that it is me. Wallpaper, sanding, painting, it is me.”
Because the house is a designated heritage house, including some of the interior, Bonk and Courchesne had to OK any renovations with the city and Thorold’s local architectural conservation advisory committee .
“We had an architect draw up the house first and then we talked about the changes we wanted. Then we approached the city for a building permit and the city wouldn’t grant it to us until a LACAC member came through,” said Bonk.
The renovation process proved trying and more in-depth than they originally thought, but the walls did give up a few secrets including a couple of notes found during the process.
“I found a note in one of them,” said Bonk. “It was from a sister or a sisterin-law from up towards Owen Sound. She was writing to give them prices on wood flooring. It was like, wow, this thing was written so long ago.”
Bonk found a second note rolled up when he was removing some trim from an archway.
“Back in the day, they had a type of caulking but they would fill it with paper, they would roll paper up and kind of stuff it and put some sort of caulk over it,” said Bonk. “I was taking a piece of trim off from up there one day and there was this rolled up piece of paper and naturally unrolled it and there was a note on it from this guy, something Dundas his name, and it was like ‘painting the house for Colonel David Munro, the year of 1920, the worst year of the Depression, beer is 50 cents and alcohol is 75 cents a shot of something’ and then he signed it,” said Bonk.
Although they hadn’t moved into the house yet, Bonk did a little detective work and tracked down an elderly lady who was a relative of the Dundas mentioned in the note.
“I was on the phone with her for about a half-hour, 45 minutes, and she is giving me the history of her family and what her father did, and what her uncles did,” said Bonk. “Then one day I’m outside with all of the guys that did the brick work and here comes this little Irish woman. She goes, ‘Who’s Michael, who’s that guy that called me?’ We talked for a bit and off she went,” said Bonk.
In another anecdote, Bonk told of looking for the source of a water leak in the foundation when he discovered dozens of old bottles in the crawl space underneath the kitchen. Bonk and Courchesne believe that the crawl space was used for recycling and now, more than 100 years later, one person’s trash is another’s treasure as Bonk found a similar bottle that he dug up on the Internet selling for $75. And he has recycling boxes full of more bottles that the pair have not had time to clean.
In addition to the Munro House, a beach house in the area of Lakeshore Road and Arthur Street is featured. Built in 1967, the house borders the Waterfront Trail at Sunset Beach. The Pelham Manor on Effingham Street at Roland Road features a 130-year-old restored barn shaded by 200-year-old oak trees on a twohectare property along with navigational instruments from the shipping industry that the homeowner collected during his time working in the industry.
Also in Pelham is a house built on an 18-hectare property that was part of the farm settled by the Rolands and a small house on King Street in Thorold that was moved to the location to make way for the Thorold Tunnel. Also included in the House Tour is the Ontario Paper Thorold Seniors Centre which was renovated and opened as a seniors centre in 2013.
The money generated by the tour goes to fund the CFUW registered charity for scholarships and to support local charities that help women and children in need.
“It is to raise money for scholarships to further the education of women, that’s the main thing, but it also goes to charities that support local women and children that are concerned with the status of women and women’s rights,” said Tonogai.
Tickets are $25 and are available at each of the houses on the tour or online at www.cfuwstcatharines.org/ house-tour-2017. More information about the tour and each house is also available on the website.