Elegy for a vanishing world
New book pays tribute to our area trades
WATERLOO REGION — Karl Kessler remembers as a kid growing up in Queens in New York City, and how when he’d go shopping with his mom, he’d be struck by the places with a different look and feel than all the other shops: Frank’s Barber Shop and Katz’s Menswear, the hardware store and the soda counter.
“They felt different,” he said. “The materials that was in them — the wood floors, the store fixtures. Even as a kid I was drawn to that.”
Those stores were part of the neighbourhood, but they stood out as being from a different, earlier time.
Decades later, in a different city and another country, Kessler and his friend Sunshine Chen have produced a tribute to places like those stores from his childhood, holdouts that seem to embody an earlier time. Their book, “Overtime: Portraits of a Vanishing Canada,” offers 50 portraits — in prose and black-and-white photos — of people in Waterloo Region practising trades and cultural traditions that are disappearing.
The book, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, is being launched at 7 p.m. next Thursday at Waterloo’s Button Factory.
All of the people, the jobs and the pastimes portrayed in the book are in Waterloo Region, but they represent change that’s happening on a larger scale, all across the country, says Kessler, who with his wife Jane Snyder co-ordinates Doors Open Waterloo Region.
The portraits range widely, capturing Waterloo Region’s traditional manufacturers — furniture, felt and rubber — and skilled craftspeople who know how to build your favourite chair, bind a book by hand with leather and hand stitching, shorten the sleeves on a beloved jacket, or craft fine pastries with quality ingredients. There are
portraits of places that are disappearing: farms now within the city limits, country churches and independent shops, and of pastimes, such as fall fairs and lawn bowling, that are on the wane.
The photos portray the people — and the environments they work in — with sober dignity. A longer look reveals details that tell as much as the written prose: the bouquet of fresh daisies on the butcher shop counter, the straw strewn on the wide planks of the broom maker’s workshop, the pressed-tin ceiling in the Linwood village grocery.
Kessler sought out what he calls “the rare and quirky places, kept his eyes open for interesting businesses, combed industrial directories and phone books, drove and walked along main streets and country roads, and asked for suggestions from everyone he knew.
About half the people he approached readily agreed to be interviewed, while the others had to be coaxed and convinced. The work has been a long time in the making. He and Chen began working on the project a decade ago, when they first approached David Rumpel in 2008 to do a portrait of his father John in the dying days of the Rumpel Felt Co. on Victoria Street in Kitchener.
Chen conducted the interviews while Kessler took the photos and condensed the conversations into short essays. Most years they’d manage six or eight portraits. Some of the photos have previously featured in exhibits at the City of Waterloo Museum, and at Kitchener City Hall.
Those efforts produced a book about loss, and survival, a book about skill and taking pride in what you do, about change and perseverance and quiet stubbornness.
The people interviewed weren’t nostalgic, Kessler said. They were matter-of-fact, proud makers of high-quality goods who have prevailed by being skilled and willing to adapt.
“It’s not a requiem,” Kessler said. “It’s a celebration and an appreciation.”
Sometimes, the people profiled sound almost philosophical or poetic. Like North Dumfries farmer Jeff Stager, who reflects about his life on his farm. “This property has provided for me. The sun shone, and the crops grew.”
In the end, as with any good story, there was a larger story that emerged from all the smaller ones.
As he and Chen interviewed the people profiled in the book, they found that over and over again, what seemed like a straightforward quest to capture a particular trade or skill inevitably turned into a discussion about life, values and human connection.
The independent retailers survived because their customers liked being regulars, whose preferences were known and understood. Skilled tradespeople loved the satisfaction of making something that someone cherished.
“What we learned from talking to people is that what people really want is to be known to each other,” Kessler said. “That’s the most satisfying thing.”