RW Woodworking, Hunter River

     Raeford Waite of R.W. Woodworking operates a top of the line woodworking operation!  Yesterday he posted these photos on his Facebook page of traditional styled windows he's made for a historic property that I prepared the drawings working with a local Architect.

    Raeford posted the following comments with these photos: "All ready for final coat had to use 221 pieces of cardboard because outside is rust red and inside is white, special thanks to my right hand man Kenny Stewart many long hours standing in one spot all day thanks to him..."

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1470370166329478&id=1048737388492760&pnref=story

Kelvin Grove Farmhouse demolished

     Today I was surprised to see this old farmhouse gone - demolished and the hole filled in with fresh soil.  The house was located at 1778 Blue Shank Road on the corner with the Kelvin Rd. (Rte. 109) which leads over towards Scale's Pond.  This is Lot-25.  I don't know who the owners were.  I travel the Blue Shank Road weekly and have taken notice of this nicely kept treed homestead.  About two years ago I noticed the lawns weren't being cut - I wondered if the owner had passed away or moved.
     I often intended to take a photo of the late 19th-century Island-ell style farmhouse but never took the time to stop.  Thanks to Google Streetview I'm able to capture an image of what it looked like.

     Meacham's 11880 Atlas of P.E.I. shows this farm belonging to Mrs. James Johnson with 275 acres.
     Cumin's 1928 Atlas of P.E.I. shows this farm belonging to Wm. Caseley with the front portion of this lot comprising of 100 acres.  

Elliott's Train Station restorer receives Heritage Award

     This article appeared on the PEI Government's website in an article they call, "Bringing History Home".  Stacy MacInnis moved the old Elliotts Train Station to his home in Burlington a couple of years ago.  I took these photos of the restored station in November 2016.

Here's the article:

https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/news/bringing-history-home

Stacy MacInnis remembers bundling up on cold winter mornings when he was five years old and going next door with his mother to stoke the coal stove for waiting passengers at the Elliott family’s train station in Pleasant Valley.

Fast forward more than 50 years – it’s a summer day and MacInnis, now 59 and his mother gone, has moved the station to his own homestead in Burlington where the Woodleigh Replicas once stood.

While repairing a part of the coal room wall, he spots his grandmother’s name among the many names carved into the tinder-dry wooden board.

“It hit me, I felt like I was saving a piece of heritage and creating a stronger connection with my ancestors,” MacInnis said.

MacInnis was one of several Islanders and groups awarded with a 2016 Heritage Award for his restoration of the 1888 station.

“I did it as a labour of love, I didn’t expect any reward for it,” he said.

Not every train station was a grand piece of architecture. The so-called flag stops, like the one at Elliotts Station, were very simple structures. Like many of its kind, when the Elliotts station was decommissioned in the 1960s, it was moved to a local farm to take up a new life as an outbuilding. That’s the end of the road for most buildings like this, and after fifty years as a storage shed, the old flag stop had deteriorated to where it was barely recognizable -- ready for demolition.

But the old Elliotts station always held a fascination for MacInnis. In 2014, he bought it and arranged to have it moved to his property in Burlington. There he brought it back to life, with new roof and shingles, but its original door and windows. The Heritage Award was recognition of his efforts to restore this small, but important example of both our railroad and architectural heritage.

The Elliott family was a staple of Pleasant Valley in days gone by. They had a wood mill, a grist mill, and a pond at the flag stop where the station stood. In winter they cut large chunks of ice from their pond to package in sawdust and ship by train to Charlottetown ice boxes in the days before electrical refrigeration.

The train station has two rooms, one waiting room where benches line the walls and sliding doors into a coal storage room.

MacInnis plans to showcase his photography and display train artifacts to make it feel like a little museum. He has painted the rusty red shingles to their original color.

His mother, Cecilia MacDowell, who tended its fires all those years ago, died six years ago at the age of 90, before MacInnis even got the idea to restore the station.

“She thought it was such a shame it was falling down,” he said. “She would have laughed to see it now.”

For a full list of 2016 Heritage Awards Winners visit the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation(link is external)

2016 PEI Heritage Award recipient Stacy MacInnis is pictured with His Honour, the Honourable H. Frank Lewis, Lieutenant Governor of PEI at the recent Heritage Awards ceremony

Creswell House, St. Eleanors

    Often in telling a story architecture is shown - an example of that is in today's Guardian newspaper in an article by Katherine Dewar and the story of Nursing Sister Catherine Creswell.  Here is a great example of a mid-1800's Centre Dormer style house.
     Katherine Dewar is the author of the book "Those Splendid Girls: The Heroic Service of Prince Edward Island Nurses in the Great War 1914-1918"

MacPherson Sawmill, Eldon /Belfast

     I was up east this afternoon and thought I'd run down to see if the MacPherson's old sawmill was still there.  Here it is on the right - it's hanging on in it's neglected state.  This is the last water-powered mill on Prince Edward Island - the last one of near 400 water-powered mills built on Prince Edward Island between the mid 1700's and 1990.

     I documented this building back in the fall & winter of 2010.  Here's a few photos taken at the time.  
     It makes me sad to think such a structure and the history here is not known to more Islanders - there's been a mill on this site since before the building of the St John's Baptist Presbyterian Church, the oldest church on the Island, built in 1824.

Rustico Rural Telephone Co. 1915

    These pages were given to Arnold - interesting reading about the Rustico Telephone - it was located across the road from the Pines Motel in Rusticoville. 

Bordon Myers Woodworking, Parkdale (Charlottetown)

     I was in Charlottetown the other day and in the parking lot of Parkdale Pharmacy - I took these photos of Borden Myers Woodworking shop.  Here's a few photos I took.

        For more than 30 years I've been sending folks to Borden Myers Woodworking for windows, doors, etc.  Here's a door and window made by Borden.

MacWilliams Farm, Belfast

     I took these photos of this old homestead on the TransCanada Highway in Belfast yesterday.  Meacham's1880 Atlas shows this property belonging to Robt McWilliams (50 Ac) & Chas. & Jas McWilliams (52 Ac) - today it appears these two parcels are one.  The low roof pitch and style makes me think this is a mid-1800's house.  The house appears to be on the Chas. & Jas McWilliams portion.
     In Cummins 1928 Atlas it show's Jno. R. McWilliams with 110 Ac.  It notes that John is an Ex-Road Master; married to Catherine, with the following children: Marion, Margaret, Bruce, Florence and John.

Springbrook Aerial

     Arnold found this aerial photo amount a few things from his days - thinking the image was taken in the 1960's.

      The farm in the lower left corner is completely gone - not a shingle remains!  See zoomed in below.

     Same for the farm in the upper middle of the image - the old Doughart Farmstead (1928 Cummins Atlas shows Allan C. Doughart here; 1880 Meacham's Atlas show's Wm. Cole here with 62 acres) - not a shingle of that property remains.  Below is a zoomed-in image of the farmstead.  The house became famous for it's "No Picture Taking" sign and featured on the back cover of book, "A Day in the Life of Canada" published in 1984.  The house was bought and moved to French River where it remained empty and in ruins for years.  For a few years it was featured on the cover of the PEI Tourism's Arts & Heritage Trail guide.  In 2016 it was destroyed by a "control burn".
     The farm in the top left corner still has a house and barn remaining.  

 Below: my photos of the Doughart House taken in the summer of 2012.

 Below: an outbuilding on the Doughart Farmstead.

      Further up the road were a few old barns (see far left, third up) - they were burned for a scene in the "Emily of New Moon" TV series.  

Below: the barns burned for Emily of New Moon TV Series.