Start to Finish

Detail from Lewis Parker's Upper Canada

Detail of Lewis Parker's Upper Canada, showing sheep being washed, sheared and released to frolic while the fleece is washed, dried, carded, and spun. Visit the Canadian Encyclopedia, "Sheep Farming".

The Log Cabin Myth

Pioneers lived in log cabins... right? Well, it really depends on the period and the area in question. It also depends on your understanding of the definition of what constitutes a "log cabin". These excerpts from Hugh Morrison's Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period help to explain:

Log House in Orillia Township, Ontario
1844 Picture by Titus Hibbert Ware

"By 'log cabin' we mean a dwelling built of round logs, laid horizontally on one another, with notched corners and protruding ends.... Spaces between logs, if any, are chinked with moss, clay, or oak chips.... the log cabin did not exist in any of the English colonies in the seventeenth century and was used very little throughout most of the eighteenth century. Neither did the Dutch use it in New Netherland, nor the French in Canada. It was a form of construction unknown in England, France, Holland, and southern Europe generally; it was likewise unknown to the American Indian.
...
It is tempting to believe that our early ancestors, gifted with ingenuity as well as courage, invented such an admirable solution to their urgent problem of quick and durable shelter. 
Apparently they did not. The English colonists did built blockhouses and prisons using logs hewn square and notched at the corners for either lapped or dovetail joints. This is indeed a superior type of construction, but it requires many tools and much skill and more time. The log cabin, if it had been known, would have supplanted the flimsy dugouts and cabins and wigwams the pioneer settlers actually built.
True log-cabin construction is thought to have been introduced into this country [the United States] by the Swedes when they settled Delaware in 1638.... In the eighteenth century, German settlers in Pennsylvania built large numbers of log houses, using both squared-log and round-log construction. Since most of the Germans entered the country by way of the Delaware valley, they must have acquired the technique from the Swedes...." (12-13)

Sources
Hugh Morrison's 1987, Early American Architecture
Harold Robert Shurtleff's 1939, The log cabin myth: a study of the early dwellings of the English colonists in North America

Further Reading
History News Network 2015, "Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving"

One Log at a Time

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Galt or any other village for that matter. Here's an interesting illustration taken from A History of Canadian Architecture Vol. 1 that demonstrates the growth of a Loyalist homestead in Upper Canada. Note that if a building was still structurally sound it was kept and re-purposed; the 1784 log cabin eventually becoming a pig shed for example. Many of the buildings are located close together - as much for safety as for ease of completing the many daily chores required of the farmer. While most trees certainly would get the axe, others were kept as a means of shielding the home from sun and wind. Fences were not only handy, they were a legal requirement in many districts - keeping your animals from wandering onto your neighbours' pasture or from obstructing narrow roads.

Sources

Harold Kalman's A History of Canadian Architecture, Vol. 1

Further Reading

Images of extant log homes in the province can be seen on the Ontario Architecture website

Taxes and the Home in Upper Canada

While I was working as an interpreter within an historic home, I was absolutely shocked (on a number of occasions) to hear that visitors believed that taxes were something of a 20th century invention in Canada. Sometimes being an interpreter isn't about sharing new and exciting information with people, it's about trying to correct myths and misconceptions.

When it came to taxes and the home in Upper Canada, three considerations prevailed: the building material of the house, the number of storeys, and the number of fireplaces. In 1807, six categories were created to help determine who owed what to the government. Here they are in order of least to most amount of tax, regardless of the square footage of the house:

- Homes constructed of round logs
- Homes constructed of square timber, one storey
- Homes constructed of square timber, two storeys
- Framed (sawn wood) homes under two storeys
- Homes constructed of brick or stone of one storey with not more than two fireplaces
- Homes constructed of brick or stone of two storeys with not more than two fireplaces

Some good news for settlers in 1811 arrived when the government decided to no longer tax buildings made of round logs (presumably if you're living in a house made of round logs you can't afford to do much else let alone hand over cash to the taxman). Some more cunning families who wished to keep more of their money to themselves built homes that were one and a half storeys - 19th century houses of this height are still littered across Ontario today.

For the average home-owner in the 1830s however, the tax owed on a two storey brick home was about 5 shillings - roughly equivalent to a days' wages for a skilled labourer. It wasn't a prohibitive tax by any means, and the Scots were among the more prolific builders of homes in stone and brick:

"... among non-log houses, Scots used stone (17%) and brick (13%) most often, and frame (70%) the least, whereas about 85% of the Irish, American, German, English, and Ontario-born residents lived in frame houses." (Kalman, 170)

I have a particular fondness for one and a half storey stone houses. Duncan Ferguson house (1856), pictured here, is located at 71 Cowan Boulevard, Cambridge.

Sources
Harold Kalman's 1994, A History of Canadian Architecture, Vol. 1
Brian Coffey's 1985, "Factors Affecting the Use of Construction Materials in Early Ontario" in Ontario History

Further Reading
Historic Places "Duncan Ferguson Homestead"