Roctober Canada 6

One of the wallers involved with the construction of the Cabanne at the Thanksgiving Festival was John Scott. He also won a prize for the best dry stone wall built by professionals. I asked him to send me photos for the blog along with some details about the work

Here is a copy of the main section of his very interesting email.

"As promised, here are some photos of the wall built in Burritt's Rapids which is about a half hour south of Ottawa, Ontario. Burritt's (1790) is the site of one of the first mills on the Rideau River which became the Rideau Canal...a strategic military shortcut between Kingston and Ottawa at a time (1833) when the USA was a threat. The Canal was built by Colonel John By who had the wisdom to import stonemasons from Scotland to quarry, cut and lay some very fine stonework in absolute wilderness, and trick a very diverse river to flow two ways. During this time the river saw much settlement...first as small clusters of farms, then mills then busy towns and military settlements. This stone house was built round 1834 on a high bank of sandy clay not far from Clowes, one of the first limestone quarries in the area but now long grown over. The original documents are lost, but it is reasonable to assume that scotish canal stonemasons built this and many of the many other houses in the area. The home owners asked me to build a wall to block out the busy road (and related tire noise) but not to block the beautiful meadow on the other side....they didn't want an imposing structure. We estimated the height of the wall by sighting through the owners eye to just cut out the road, plus two inches. There was an existing hedge which had grown very tall and wild. They had violently torn it out so we had to remove loose soil to 12 inches and replace with aggregate. Since we had to move so much soil anyway, we decided to alter some landscape to convince spring runoff around the wall and into a ravine. We also decided to create a simple pathway to the front door. The stone used is a dolomitic limestone and reasonably hard, featuring the odd trilobite fossil and calicte cluster, and ranges from a blue/grey to brown, in beds from 1" to 12". There was also a nice stash of granite glacial boulders that had been salvaged from a barn that burned before 1970. At that time the boulders had been pushed into a pile and left to gather moss. The wall is 160 feet long and split by a driveway and gate. Although the elevation slopes by 2', the copings are level....the difference was made up by using the gigantic footing stones at the tall end so that the copes could be uniform. The wall is battered, including all cheekends, except the gated ends which are plumb. The gate is cedar and reflects the shape of the arch above the main door of the house, and we used similar shaped stone to cap the cheekends. The hardware was made by a blacksmith who works for Parks Canada at Jones Falls...a historic site that marks the watershed of the canal and features an impressive sandstone dam. The hinge pintels connect to a 24" flat arm that hooks downwards into a slot shisel cut into the walling stone. A wreglet chisel cut into the above stone keeps the arm from moving sideways. The latch bolt slides into a femal receptor which also reaches and hooks into the walling stone. These inventions were created at a Tim Hortons in classic Canadian style! I did not build this wall alone. Jason Macrae was granted a month's leave to work with me and proved to be a solid waller. Mike Bonk also helped as the winter made an early appearance. These two gentlemen receive high praise! The owners, Ian and Nina Donald, were also key. Nina gathered and delivered hearting every day. I thank them for their hard work and trust. "