Written By Len Cuthbert
We were a young family of four, moving back to Ontario after living on Vancouver Island for four years. Every home buyer seeking their next place of residence has their personal list of needs. At the time, our top priority was affordability, so our geographic search was very wide. We witnessed the inside of many homes throughout Middlesex County, but eventually found a place to call home in the small town of Rodney, in the next county over.
It was a big old three-quarter storey century house. Strangely, the realty listing didn’t indicate the year it was built. How old was it? The listing just said, “old,” which went without saying. We had come to discover that it wasn’t that uncommon throughout the area that some of the houses had lost touch with their birthdate. It was the oldest home we had ever owned. It was quaint, with 6” baseboards, huge entry openings between rooms and French Doors in between.
The history of the town reached back to the late 1800’s, so I was curious about when the structure was built. It amazed me that something as crucial as when a home was built could be lost and forgotten in just a century. During our time there, I carried out some renovations to resolve various issues and improve life inside the many walls. One renovation included a small back room on the main level that I used as an office. The room was a bit cold, so increased insulation was on the list.
In redesigning the space, the adjacent closet and cupboard space of the kitchen on the other side of the wall were combined to create a small two-piece powder room. The addition of a small window would allow for more natural sunlight. The project began with tearing the plaster and lath off of the walls to reveal the original rough hardwood studs that were officially 2” x 4”. A limited amount of vermiculite type insulation had seeped down from the ceiling, so there was a considerable amount of mixed rubble on the floor making it a challenge to keep the floorspace clear while working.
In the process of cleaning up one day, I found something quite unusual. It was a small pad of papers, loosely held together with a staple. The pages were lightly covered in dirt and it appeared that a mouse had chewed the corners off. I flipped it over to reveal it was a small calendar with the first two months missing. In the top corner, it read the year, 1916. In my hands was not only an artifact that was 100 years old, but possibly a more definite answer to the era of our home. I wondered what a calendar was doing inside the walls and how it had found its way there.
I asked my father, who was born in the early 1930’s, if he had ever heard of something like this being found inside an old home’s walls. He told me that he was of the understanding that occasionally a builder might toss something like pennies or a calendar into the wall of the home. I wondered if the builder of our home had thought about life in the future and that someone might possibly find his calendar during a renovation or demolition? One thing for sure, his attempt to share the past had been successful in this old building. Since we now have the benefit of internet search information, I have discovered that leaving dated artifacts inside a home for later generations to discover is not an uncommon thing to do, particularly during renovations. It was very likely that this was the case here.
I recently came across a photo in the local archives, taken February 18, 1916, of the B Company of the 91st battalion, C.E.F, assembled at the Rodney Town Hall. While this photo was being taken, just down the road, our house was being built. It was the middle of the First World War, and I can just imagine, a construction worker stopping for a lunch break. He pulls a small calendar out of his lunchbox and tosses it into the wall cavity, for us, in the future, to discover. Fast forward 109 years and it is now the year 2025. The sun has since risen and set almost 40,000 times. The walls of that home have witnessed the stories and life experiences of the past 5 generations that have come and gone through the doors of that home. And that simple action of a home builder has ignited the imagination and wonder of what it was like so long ago.
Len Cuthbert is the founding director of Fridge Door Live Theatre Company based in Mount Brydges. His play, Blue Side Up, will be staged June 7 & 8, 2025 at The Wright Place in Strathroy, June 7-8, 2025 and at the Keystone Complex in Shedden, June 4-5, 2025. Tickets are available at www.OnStageLive.ca.
