| ________________ CM . . .
. Volume VIII Number 3 . . . . October 5, 2001
excerpt: Stores were built with false "boom town" fronts (large parapets that hid the roof and made the stores look bigger and more solid than they really were). But the most prominent prairie building form was the grain elevator. A town's importance was measured by the number of elevators - as in "a three-elevator town."  Beginning
with an illustrated timeline from 1600 to the present, this book explores
the diversity of Canadian architecture. Each influx of settlers to Canada
brought with it different architectural influences- the Byzantine domes
of Ukrainian churches, Victorian "gingerbread" houses from England and
the Mennonite house-barn combination, to name a few. With the introduction
of mail order catalogues and the development of the railway, materials,
previously unavailable in certain areas of the country, could be shipped
from coast to coast. Shemie does not restrict the subject matter to houses.
She covers a variety of structures - shelters, multiple dwellings, churches,
office buildings, banks and government buildings - and also discusses
the development of large cities and the growth of suburbs. Adaptations
to building materials and construction techniques which help people to
survive Canada's harsh, extreme climates are also mentioned.
In all, 15 topics, with a double-page spread devoted to each, are covered. The text is enhanced with plenty of watercolour illustrations, all of which are suitably labelled (a brief description of each building depicted is also provided). A table of contents and a glossary, with sketches to illustrate various architectural terms, are included. One minor flaw is that, because there are no page numbers, readers have to flip through the book to find specific information. Recommended. Gail Hamilton is a teacher-librarian at Bird's Hill School in East St. Paul, MB.
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Published by NEXT REVIEW | TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - October 5, 2001.
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