The Rural Voice, 1994-08, Page 41RURAL LIVING
The porch on Paul and Joan Spinal's Seaforth-area farm home provides a delightful place to spend a summer evening.
The Card house, before the porch was added (above) and
after.
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Celebrating
a rural tradition:
the front porch
By Keith Roulston
It's a hot August afternoon, so hot you can hardly move.
Luckily it's a Sunday so you don't have to for a few hours.
You sit in the shade of your front porch and listen to the
cicadas sing in the trees. Could there be a better life?
Whether you get to enjoy that kind of day or not, the
very thought of the porch summons up visions of idyllic
summer days in the country. After a century of enduring
the harsh western Ontario weather, however, many a porch
has seen better days. Some have been restored beautifully
but some have collapsed or long since disappeared. Some
caring homeowners have been trying to replace porches
that have long ago vNnished and do it in a style that
complements the original Victorian home.
When you own a historic home like Paul and Joan
Spittal, R.R.3, Seaforth, you want to make sure you do the
job the right way. They live in the old Abcrhart family
homestead, birthplace of William "Bible Bill" Abcrhart,
premier of Alberta from 1935 to 1943 and founder of the
Social Credit Party in Canada. They've been in the process
of restoring the house since they bought it. It was covered
with grey asbestos siding, the kind used in government
buildings like air bases in the 1940s. They took it back to
the original ship -lap siding.
But much as they wanted to keep the original character
AUGUST 1994 37