Columns and Letters

Housing

 

-by Jim St. Clair

Background
    Much comment has been made in county council meetings, community development sessions, and other places about the shortage of housing, both public and private, in Inverness County. In our memories, we recall how groups of neighbours and relatives in years past would cut trees, saw logs, build stone chimneys, and frame post and beam dwellings for newly-arrived residents or expanding families.
    Just over a century ago, two ordained young men from Inverness County, Fathers Tompkins and Coady, worked with study groups to establish the framework for community housing through the Co-operative Movement. The first of these buildings took shape in November of 1938 in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton County, on a side road which eventually came to be called Tompkinsville.
    Eleven families, under the leadership of Joe and Mary Laben, singing a song composed for the event, “Come let us sing together. Home in Tompkinsville” opened the doors of their two storey, single family houses.
    The study groups, after establishing a co-operative society, and acquiring land, and gaining funds for mortgages, consulted with two experts in such activities who came from New York as consultants, Mary Arnold and Mary Reed. The experience and enthusiasm of these two experts in  bringing co-operative planning into reality are recalled with much applause to this day.
Design of buildings
    Designated as “vernacular” by architectural historian Dr. Richard MacKinnon, vice-president of University College of Cape Breton (whose family origins are from the edge of Cape Mabou, overlooking MacKinnon Brook), each house had a finished basement and two full storeys. They were placed in the middle of land plots with entry drives and pathways. In the downstairs, are dining rooms, living rooms, and kitchens with an entry porch attached.
    In the upstairs of each home, arranged slightly differently in each building, are three bedrooms and an indoor bathroom, different from many other family houses in the area; with details a bit different in each building, the basic design was the same. No duplex houses, as were found in previous houses of miners in the area and in Port Hood and Inverness as well.
    Through the years, alterations have changed the exterior of the surviving first products of the Co-op Housing Movement and interiors have achieved individuality as well. But the basic floor plan remains the same.
Significance of Tompkinsville Co-operative Housing
    These century-old houses are very significant in Cape Breton, indeed Canadian, history. The success of the procedure and of the actual structures encouraged other communities to establish co-operative housing organizations. Many miners were encouraged to learn carpenter and masonry and electrical skills in order to assist in the building of such dwellings. In other places far away from Cape Breton, co-operative housing took place based on the stimulus supplied by those who lived in Reserve Mines a hundred years ago.
    Is it possible that the example from this Cape Breton community of the early 1900s might be suitable for study by locals in Inverness County groups concerned about housing? Have we lost the enthusiasm for cooperative effort?
    Some of us may have seen the play “Tompkinsville” created by playwright Lindsay Kyte in Antigonish. It well celebrated the accomplishments at Reserve Mines.
    “Come let us sing together - ‘Home in Tompkinsville.’”


Oran Dan - The Inverness Oran - www.invernessoran.ca

The Inverness Oran
15767 Central Avenue. P.O. Box 100
Inverness, Nova Scotia. B0E 1N0
Tel.: 1 (902) 258-2253. Fax: 1 (902) 258-2632
Email: [email protected]