Shacks by the Stacks: The Great Canadian Shacks in the City Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

shacktastic.

Timmins is shacks-with-no-stacks.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by biguc

I know we're supposed to be over the whole urban renewal thing, but maybe it's time for another round. We don't want to displace anyone, but how are we supposed to look at central parts of cities occupied by ice-fishing huts and semi trailers masquerading as boarded-up video stores, and accept that this is a country with an affordable housing issue? And then there are all the stripmalls, waste-of-space parking lots, backyard junkyards, and serial-killer autoshops. Why not start over?

Add pawnshops and moneymarkets/cashmoney outlets. They are a cancer on the surrounding urban fabric, driving out the good.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

Wow, there's a little Italy in sudbury.

I found a small blurb on it:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_...able_landmarks

I "discovered" that neighbourhood pretty recently - thought it was interesting enough to warrant a post in the Ugly thread: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=5149

Certainly unique at least:

https://goo.gl/maps/DvBFmSDtqtfdj3qb8
https://goo.gl/maps/8msCB5xSYUfKi6a69
https://goo.gl/maps/r3RCAWRoCUbDmEZU7

[MolsonExport]

Wow, it looks revolting from the air. Ontario's answer to Alberta's tar sands extraction.

[kwoldtimer]

"(R)eminiscent of Italy". Italy on a molto, molto bad day, perhaps.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

"(R)eminiscent of Italy". Italy on a molto, molto bad day, perhaps.

Actually, generations ago, Northern Ontario probably looked like paradise to people from (economically-depressed) Italy.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by biguc

Is that parking lot for shack visitors? Or do surface parking lots randomly spawn next to shacks. You rarely see one without the other. See Harley's photo above of shacks, stacks, surface parking for the stacks, and even some brand new shacks to keep the old shacks company.

It’s funny they spent half a million dollars restoring the shack and part of that budget was to place bollards beside it so that vehicles using the parking lot wouldn’t crash into it. The parking is for the restaurant which is inside the also historic Deane House next door.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Wow, it looks revolting from the air. Ontario's answer to Alberta's tar sands extraction.

Nah, Fort McMurray was the answer to Sudbury, not the other way around.

Will future astronauts train in northern Alberta, as they did the moonscape of Sudbury? I think not, sir.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

"(R)eminiscent of Italy". Italy on a molto, molto bad day, perhaps.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Actually, generations ago, Northern Ontario probably looked like paradise to people from (economically-depressed) Italy.

Reminiscent of Italy when most of the way through a bottle of grappa, at night, and surrounded by fellow Italians, maybe.

“Looked” like paradise, no. Economically paradise, sure. If I had to make the same choice between decent job in Sudbury or unemployed in lovely looking Italy, I would likely make the same choice they did.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Echoes

Of course on the Prairies our oldest structures are shacks.

That wasn't a given. The oldest structures in many areas are either churches / religious buildings, or else forts (or a combination of the two, like the Spanish missions in northern Mexico / U.S. southwest). That's true in both the Old World (typically the only truly medieval ~1,000 years old structure in a typical random French village is the church) and in the New one.

Pretty sure I recall the oldest building in SK is a church.

Actually, just looked it up and I was right:

https://www.tourismsaskatchewan.com/...4%20and%201860.

It's an elegant Anglican-style temple, I wouldn't call that a shack at all, despite being wood-framed and wood-covered.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Reminiscent of Italy when most of the way through a bottle of grappa, at night, and surrounded by fellow Italians, maybe.

“Looked” like paradise, no. Economically paradise, sure. If I had to make the same choice between decent job in Sudbury or unemployed in lovely looking Italy, I would likely make the same choice they did.

Northern Ontario Italians generally have few complaints about the life they found there, in my experience. This is certainly true for those that immigrated and even the predominant view among their kids and grandkids.

Though in the latter cases, Toronto and southern Ontario do exert a considerable pull on younger generations.

Some nostalgia for Italy does exist in the community, but it's mostly in the abstract at this point.

[Echoes]

Originally Posted by lio45

That wasn't a given. The oldest structures in many areas are either churches / religious buildings, or else forts (or a combination of the two, like the Spanish missions in northern Mexico / U.S. southwest). That's true in both the Old World (typically the only truly medieval ~1,000 years old structure in a typical random French village is the church) and in the New one.

Pretty sure I recall the oldest building in SK is a church.

Actually, just looked it up and I was right:

https://www.tourismsaskatchewan.com/...4%20and%201860.

It's an elegant Anglican-style temple, I wouldn't call that a shack at all, despite being wood-framed and wood-covered.

I was being flippant with that remark as I found it amusing that both Calgary and Saskatoon have such similar oldest* structures.

*The Trounce House is the oldest overall, but Saskatoon's oldest still in its original location is the Marr Residence, which was used as a hospital during the Northwest Rebellion and has a rare-on-the-Prairies mansard roof. It's a handsome enough shack and across the street there's a 1960s stack: https://www.google.ca/maps/@52.11882...7i16384!8i8192

Thanks for sharing the Stanley Mission church. Its presence among total wilderness, on the shore of a northern lake, is quite striking.

[MolsonExport]

what about shacks that are stacks?

cbc

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Northern Ontario Italians generally have few complaints about the life they found there, in my experience. This is certainly true for those that immigrated and even the predominant view among their kids and grandkids.

Though in the latter cases, Toronto and southern Ontario do exert a considerable pull on younger generations.

Some nostalgia for Italy does exist in the community, but it's mostly in the abstract at this point.

Like many migrants who made a life somewhere that was far from home and was a one-way kind of deal, they made the best of it. If I had to venture as to what made them stay, it was their kids. The parents did the hard work of coming to somewhere foreign so that their kids would have the chance to grow up locals in Canada. As a product of those immigrants a few generations removed, I am quite happy they did.

Nostalgia for the old country in Northern Ontario is pretty much a nostalgia for the tourist version of the country their parents left behind now. Not too many native Italian, Serbian, or Finnish speakers left in Northern Ontario these days.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Like many migrants who made a life somewhere that was far from home and was a one-way kind of deal, they made the best of it. If I had to venture as to what made them stay, it was their kids. The parents did the hard work of coming to somewhere foreign so that their kids would have the chance to grow up locals in Canada. As a product of those immigrants a few generations removed, I am quite happy they did.

Nostalgia for the old country in Northern Ontario is pretty much a nostalgia for the tourist version of the country their parents left behind now. Not too many native Italian, Serbian, or Finnish speakers left in Northern Ontario these days.

Upwards of a quarter or even half of all Italian immigrants to North America in the early part of the 20th century returned to Italy, but not after the Second World War.

Why? Seems fairly obvious: the postwar explosion of wealth. In 1910, subsistence wages in a teeming tenement in lower Manhattan wasn't really much of an upgrade over the peasant life in Sicily, but the vast improvement in work and life conditions in Brooklyn (or College in Toronto, or the North End of Hamilton etc.) in the 1950s and 60s would have been impossible to give up to go back to...being a peasant in Sicily.

You'll give up a tuberculosis-ridden address on Mulberry Street in 1910, but you won't give up a Cadillac, or maybe more accurately, the realistic promise of one, in 1965.

[someone123]

This one in North End Halifax reminded me of this thread:


Source

I think it's an interesting one rather than ugly, although I hope the shacks don't all get torn down in the long run. I don't think there's anything stopping a developer from demolishing all of these.

Similar feel:


Source

[someone123]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Upwards of a quarter or even half of all Italian immigrants to North America in the early part of the 20th century returned to Italy, but not after the Second World War.

I don't have statistics but I have read that a lot did manage to save up money then move back and purchase property. That's the third option beyond "give up and go home" or stay. The mafia preyed on this population.

[Binour]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I "discovered" that neighbourhood pretty recently - thought it was interesting enough to warrant a post in the Ugly thread: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=5149

Certainly unique at least:

https://goo.gl/maps/DvBFmSDtqtfdj3qb8
https://goo.gl/maps/8msCB5xSYUfKi6a69
https://goo.gl/maps/r3RCAWRoCUbDmEZU7

The neighborhood in Rouyn-Noranda, near the smelter, seems to be a next of kin (apart the wider and straighter streets).
https://www.google.ca/maps/@48.24985...7i13312!8i6656

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I "discovered" that neighbourhood pretty recently - thought it was interesting enough to warrant a post in the Ugly thread: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=5149

Certainly unique at least:

https://goo.gl/maps/DvBFmSDtqtfdj3qb8
https://goo.gl/maps/8msCB5xSYUfKi6a69
https://goo.gl/maps/r3RCAWRoCUbDmEZU7

Those last two images have a street layout that's pretty atypical for most of North America.

Since it's kind of a "Little Italy" area, you'd almost think they let the Italian immigrants lay out the streets themselves.

If it were built today they might call it a "woonerf"!

[craner]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

what about shacks that are stacks?

cbc

Haha - love it