GARAGE BARRAGE: A Back Alley Search for Imperfection

"It's like love, isn' it? . . . back alleys, . . .all the mess that you can't live without." Inbar Kaminsky, Author

This project began as a sort of character study, an attempt to document distinguishing traits of the place my family has called home for the past twenty five years, Timmins, Ontario. As a starting point, I decided to 'dig under the surface' of my character's psyche by taking a stroll through some of its myriad back alleys. Hemmed between over grown hedges and rusted wire fences lingered the usual assortment of flower and vegetable gardens, the occasional linen shrouded clothesline, and more than the occasional stockpile of "mess". But it was the threadbare shelters standing unobtrusively among these conventional back alley exhibits that invariably drew my attention;  the worn and venerable preserves of 'mess', old back alley garages.  

Without fanfare, in the largely forgotten backdrops of our city, these garages have unpretentiously survived for over 75 years. Although they unashamedly bear the scars of time, their largely original and unadorned structures confer upon them a raw and authentic beauty unmatched by the surrounding banal and predictable parade of face-lift laden garages. 

The enduring presence of these monuments epitomizes and pays reverence to the grit, resilience and determination of the early labourers who often rallied together with friends and neighbours to build them. This project pays tribute to seven garage treasures built between 1930 and 1940 in Timmins, Schumacher and South Porcupine.  

The time and place

"My first job, when I was 12 years old, was delivering milk with Earl Plunkett for Korman's Dairy. I carried the six pack cases of milk from the sleigh to the doors of the houses while Earl held the reins. My favourite time of the day was at the end of the run when Earl would toss me into the snow bank on my front lawn. Back then if you wanted to work there was work." Don Lemon, Timmins Resident, on the economy of the 1930s in Timmins.

For Timmins and for the neighbouring communities of Schumacher and South Porcupine, the 1930s were marked with a flurry of economic activity. While the rest of Canada and the world were suffering from high unemployment (as a result of the Great Depression), Timmins was prospering from a mining and exploration boom.

Founded in 1912, Timmins experienced its initial gold rush between 1911-1917. when the 'big three' gold mines (the Dome, Hollinger and McIntyre) were established. However, during this period hard rock mining demanded a high level of investment to be profitable and many of the smaller mines failed. It wasn't until the late 1920s and 1930s, spurred by lower labor costs and a spike in gold prices, that a 'second wave' of new mines opened in the area.  

By the end of the 1930s (with eight new mines producing $35 million in gold per year and a flourishing secondary lumber industry supplying the mines and the town's infrastructure) Timmins had undergone a dramatic transformation from a remote mining town to a burgeoning resource based regional municipality.  

THE BACK ALLEYS

When Noah Timmins (founder of Timmins) planned the town's business core, he had the forethought to design alleys between business blocks similar to those commonly found in other North American cities of the time. The alleys allowed easier access for deliveries, fire trucks and garbage collection. The Town of Timmins annexed land six different times from the surrounding Tisdale and Mountjoy townships between 1912 to 1977. The second annexation, between 1921 and 1931, resulted in the expansion of the town adjacent to the town's business core on the north and south sides. Throughout the course of this expansion period, the Town of Timmins adopted Noah Timmins' urban planning design strategy by including alleys running parallel along streets in both the north and south annexed areas.  

Many of the plots sold in the interwar years were purchased by single immigrant male workers from Europe who, at the time, were living in bunkhouses and cottages provided by the mines. In fact by 1941, sixty percent of the population of Timmins was of Continental European origin. Journalist and historian Gregory Reynolds notes the urgency with which these workers clamoured to move into their own homes:

 "Once they arrived in Timmins, European labourers wanted to move out of the bunkhouses, buy a plot of land and build their homes as soon as possible. Sometimes two or three families would purchase a house together.  When they could afford it they built a garage in the back lane."

The convergence of a surging economy, an influx of labourers from across Canada and Europe,  and a vigorous housing expansion plan, stoked the building of a barrage of back alley garages through the 1930s.  

THE GARAGES

"There are three things that are required to change the world.  The first is a change agent, usually a maverick .  .  . The second is a napkin. It's the perfect place for a crude line drawing on how your contraption is going to work, gonna look, and gonna change the world.  And lastly, but no less important than the first two, is a garage." Rick Radar,  re: garage start-ups.

The list of world famous companies that trace their humble beginnings to the garage's creative confines is longer than an extended ladder. Although not a whiff of a link to a renowned business start-up can be claimed by any of the garages featured in this project, all seven garages are associated with a start-up of a different kind. These garages were built by risk taking 'mavericks' seeking to change their dire circumstances at a time when much of the world was struggling through a severe economic depression. Many labourers traveled from across Canada and Europe to a cold desolate land in Northern Ontario with less than a 'crude' idea of how they were going to change their world. But once they arrived, they wasted little time creating a new life for themselves and their families.

Typically built by labourers a few months to a few years after the construction of the family home, the garage of the 1930s served more than merely as a shelter for firewood or an automobile. It came to symbolize the 'start-up' of the next chapter in the labourer's quest to establish roots in their new community and further distance themselves from the clutches of poverty. Of the seven featured garages, three are located in the Timmins north and south areas, two in Schumacher and one each in South Porcupine and the Timmins "Hill" district.   

MY SECOND HOME

In 1910, Karl Benz, the inventor of the automobile, had a two level garage built for himself in the fortified tower style. The second floor contained a fully furnished study, the ground floor space for his Benz. The tower is the first planned garage built in the world and still stands to this day in Ludenburg, Germany.

Thirty years later, Stanley Fermanick, a miner with the McIntyre mine, built a fortified two level garage for his wife Carline and their six children in the tar paper "'lick and stick' brick style. The second floor contained an unfurnished attic, the ground floor space for a car. The garage still stands to this day on Montgomery Avenue. 

Stanley's initial plan was to build a second house on his property. Halfway though the project, the Town of Timmins intervened advising him that it was illegal to build two houses on one property. With his dual dwelling plans halted and with no car to park in the garage, Stanley turned to a more conventional use for the structure. The word 'garage' is derived from the French 'garer', to shelter and protect., and in Timmins,  where winter typically arrives unfashionably early and lingers long past its welcome, it meant protecting and sheltering one thing - firewood. Stanley's 87 year old son Walter, who continues to reside in his birth home, points outside his kitchen window to the conspicuous garage as he shares a childhood memory:

"My father would order twenty loads of firewood at seven dollars a load. The (horse drawn) wagon would dump the slabs in the middle of the lane way and it was my job to pile them in the garage . . . without a wheel barrel. It took me a full day and my father would tell me I had to do it 'right away' . . .In the spring it was my job to grab a shovel in the garage, scoop up the horse poop left on the road by the milk wagons and dump it in our garden so it could be used for fertilizer. Everyone had gardens in those days because there was no A&P. If you wanted a head of lettuce you had to grow it." 

THE DOLL HOUSE'S GARAGE

While purchasing supplies for his garage at Feldman Timber, Stanley Fermanick may well have met up with John Fulton.  In the same year Stanley was building his 'second home' garage, John Fulton's back alley gem was taking shape across town on Toke Street. John, an OPP Officer, lived in the 'Hill Section' of  town where homes were typically older and owned by "mine managers, professionals, and influential businessmen". To this day John Fulton's garage, with a 'one-of-a-kind' arched or vaulted roofline and detailed doll house molding, holds a striking presence in the neighbourhood.  The vaulted roof, supported by contoured 2" x 8" cross beams, is an architectural departure from the ubiquitous 'A-Frame' roof design of the time. 

THE POWDER BOX

Although employment in Timmins throughout the thirties was robust, for many labourers the depression era wage drop left little disposable income. For some, being able to afford a garage meant having to rely on one's own skills and considerable help from family, friends and neighbours. For others, it also meant keeping supply costs to a minimum by using recycled materials. When South Porcupine resident Jim Hall heard about the 'Garage Barrage' project he asked whether I had found any "powder box" garages. 'Powder box' is the name given to the wooden case used to transport stick powder explosives needed by the mines. The mining companies handed over the empty powder boxes to their employees who often recycled them as garage and shed walls. An example of a powder box garage (discovered by Jim Hall in Schumacher) is shown below. With siding partially worn away, the powder box pieces are clearly visible.   

HEAVY METAL

Metal siding as a residential building material came into prominence in the mid to late 1930s. Metal offered several advantages over wood and asphalt siding: it was easy to maintain and was more durable than tear prone asphalt siding. On the downside, metal siding was heavy and difficult for installers to work with, was susceptible to rusting and had little to no insulation value. In Timmins, the largest cluster of garages built with metal siding can be found on two blocks in the Patricia Avenue and Cherry Street area. Approximately a dozen duplex and four-plex garages (and their adjoining houses) were built by the Hollinger Mine in 1937-38 for the middle management employees i.e., shift managers, mine captains, managers of the machine shop, electrical shop etc.  

A scattering of metal wrapped garages dating back to the 1930s can also be found in the Timmins north and Timmins south areas.  Most metal siding of the era was of the corrugated kind. However, in the Timmins south alleys a few select garages were constructed with molded tin siding. One such garage is 'Heavy Metal'. The molded tin siding, which to this day remains fully intact, gives the garage a faux-stone appearance. Molded siding is not the only distinctive feature of 'Heavy Metal'. The garage also houses a fully functioning, custom made, counterweight door opener. Many counterweight systems use a spring action to provide inertia or leverage. However, this unique door opener (likely built by the original owner) relies on a complex network of cables, wheels and weights for its operation.            

PISA

'Pisa' (shown above at the beginning of the essay) is arguably the oldest of the seven garages in the photo series. It is also the garage that holds the greatest mystery. Apart from the identification of its original owners Gordon and Lilian Pooley, (who have long since passed away) little is known about Pisa's building and ownership history. Gordon was a Timmins Firefighter from 1926-28 and later a lineman with the Power and Telephone Company. I discovered 'Pisa' perched idly between two vacant lots in a Timmins north back alley, With a perceptible north leaning tilt, reminiscent of the Tower of Pisa, it stood defiantly in the early morning sun. Its austere unpainted wood siding, reminiscent of garages built in the early 20th century, gives it a minimalist, contemporary flare.  

MIETO'S HAVEN

'Into a hitherto woman's world came Robert Ship, in September 1934. . .The Board deemed it advisable to hire a man for the junior fourth who could take charge of the senior boys' sports and physical training.'  from 'Broken Threads: Memories of a Northern Ontario Schoolteacher', Bertha Shaw, 1955.

In 1931, Isaac Mieto, purchased his first home on Crawford Street in South Porcupine. For most Canadians, owning a home during the Depression years amounted to a fantasy at best.  But for Isaac, who was riding the wave of the Porcupine's second gold rush, owning a house was a dream only half-fulfilled.  Isaac, a mechanic at the Paymaster mine,  like most mechanics liked fixing things. Isaac liked fixing cars, fixing big motors and small motors. He liked fixing things that twisted and things that turned.  In the end, Isaac liked fixing anything with moving parts that didn't carry a heart beat. However, Isaac's problem was he needed a place where he could fix things. He needed elbow room to store his wrenches and ratchets. He needed shelf space to stock his pulleys, springs, wheel trains and gear trains. So, by the time Robert Ship was welcomed into the 'woman's world' of his new school, Isaac had ordered a truckload of Douglas Fir from British Columbia and built himself a towering sanctuary alongside his new home.  The other half of Isaac's dream was now fulfilled.

Often heard spouting the traditional Finnish refrain "perfect like a birdcage",  Isaac was known to be a "perfectionist". Although time has quelled the wonderment and sense of grandeur once radiated by Mieto's Haven, vestiges of Isaac's attention to detail and meticulousness can still be seen in the monument's spring action door opener and in its singularly stunning Mayan temple-meets-mineshaft configuration. 

In the 1960s, around the time Edwyn Lucyk was storing his 1945 Harley Davidson and a friend's sidecar in his Croatia Avenue garage, he may have watched a few spaghetti westerns on television. Built in 1938, the flat roof, false front garage would not look out of place in a western plains, frontier town scene with John Wayne mounted on his horse out front. On the other hand, as a husband (to his wife Mabel) and father of five children, and as an entrepreneur and mechanic who owned a service station, Timmins' first snowmobile/motorcycle dealership and Timmins' first Toyota car dealership, Edwyn had little leftover time to watch television. According to Edwyn's son Carter, his father needed the double garage (rare during its time) to store his cedar strip outboard boat on one side and his supplies from his service garage on the other. Later in the 70s and 80s, it was used to 'store crates of Skidoos and Kawasaki motorcycles' from his snowmobile and motorcycle dealership. 

THANK YOU

  'The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.'   Ben Okri

One of the greatest challenges in the making of the 'Garage Barrage' project was facing the hard reality that the fate of many of the garages I was photographing was hanging in the balance. These buildings, many of which represent first-of-their-kind local architectural achievements, are woefully outdated for a northern city where weather resistant and low-maintence materials reign. Inevitably, as they go, so will go a piece of Timmins' heritage and storied past.

Two of my greatest rewards were, meeting several generous, knowledgeable and fascinating individuals and learning that behind the 'unease' of rusted nails and crumbling tar paper, beneath the 'imperfection' of peeling paint and rotting timber, more than a 'hint' of stories were waiting to be told. 

I would like to thank several people without whose historical insight, resourcefulness and exceptional memory this project would not have been possible: Christy Marinig and the Timmins Economic Development Corporation, the City of Timmins Planning Department, the Timmins Public Library, Karen Bachmann and the Timmins Museum, the Timmins Fire Department, Jim Hall, Greg Reynolds, Benji De Lorenzi, Lorrie Lavis, Diane Armstrong, Vic Power, Tiina Guillemette, Mark Chenier and Tuula Bernard. 

Special thanks to Walter Fermanick, Regis Dion, Carter Lucyk, Don Lemon and John Heikkila for sharing a part of their family history and for graciously welcoming a paparazzo into their garages.  

REFERENCES

Abel, Kerry M., Changing Places: History, Community and Identity in Northeastern Ontario, McGill, Queens University Press, 2006.

Armstrong, Diane, Interview, South Porcupine, August 2015.

Bachmann, Karen, Porcupine Goldfields 1920-1935, Looking Back Press, St. Catharines, Ontario, 2004.

Dion, Regis, Interview, Timmins, August, 2015

Fermanick, Walter, Interview, Timmins, August 2015

Hall, Jim, Interview, South Porcupine, September, 2015

Heikkila, John, Interview, Timmins, August 2015

Kaminsky, Inbar, A Short Story: Common Uses of Back Alleys, MadHat Lit, 2015.

Lemon, Don, Interview, Timmins, August 2015

Lavis, Lorrie,  Creator of the Title: "Garage Barrage", Toronto, July, 2015

Lucyk, Carter, Interview, Schumacher, July, 20

Power, Vic, Interview, Timmins, August 2015

Radar, Rick, Garages in History, Garage Style Magazine, Spring, 2010

Reynolds, Greg, Interview, Timmins, July, 2015

Shaw, Bertha, Memories of a Northern Ontario Schoolteacher, Exposition Press, New York, 1955.

Torlone, Joe,  The Evolution of the City of Timmins: A Single-Industry Community, Wilfrid Laurier University Theses and Dissertations, Waterloo, Ontario, 1979.

All photographs (except 'My Three Buddies') Copyright 2015 Carlo De Lorenzi