Reviving a crumbling, but historic, P.E.I. homestead
Facing a rural road on the North Shore of Sea View, the John Sutherland house had grown into an object of fascination and romanticism for many Islanders, who would pause to absorb the forlorn memorial to a bygone era, left languishing for more than a decade.
Phillip Gallant often passed the homestead, sitting vacant and historically known as Melrose Cottage, nestled amidst the trees and long, swaying grass. He knew that with his skills in heritage property restoration he could help nurse it back from the grave, but it would be a big job.
“I loved the old house for the architecture,” says Gallant, who grew up in the area.
It had been sold in 2010 for a mere $42,000, after Barbara Sutherland, the fifth generation of Sutherlands to occupy the 16-room mansion, moved out because the house was unsafe.
“Someone before me had put a new foundation under it and new roofing,” says Gallant. “But over time, the shingles had blown off … The weather had entered the home, causing major interior damage.”
He got in touch with owner Joe Schurman, who lived in Texas, and they worked out a deal.
Gallant and daughter Juliana worked on the home in 2018. Due to the severity of the damage, they gutted it to the studs and installed new roofing, entry doors, and a front veranda. It took meticulous work to replicate and repair the prominent gingerbread trim and eaves, and to tighten the structure. They also fixed the original hand-blown glass windows.
In the process, he learned that the homestead has an illustrious history connected to the famed P.E.I. author of Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery. She often visited her aunt, Margaret Montgomery, who was married to Robert Sutherland. His father built the house.
During the restoration, Gallant discovered that the home’s construction was in two stages. The original encompassed about one-third of the footprint. Shipbuilders constructed it around 1830, bringing high-quality materials and their distinctive joinery techniques in the home.
The second stage, on the north side, he says, was constructed in 1860 for John St. Clair Sutherland, who moved with his wife Marion from Scotland in 1842. They reshaped the home in a Gothic Revival style, which was popular in Britain during the early Victorian era.
On site, Gallant says the gentlemen farmers operated a large blacksmith and carriage-making shop as pictured in James Hubbard Meacham’s renowned work, the 1880 Atlas of P.E.I. They made square nail heads, spikes, and iron products used to build the second stage of the picturesque home.
In 2020, Gallant put the home on the market “as is,” hoping someone special could continue the project and preserve its character.
It caught the attention of Catherine Hanson, an antique collector and former designer at Laura Ashley, who lives with her pug, Pumba, in a Toronto condo she transformed from basic to brilliant.
Hanson was seeking a project during the COVID lockdowns, something she could bring her 92-year-old mother to see in the summers.
She paid $200,000 for the home and its lot and says she’s spent more than $1 million restoring it.
“There were no walls, no floors, no electricity, no plumbing … an empty shell. So, it was hard to see how it could be, but for me, that was the beauty of it. Most people could not see that, but I could do whatever I wanted,” recalls Hanson, who adds that sadly, her mother passed away before the finished restoration.
“I wanted to bring back whatever I could, any beam, any floor, anything that we could incorporate from the existing home into something modern. So, that’s what the great architect Greg Munn did through SableArc.”
After meeting with his client and conducting a complete home inspection, Munn created a balance between vision, functionality, and character without diluting its authenticity.
“Interventions are to have their own character and to be of their kind, of the 21st century, but also complement and take a backseat to the original features,” says Munn, who has more than 30 years of experience in preservation, rehabilitation, and heritage conservation.
The home was too big for a normal family, so it was divided into a portion for Hanson, facing the road, and two Airbnbs, with crucial steps to bring it up to safety standards and code. Some of these crucial steps involved ensuring the two rental units have independent fire exits, with an exterior deck incorporated into the system under specific conditions. Additional upgrades included energy-efficient windows, a blend of heat pumps and wood-burning stoves, new cedar shingles on the exterior, and electrical, plumbing, lighting, ventilation, insulation, drainage, and structural reinforcement. Some original walls were reinforced with strapping, the basement foundation was repaired, and both floor joists and new wooden floorboards were installed.
“Everything inside the home is new,” says Hanson.
Many old farmhouses are much more durable and complex in build than many modern homes.
“These buildings are not built to be plumb (perfectly aligned),” says architect Monica Gilks of SableArc Studios, who worked with Munn as an assistant intern.
“If they’re so tight, the water has nowhere to go. So, understanding that if you are going to make it tight, how do you do it properly and effectively, or you keep the building breathable, and you use different products so the air flow can continue to escape the building when it needs to.”
Hanson has since put her stamp on the home with a contemporary white-wash interior, spotlighting her collection of mid-century treasures, including a chandelier she purchased from famed Canadian writer and actor Gordon Pinsent.
Another special touch is the open attic with exposed original beams once covered by layers of Victorian floor, where an early 1900s French crystal chandelier peeks through.
“When I worked for Laura Ashley, we were saturated with colour all the time, it literally made me go, ‘OK, I can’t do it anymore.’ So, I have always liked whites with colouring coming from other stuff.” There is one exception: the kitchen, with a seaweed-green from the cabinets to the ceiling, giving a bold, warm nod to the surrounding coastal landscape.
“If I sit outside of my house at any time, every day, people stop and come down the driveway because they are all excited and want to talk to me about what I have done here. I always hear their vehicle stop, screech, and back up because they want to tell me stories about how they knew the home and how thankful they are that it has been saved,” says Hanson.