Built to last
My daily bus run takes me through some older neighbourhoods. Houses built some three centuries ago, still in use; the difference is that repairs cost so much more when you aren’t allowed to use normal materials.
I’m serious. Heritage is a big business, and when you live in a building that has caught the attention of the local government, you don’t get to play weekend handyman. Everything requires a permit, and detailed planning, and dollars. Ever wonder why so few houses remain from “the good old days”? Prohibitive maintenance bills.
It’s still fun to find a picture of a familiar house, with the note that the photograph dates back to a time before Kodak. In some cases, not even photographic evidence. Instead, lithography. Try doing some of that with your new digital point-and-shoot. Here’s a house from the older part of town.
The actual building dates back to around 1800, which isn’t that old by Quebec City standards. However, this one is a museum, and you can take a nip inside to get a better sense of the scale of things. Don’t ask about upkeep costs, though.
Here’s the house next door…
Again, built with materials that last.
To be fair, there are dozens of houses from the 17th and 18th centuries locally; I’m not having much luck pulling up images in Google right now. As I sit in my house built a scant quarter of a century ago, worrying about the cost of putting in some new windows and reshingling our roof, I count my lucky stars that I’m not responsible for maintaining the heritage of a region. I’ll leave that to the next generation of owners.
