The Location Of The House

The Potters' house is located on a rocky hill 22 km south of the town of Bancroft, Ontario.

The hill is like many others in the area: solid rock thinly and incompletely covered by soil. Ages ago the glaciers came down from the north and scraped the soil off, pushing it to the south. (These were no small movements; the same scraping in softer sedimentary rock dug the basins of the Great Lakes, and laid bare the bedrock across thousands of kilometers of central Canada. Ice stood a kilometre tall on the site of what is now Toronto.) The rock of the area is hard and tough, though; it resisted the glaciers. The glaciers melted, and slowly the vegetation came back.

The result is the rugged and stunningly beautiful land known as the Canadian Shield, dotted with a million lakes nestled in the hollows of the rock.

It is not an easy land to live in, though. The thin soils, found mostly in the valleys, are sandy and not necessarily fertile.

The weather can be harsh. The area is relatively far from the moderating influence of the Great Lakes, and shares the climate of Ottawa rather than Toronto. Winters run about 5-10 Celsius degrees colder than along the Lakeshore. A cold winter night in Toronto (-15C) will bring -25C in Bancroft.

Summers are just as warm as in the Great Lakes basin near Toronto, peaking at about +30C.

The bulk of the land is forested. The isolated farming areas are on the bed of former lakes, or on glacial deposits. There is some commercial forestry, and a little mining; but a lot of the human activity in the area revolves around tourism.

The southern Shield is 'cottage country': rest and relaxation for the fortunate from the teeming cities along the Great Lakes and the rivers that join them. People come 'up north' in the spring to open up their cottages along the lakes and rivers, and make then ready for a summer of weekend fishing, hunting, partying, hiking, and canoeing. In the fall, the cottages are closed up for the winter. To 'winterize' a cottage, that is, to make it suitable for year-round habitation, is a fairly large investment. Many people do come up in the winter, though, to enjoy skiing, snowmobiling and wintercamping.

In the summer, the southern Shield is a land of sunny days, thunderstorms, fresh pine-scented air, blue lakes among forested hills, and at night the Northern Lights against a sky of a million stars. In late September and October the forest is a riot of reds, golds and oranges as the days shorten and the leaves change colour and fall. In November the cold rains come and the snow is not far behind. By Christmas the lakes have iced over, the ground is frozen and snow covers all.

In January and February, the depths of winter, there are days of crystalline clarity when the hard cold wind blows straight down from the Pole and the snow sparkles and glitters in the near-blinding sun. In March there are the first tentative breaths of warm air from the south, and the daytime highs creep above freezing. The ice on the lakes starts to break up.

The April rains come, and as the snow is washed away, the rivers rise and the ground thaws. In late April the land is touched with green and by May all creatures, from mosquito to moose, from trillium to tree, are stretching and growing. June returns with the long days of summer and their heat, humidity and southern winds. The cycle of another year has turned.

This is the land in which the Potters have chosen to place their home.

The Site

The house is placed just below the peak of the hill on its south side. It will pull the living soil up over its northern walls and roof, opening wide southern windows to the sun.

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