In the early 1970s, after enjoying international acclaim with both Toronto’s Massey College and Peterborough’s Trent University, architect Ron Thom didn’t let moss grow under his feet.
As head of the team that would deliver the gargantuan Metropolitan Toronto Zoo in Scarborough’s upper corner, a 1971 Globe article quoted the “brilliant young architect” (who was then 48-years-old) as describing the pavilions thusly: “These things must look right to the animals before they look right to the people. The buildings must merge into the landscape.” Of the old Riverdale Zoo, he added, “I regard it as an animal jail.”
These thoughts, minus the animals, must have been with him as he put pencil to paper to design a home for Canadian General Electric CEO Walter Ward around the same time.
Overlooking the Village of Mount Pleasant near Peterborough, the low-slung and very un-prison-like home is part Prairie Style, part Asian temple, part resort at just under 4,000 square feet, and all Ron Thom artistry, although the Thom Partnership was so busy then – North York’s Japanese-inspired Prince Hotel and the Shaw Festival Theatre would have been in development also – the architect had to call on his former colleagues for help.
“Ron could not resist doing houses for clients even though it took time away from the more important work in the office. So he would work on the design at home in the evenings,” says architect Bill Lett Sr., who worked under Mr. Thom during the Trent University days of the 1960s. Since Mr. Lett’s new firm, Lett/Smith Architects, which he established with Peter Smith in 1973, was “starving for work,” he was only too happy to prepare “final design drawings and working drawings” and oversee the permit process and construction (by Huffman) for Mr. Ward’s house.
Mr. Ward was a dream client with money to spend. Starting his career in the early 1930s at 17 on GE’s Peterborough assembly line, he’d worked his way to leading the expansion of the European arm of GE Switzerland in 1964. In 1968, he returned to Canada and purchased 146 Warren Rd. in Toronto in order to run the Scarborough plant, which made nuclear reactors and steam turbines. Shortly after, he’d return to Peterborough to head up the operation there and have Mr. Thom design his dream home.
His introduction to Mr. Thom was established long before that. In 1962, Mr. Ward was one of the initial six members of the Trent University board of governors. That same year, he personally handed over the deed for the first 100 acres of land along the banks of the Otonabee River – a gift to the school from GE – that made possible Mr. Thom’s masterwork, Champlain College, which opened in 1967 (the first students attended a downtown Peterborough campus in 1964).
And speaking of huge parcels of land, Mr. Ward had owned for quite some time the one he’d show to Mr. Thom in the early 1970s. Then consisting of 283 acres and called Mill Pond Farm, current owners Dan and Ginny McWilliams, who knew Mr. Ward before his death in 1994, say the Ward family would visit often. “They picnicked here for quite some time just to watch the sun set and the sun rise and that type of thing,” says Mr. McWilliams, who purchased the home a decade ago from the third owner.
“The view changes every day,” he adds. “You wake up in the morning, and the valley you don’t see because it’s fogged in.”
When the valley is visible, it’s spectacular, of course, since the home sits 275 feet above its floor. Interestingly, the view is unsullied by power lines: Mr. Ward had all of them buried, along with warming cables under the house’s courtyard and driveway so he wouldn’t have to shovel snow.
And if one doesn’t care for the rolling hills of Peterborough County, there’s plenty of great architecture to ogle, since Mr. Thom’s work remains largely unchanged. For instance, a series of rhythmic stone columns, similar to those added by the architect to the Termuende residence in West Vancouver in 1960, greets approaching visitors. A trellised walkway within a treed, shade-dappled courtyard guides them to a groovy, chunky-patterned double front door.
Inside, high-ceilinged rooms don’t really connect via hallways (although there are a few) but rather link together in a languid, rambling way. It’s as if a series of boxes were set down in a line on slippery ground and, just as they all started to slide away from one another, the ground solidified. So, although the house is vaguely L-shaped, when viewed from above it looks more like a slithering snake than the usual rigid Tetris block (the pool however, is a rigid L). Seen from the small hill that shields the house from the road, the multihipped roof looks a little like the Toronto Zoo’s Africa Pavilion.
And because Mr. Thom was born where Modernism came more naturally, British Columbia, those rhythmic pillars that define the façade sneak past the glass to come inside and blur the border between inside and out. Fireplaces do it too. In addition, massive windows dissolve hard corners every chance they get, and sliding doors are everywhere, including one in each bedroom.
In rooms that have a high, coved ceiling, a collaboration between the two men – one a trained artist and one an electrical wizard – resulted in a wraparound mahogany lighting valance that conceals dimmable fluorescents. Still functioning today, Mr. McWilliams loves them: “Nobody had ever seen it before,” he says, working the light switch.
The empty-nesters are both relieved, however, that a previous owner turned Mr. Ward’s former billiards room, which had a built-in exhaust fan to empty it of cigar smoke, into a dining room; it’s the perfect size for the gorgeous antique table that came from their pre-Confederation home in downtown Peterborough.
“Even as much as it seems kind of modern, it’s still got a family look, it’s very warm,” Mr. McWilliams says. “When you get the fireplaces going … and the outside comes in, like in the wintertime the snow sits there, but you’re still warm and cozy …
“Yeah, yeah.”