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As you drive north at dusk on Mavis Rd. from Eglinton Ave. W., you can see the sagging silhouette of Mississauga’s pioneer past, standing in stark relief against the sky.
I don’t know if it’s the barren, lacy fingers of the black walnut branches splayed out against a cloudy backdrop, or the fact that the crumbling vestiges of the once-magnificent Sandford farm house stand on such a prominent rise of land that makes it such an iconic – and desolate – site.
“It looks so forlorn out there by itself,” says Mississauga resident Doreen O’Grady, whose father Edward was born in the house in 1907. Her grandfather Martin bought the home Dec. 15, 1890. O’Grady knows because she still has the deed.
It makes O’Grady very sad to think about how the house has been allowed to fall into disgrace in its dotage. After her Uncle Vincent and Aunt Agnes, who lived there for eight decades, began having health problems in 1994 the house was empty.
Thieves broke in and stole the family bible and the little rocking chair that Doreen and her siblings had used.
It was the beginning of a long decline that included a fire that destroyed the barn, arson in 1999 that took the roof and a rearguard action by heritage buffs and the family to try to have the home preserved. Both the house and the land that includes the walnut grove were designated for preservation when a developer bought it, but he could not be convinced to restore it.
Ward 11 Councillor George Carlson, who chairs the City’s Heritage Advisory Committee (HAC), says the combination of a $1 million plus bill to restore the house and/or create a replica and the continuing theft of bricks, artifacts and just about anything else that could be physically lifted off the site. “It’s basically a derelict building now,” says Carlson. “It’s unfortunate but there’s nothing realistically we can do now,” says the HAC chair.
The heritage designation has been taken off the house and the developer will be
applying for a demolition permit. As a condition, he will have to produce a heritage impact report which will stipulate that everything that can be saved from the house should be saved.
Yesterday, heritage lover and environmental watchdog Stephen Wahl was at the site and expressed shock at the degree of deterioration that has taken place since his last visit. The farm was once a showcase, as surviving photos and drawings prove.
Wahl hopes to rescue some of the outstanding remnants of the building, especially the iron cooking implements and the magnificent stone hearth that was the centre of the family life at one time. “The house’s demise is a given,” said Wahl. “We want to reuse the elements that remain ads a memorial to the spirit of the building.”
Now that the fight to save the Sandford house is lost, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the hearth become a centrepiece of another historic home that can be saved?
That, at least, would be be a small comfort, says O’Grady, who remembers that, in her childhood, the parlour was only used when the priest came to visit.
Seeing the slumping profile of her ancestral home from the car as she passes by is anguishing, says O’Grady. Asked how she will feel when there is nothing left at all, she says, “the tears already come now, so it’s not going to be any better.”