Canada boasts one of the most eclectic architectural histories in the world, evolving to encompass hundreds of years of design trends. From Indigenous settlements and quaint prairie farmhouses to state-of-the-art mid-century houses, the concept of home sweet home has undergone dramatic change over the centuries.
Click or scroll on to take a look back at Canadian homes through history via incredible archive photographs from decades past.
Over the course of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Canada bore witness to numerous generations of European settlers, predominantly French and British, who colonised land from First Nations, Inuit, Innu and Métis people, Canada's Indigenous population.
However, by 1763, France had ceded nearly all of its North American territories to Britain as per the Treaty of Paris, leaving the terrain to British colonists who would continue to explore and claim the land for the next hundred years until Canada’s official founding in 1867.
Pictured here is an image from 1801 depicting five generations of a Canadian pioneer family.
For early European-Canadian homes, the architectural styles were, understandably, predominantly influenced by French and British Colonial styles. These houses were similar to those being built in settlements a bit further south in the United States and were heavily reliant on the wealth of local timber.
This tintype photograph – created on a thin sheet of metal – shows the home of the Merkle family in Aultsville, Ontario in 1860. While the house was constructed in 1818, it was moved brick by brick from another site in Ontario.
Canada has long been home to a wealth of Indigenous settlements. The Innu are a people that historically populated the Labrador-Québec peninsula in the east of Canada – they were some of the first North Americans to encounter European colonisers. They were also among the last Canadian Indigenous groups to relocate to permanent village settlements in the 1960s.
Pictured here in 1895 is an Innu family and their dogs outside their traditional turf-covered log home on the waterfront in Labrador.
Elsewhere in Canada, influences from France were keenly felt. While the shift from French to English rule in 1763 had substantial sociopolitical consequences for 19th-century Canada, the change did not have any immediate impact on architecture. Instead, French design was prevalent throughout the Frano-Candian provinces throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
For example, this farmhouse in Montréal, known as Maison Saint Gabriel, was built in the French Colonial style. The surrounding region was initially part of New France, one of the areas colonised by the French in the 17th century.
Taken sometime between 1898 and 1920, this glass plate negative photograph gives a glimpse into the lives and homes of Canada's wealthy around the turn of the century. According to archival records, these two women known as Maude and Violet were captured in the parlour of a grand home in Ontario.
In affluent households, interior design was heavily influenced by European trends in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, botanical-inspired wallpaper frames the room along with patterned carpets. Stately armchairs, an ornate oil lamp and framed portraits and artwork suggest the status of these two high-society women.
The turn of the century was a time of great social and economic change. The Klondike Gold Rush, sparked by the discovery of gold in 1896, resulted in an influx of miners to the Yukon Territory in Canada's rugged northwest. Dawson City was at the heart of the dramatic emigration, drawing prospectors from across the nation, all hoping to strike gold.
Pictured here in 1898 are four Canadian women in front of their log home in the town. These types of frontier-style buildings quickly cropped up across Dawson City and other epicentres of the Klondike Gold Rush to accommodate the sudden population growth.
Beyond major cities such as Toronto, Montréal and Halifax, prairie homesteads and farmhouses were still prominent. The majority of the country remained rural and agrarian until the 1920s and 30s.
Pioneer life had an enduring impact on the formation of these communities, where settlers worked together to build homes, churches, schools and other public buildings from local materials like timber and stone.
Pictured here in 1900 is Mrs Morgan at the door of her prairie farmhouse with one of her children in Alberta, Canada.
Labour-saving domestic devices were a hot topic in women's magazines by the 1910s. More affordable models were rudimentary in design: many washing machines were hand-operated and dishwashers often comprised a hose attached to a hot-water tap. Advanced models, powered by electricity, gas or generators, were extremely costly and accessible to only the wealthiest.
Photographed here in 1910, a woman in a farmhouse in Western Canada bakes bread in a metal oven from stove brand Acme.
Historical pictures show that homes across Canada varied wildly. Pictured here in Saskatchewan in 1919, this aboriginal family stands by their tipi, a conical shelter traditionally made from wooden poles and hides.
Saskatchewan is part of a cultural region known as the Plains. The Plains Indigenous peoples who lived in this area were largely nomadic – they travelled seasonally for hunting and social meetings such as Sun Dances. They created the tipi as a mobile home that could accommodate their unique way of life.
Sadly, like swathes of First Nations groups across Canada, many Plains Indigenous people were forcibly relocated to reservations in the 19th and 20th centuries by European colonisers.
Meanwhile, the presence of Canada's British settlers was also felt in 19th and 20th-century architecture trends, especially in French-Canadian provinces. British authorities sought to establish their presence in Québec by transforming existing public buildings and erecting new ones in the Palladian style, which was extremely popular in England at the time. These buildings were characterised by their grand scale and emphasis on symmetry and classical forms.
Pictured here in the 1920s is an impressive stretch of Palladian architecture in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an area with a history of French settlement.
The 1920s were largely a prosperous era for Canadians, with higher wages, lower unemployment rates and dwindling consequences of the First World War.
In a wealthy rural home, a mother and daughter are photographed here in the kitchen of their farmhouse in Ontario County. They're surrounded by symbols of the economic prosperity that dominated Canada in the early and mid-1920s, from the electric iron to the washing machine.
The first private electric systems were developed in the 1880s but it took decades for normal homes to have access to electricity, beginning with small communities near Niagra Falls in 1906.
However, the onset of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s widened the economic gap between those with money and those without, especially outside of urban areas.
This image from 1929 shows two women in their first home in the remote village of St. Jean Baptiste in Manitoba preparing dinner. The humble log home features a metal stove heated by a log burner – one of the women holds an armful of wood to fuel the cooker.
The Great Depression hit urban areas hard too. Around 30% of the labour force across Canada was unemployed by 1933. While the late 30s were essentially a decade of slow rebuilding and improvement, it was still a period of substantial financial strain.
Classical architecture remained popular during this period, though in a substantially paired back and therefore less expensive fashion. This style, sometimes known as “stripped classicism,” can still be found in most major cities, including Downtown Vancouver (pictured).
The 1940s saw an explosion of homebuilding across Canada both during and after the Second World War. Initially, these mass prefab developments were constructed to house those working in war-related industries. However, the building boom continued in order to satisfy the housing demand from returning veterans. This gave rise to the strawberry box house, which was popularised for its speedy and inexpensive construction.
These kinds of mass-produced homes were used to create entire communities in large cities across Canada, such as this war workers' housing estate in Toronto, photographed in 1945.
By the 1950s, modernism was in full swing, influencing innovations including the construction of new towns, a programme of public housing and experiments in suburban planning.
The 1940s also saw the dawn of the functionalist and modernist movements, which were born of a post-war desire for architectural simplicity and function-led design. These homes were characterised by boxy profiles, flat roofs and clean lines, like this 'streamline moderne' model in Saskatoon built during the 1940s.
Single-family homes were still the dominant form of housing being constructed during the 50s. However, new housing stock started to shift towards multi-family structures such as apartment blocks and condos by the 1960s, as seen here in these residential blocks in Inuvik, a town in the remote Northwest Territories.
This was due to an increase in housing demand fuelled by population growth from both the post-war baby boom and the influx of immigrants attracted by Canada’s Economic Point System, which led to thousands of skilled immigrants relocating to the country.
Vacation homes became more prominent in the lives of the middle classes around this time too. In the late 1940s, visitors to Canada's national parks soared as more people than ever retreated to the nation's beauty spots to unwind. To satiate the influx of moneyed visitors, the government provided a cash injection to fund improved facilities for vacationers, carving out slices of suburbia in the wilderness.
Officially opened in 1950, Fundy National Park in New Brunswick was part of this new wave of investment. Pictured here in the year of its opening, a young family arrives at a new vacation chalet in the park, one of 29 cottages featuring modern gas stoves and refrigerators.
While modernism dominated domestic aesthetics during this period, there were alternative schools of design. Many architects found themselves preoccupied with historical styles such as the Georgian and Victorian, as well as revivals and reinterpretations of the more agrarian-style, 19th-century farmhouse.
In this picture from 1951, we see a housekeeper plumping cushions in an elegant farmhouse-inspired sitting room on Vancouver Island.
However, the sleek silhouettes of modernism would persist throughout interiors in the mid-century period. Light woods like teak took the place of darker mahoganies and clean lines were favoured for more streamlined furnishings.
Meanwhile, televisions became central features in living spaces as their accessibility increased dramatically as the decade progressed. Pictured here, a TV takes centre stage in this lounge in a family home in Ottawa in 1955.
Mid-century kitchens were fitted out with state-of-the-art technology, including automatic toasters, electric mixers, ovens and juicers, usually in ice cream pastel shades.
In the financial boom after the war, most Canadians had expendable income for the first time in many years and were keen to spend it on the most up-to-date domestic appliances. For example, the kitchen of this modern home in the town of Milestone, Saskatchewan features a state-of-the-art refridgerator with an ice box set into the top.
It wasn't just appliances and home interiors that underwent innovation. This remarkable photograph from 1961 demonstrates a radical solution to moving house. A group of men are pictured on a shoreline in Newfoundland and Labrador, watching as a house is relocated by water from Silver Fox Island in Bonavista Bay to Dover.
This relocation method was common in Newfoundland in the 1960s when government programmes encouraged many families to move from remote fishing villages to more populated areas. Those who couldn't bear to part with their home strapped empty barrels to the base and floated them across the water to their new properties.
As the 50s progressed into the 60s, urbanism skyrocketed as Canada’s population surged into its cities. In 1967, Canada was named host for the World's Fair Expo 67, a "Universal and International Exposition" which was the perfect platform for showcasing Canadian arts, culture, technology and innovation.
The fair was held in Montréal, Québec, however, there was a shortage of official accommodation to house the staggering influx of visitors. To address the issue, a system called Logexpo was set up, which paired visitors with homeowners in the Montréal area. Pictured here, a woman sits in a bedroom provided by a Logexpo volunteer host.
Among the architectural innovations exhibited at the Expo 67 show was Habitat 67 on the outskirts of Montréal, an experimental apartment block designed to offer cheaper housing for the masses. While the completed prototype didn't entirely live up to expectations, it did inspire a new-found focus on spacious, high-rise city living.
There was also a concurrent surge of the heritage preservation movement, with an increased effort to restore older structures in historic districts, like the section of Old Town Montréal pictured here.
Moreover, there was a push to refurbish and repurpose old factories and warehouses rather than demolish them, such as the Queen’s Way Terminal on the Toronto waterfront.
In the 1980s, postmodernism took over as the most popular architectural style, celebrated for its collision of styles, diverse aesthetics and creative juxtaposition of elements taken from previous architectural trends.
This quirky log home, for example, clearly draws inspiration from the early pioneer cabins built by prairie settlers.
Log interiors were equally popular during the 80s, with the nostalgic trend undergoing something of a resurgence.
This shot of a reconstructed 1982 suburban log home features a naked pine ceiling, floors, a chair rail, window casements and matching furniture. Talk about a woodsy aesthetic!
Postmodernism declined in the 90s and 2000s and architects turned yet again to the past for inspiration. A range of new builds modelled on Tudor, Gothic, Queen Anne Revival and Victorian homes sprang up across the country, like the contemporary Victorian home in the Québec suburbs pictured here.
For Canadians in more rural areas, the traditions of self-sufficient living laid down by their homesteading ancestors endured in the 1990s and beyond.
Pictured here, a woman works the land in front of her yellow clapboard house in Lillooet, a town in southwestern British Columbia. Holding what appears to be a pile of wooden stakes, she tends to a large vegetable garden of tomato plants.
Throughout Canada's history, definitions of home have been diverse and varied and this legacy continues throughout the nation today. This image from 2006 shows a beaming Canadian Inuit boy inside a traditional igloo home in the North Pole, although most modern Inuit live in regular houses.
Canada's Indigenous Inuit peoples are concentrated across 51 communities in Inuit Nunangat, the group's cultural homeland in the northern Nunavut territory, which spans the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Igloos hold cultural importance and building them is a valuable skill that's still taught in schools throughout Nunavut to preserve this way of life.
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