The 'green' roof will be completed some time this fall.
This year's 'ROCKTOBERFEST' was a tremendous success.
Dry Stone Walling Across Canada hosted its annual festival October 9-12 of 2009 in Grand Valley Ontario. It was the first time outside of the Port Hope area. It was successfully held at the Landman Farms property just north of Grand Valley Ontario, about an hour north west of Toronto. Wallers from the Canada, the States, Ireland, Wales and Scotland constructed a dry stone Blackhouse building and a skilled carpentry team added much of the roof structure over the three days of the festival
As well there were three walling workshops held on the saturday and sunday.
There were also two wallers tested for dswa certification in intermediate level
coordinated in conjunction with with the DSWA of UK
There was a children's squash walling event, as well as music provided by The Robin Aggus Celtic Trio and display booths by many craftsmen and women from Dufferine County.K
Guest presenters and instructors at the festival included
Norman Haddow, Master Craftsman with the DSWA of UK who taught a fabulous two day sedum-turf top walling workshop
Patrick McAfee, Author and traditional masonry expert who taught workshop students how to build a traditional Irish Feidin Wall
Dan Snow, Well known author and dry stone artist who taught a workshop
John Shaw-Rimmington, dry stone artist and president of the DSWA of Canada ran some children's building with squash events.
Tomas Lipps, director of the Stone Foundation and editor of Stonexus Magazine who gave a power point presentation Saturday and Sunday evening
James Crawford, over saw much of the Blackhouse construction and gave a presentation on the Saturday vening in Grand Valley on " The figure of eight and its evolution to the Black house " James served apprenticeship in the family company, then trained in technical drawing and surveying before taking up the post in controlling Planning and Engineering in the family company.
Left business in 1973 and came to the Outer Hebrides to pursue his life long interest in Vernacular buildings of the Hebrides, restoring many traditional buildings, ie BLackhouses,Horizontal Mills, Kilns, and Beehive houses, ect.
In 1995 an experimental Archaeological figure of eight house from the fifth century AD was planned and executed by him, and the realisation that the traditional Backhouse evolved in all likelihood from this structure.In 1997 he was approached by the local College of Education to run a course on traditional building course on Vernacular buildings this was repeated shortly after by the Western Isles Council, on the same theme.
Over the years, out with the vernacular field he has through commissions constructed some 30 odd monuments some of which won through to the last six in the UK, for the Civic Trust Awards. Three structures won the top Architectural awards for Scotland.
Since moving to Lewis, research has been ongoing in the Archaeological field leading to some interesting developments, together with papers being produced, resulting in his being elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland in 1995 in recognition of Archaeological service.
The DSWAC would like to thank all the wonderful people who helped out this year, and especially the following people for their tremendous effort making this 2009 Roctoberfest the successful walling celebration it was.
