http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/434711
KITCHENER
On the front lawn of Kitchener's birthplace, Dean McLellan is building a 90-metre stone wall the old fashioned way.
"The labour's intense," he said yesterday. "Every stone is placed by hand."
Some of the limestone and granite rocks from a Wellesley quarry weigh up to 500 kilograms. McLellan avoids using any heavy equipment, so he'll roll the big ones up a plank of wood.
"The craft is what it's about," he said, with his hands on his hips, overlooking three-month's work. "This wall will last a hundred years."
True to dry-stone technique, McLellan uses no mortar, or adhesives of any kind.
Instead, he places the rocks, of varying shapes and sizes, in such a way that gravity makes the wall solid and unshakable.
"I compare it do doing a crossword puzzle for eight to nine hours a day," he said. "And on top of that, you have body fatigue."
The wall, about a metre high, lines the property of a home built in 1830 by Samuel Betzner at 300 Joseph Schoerg Crescent, just off Deer Ridge Drive in south Kitchener. It was part of the first non-aboriginal settlement in Upper Canada and stands close to the historic Pioneer Tower overlooking the Grand River.
"It's just the natural product to use,"said John Ariens, who has owned the property for six years. He'll pay tens of thousands of dollars for the wall.
McLellan, a certified dry-stone waller from Holstein, near Mount Forest, invited Norman Haddow, a Scottish dry-stone expert, to join in the wall-building yesterday.
Haddow, 70, picked up the craft after a career as a microbiologist for a big oil company.
He took a two-day course in stone-walling 25 years ago, and hasn't stopped building since.
"It's lovely," he said of the craft. "It's really satisfying. At the end of the day, you can say, 'I built that.' And it will be there for 80 to 100 years."
Now, Haddow maintains the stone walls at Balmoral Castle, the Scottish home of the royal family.
He works with McLellan and John Shaw-Rimmington of the Dry Stone Walling Across Canada to promote the craft.
"It's pretty addictive," Shaw-Rimmington said. "You get to design the puzzle as you go."
In the end, the wall provides a home for up to 5,000 plants and animals, such as snakes and mosses, McLellan said.
And the lack of cement means the wall emits no carbon.
It also means heavy frosts won't cause the wall to crack. It shifts naturally while maintaining its sturdy structure.
Demand for the historic-looking walls is booming. McLellan has enough work to fill a 40-hour week, and then some.
But he's afraid there aren't enough people who appreciate the old-style workmanship.
"Masonry has done a dive," he said. "Anybody can go to Home Depot and buy mortar and glue something together."