The Al Purdy A-frame Association

With a pile of “used lumber, concrete blocks, studdings, beaverboard and the like” Al, Eurithe and Jim Parkhurst (Eurithe’s father) began construction on the now famous A-frame. Al tells the story in Reaching for the Beaufort Sea.

Things happened in that house. Alfred W. Purdy, the "failure" of a man and poet (as Al looked backed on that time), started publishing as Al Purdy. Just as Al and Eurithe composed the A-frame from available materials, Al began to compose poems about Roblin Lake, Ameliasburgh and Prince Edward County. In 1962, Poems for All the Annettes was published. Al considered this book a “watershed” in his development. The following year he submitted the manuscript of The Cariboo Horses to McClelland and Stewart. It won the first of Al's two Governor General's Awards.

Eurithe says Al was always his most productive at the A-frame. “Despite the caviar receptions and gold accolades, he always returned to this jury-rigged little A-frame tacked to a low-slung, leaning bungalow. The whole edifice, he observed, ‘bent a little in the wind and dreamt of the trees it came from.’ Here, he could observe all his poetry’s recurring themes: love, death, ego, ‘the glories of copulation.’”

The Open Door

Even while the A-frame was being built, it became a meeting place – for poets, for poetry lovers, for those aspiring to be poets. Michael Ondaatje writes about Al and Eurithe’s famous hospitality, “We were in our twenties (and I speak for my friends Tom Marshall and David Helwig, who were there with me) and we didn’t have a single book to our names; we were studying or teaching at the university in Kingston . . . And Al and Eurithe simply invited us in. And why? Because we were poets! Not well-known writers or newspaper celebrities. Did Kipling ever do that?

“Did D.H. Lawrence? Malcolm Lowry had done that for ‘Al-something or other’ in Dollarton, years earlier.

Al Purdy (L) and Michael Ondaatje (R)

“These visits became central to our lives. We weren't there for gossip, certainly not to discuss royalties and publishers. We were there to talk about poetry. Read poems aloud. Argue over them. Complain about prosody. We were there to listen to a recording he had of ‘The Bonnie Earl of Murray.' And sometimes we saw Al’s growing collection of signed books by other Canadian poets (My favourite dedication among them was ‘To Awful Al from Perfect Peggy.’).

“All this changed our lives. It allowed us to take poetry seriously. This happened with and to numerous other young poets all over the country, right until the last days of Al Purdy’s life. He wasn’t just a ‘sensitive’ man, he was a generous man.”

The list of people who travelled to the A-frame (if it would be possible to compile a comprehensive list) reads like a who’s who of Canadian letters – Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, George Bowering, Lynn Crosbie, Dennis Lee, Steven Heighton, Patrick Lane, Margaret Laurence, Jack McClelland, John Newlove, Anna Porter, Elizabeth Smart, and the list goes on and on.

And it wasn’t just those aspiring to be poets who were welcomed. Poets, publishers, booksellers, academics, pool players, students, radio broadcasters, journalists, photographers, painters, and readers made their way to Ameliasburgh. Linda Crosfield reports the following story: "Over dinner the other night, I mentioned to my husband that I was writing a letter to support the initiative to preserve Al’s house. ‘I went there once,’ he mused, ‘it was 1972, the summer Judie and I drove across Canada with the kids. She grew up around there so we were able to find the place. Al wasn't home, but his wife was, and she opened her house to us as I explained how I’d taken courses from Al at Simon Fraser and was a big fan of his poetry.” This is how Al's house has always been, according to those who have found their way there.

The house draws people in. It's a pilgrimage to see the country, search out the places Al mentions in the poems, find the church spire and the site of Roblin's Mill, visit the Purdy Library in Ameliasburgh, cross the street to stroll down Purdy Lane to the graveyard where Owen Roblin and Al Purdy are buried along with the other pioneers of Prince Edward County – Al’s book-shaped gravestone bearing the inscription “This is where I came to / when my body left its body / and my spirit stayed / in its spirit home."

Continuing the Tradition—Writer-in-Residence Program

The residency program for the A-frame was designed by poets David Helwig, Steven Heighton, Karen Solie and Rob Budde. The poets were selected to include a broad poetic sensibility, geographical reach, breadth of experience with residency programs, knowledge of Purdy’s work and personal experience of the property. Both David and Steven were long-time friends of the Purdys and spent many decades visiting Roblin Lake.

For more information about the residency program, and how to apply see Programs in the drop-down menu.

Upgrades and Preservation

Over the years there have been many changes and transformations. Barn board was retrieved from a demolition site and added as siding. A patio was added at the front, overlooking the lake. Al built a writing studio. Later a deck replaced the patio, then that deck was extended. Plantings on the grounds matured. The kitchen had upgrades. The garage burned down. The house was always an ongoing project.

Under the guidance and direction of Eurithe Purdy, the property has been upgraded to make sure that everything meets current building codes. Improvements continue every year. Some are made to ensure that the property will be user-friendly for writers (for example, the addition of a washer and dryer). Minor damage that had occurred while the building was not occupied has been repaired (ah, those Prince Edward County squirrels). Things that need attention because of age were repaired or replaced (the original deck at the back of the house was completely replaced), and some things that might have created insurance issues were removed or replaced (removal of oil tank and stove, replaced by energy efficient electric heat). All work was and is done, in keeping with the Purdy’s legacy, to make the property as low-maintenance as possible.

Al was fascinated by the history of the county, and the country. He was a chronicler of local and national history. It is fitting that the house become a permanent part of Canadian history.

The restoration of the house is a work-in-progress and, given the history of the A-frame, the building has its quirks along with its many charms. Please read the history about architect Duncan Patterson’s involvement, as it will provide you with a good primer on the spirit of the project.

Duncan's Story

I first met Al at a reading in Picton my mother took me to when I was 14. My family cottage is in Waupoos, 15 minutes from Picton and about 40 minutes from the A-frame. Al’s reading, gruff yet sensitive, made a real impact on me. I was struggling to figure out how to fit myself both into the world of ideas and the real world, and Al’s ‘the-poem-oughta-be-worth-a-beer’ approach gave me some solace and some guidance. Al’s poetry continued to play an important role in my life throughout my teenage years, and his voice remains important to me to this day.

I had a copy of In Search of Owen Roblin, in which Al talked about resettling in the County, and so I knew that the A-frame was around but had never found it. When Patrick White’s article in the Globe and Mail (2008) came out, about Eurithe putting the property on the market and the A-frame’s imminent demise, I decided that I needed to do a thorough documentation of the house. I was doing my professional graduate degree in architecture at the time, and over the previous 6 years of school and work, had developed adequate skills to do this, plus I was very interested at that point in the houses of writers – specifically Carl Jung, Heidegger, Yeats, Neruda, etc. Gaston Bachelard had written in the 50s about the value of reading poets describing space, and I was trying to look at poets that had made purposeful impacts on space. Here was a Canadian poet close at hand, who I also happened to be big fan of!

Jean and Howard at this point had formed the Al Purdy A-frame Trust to raise money to purchase the house, and so I got in contact with them, got the keys to the house, and did my best to both document and study the house. Afterwards, I wrote an essay about the house, which I sent to Jean. I knew they were compiling an anthology about the A-frame at the time, so I offered them the use of my photos and drawings for the book. I didn't expect them to also want my essay for the book! But when Jean asked if they could use it, I was delighted, and hooked, which I suppose was the idea.

Only afterwards did I think how hilarious it must have seemed to Jean and Eurithe when I approached them with the idea of studying the house from an architectural perspective! But I was convinced of the structure's importance, not just in a specific historical way, but in a more general way as well. When I set out to find what I could learn from a poet building a house, I found all kinds of interesting things. Al wasn't a great carpenter, and they never had much money to put into the place, so the building developed in a very haphazard manner, made from all kinds of found materials: lumber from here, beams from here, flooring from here, an old window from there, a chicken coop as a writing shed – the list is extensive. And I saw a resonance between this approach and Al’s approach to poetry. Al’s poems will frequently start out lyrically, catch themselves, turn into an abrupt and silly joke, jumble around in a sort of awkward and entirely quotidian way, and then soar off to a philosophical and expansive conclusion. David Bentley has referred to it as bricolage, a cobbling together of different elements. Al’s poems both frequently cite classical references, as well as use well-worn clichés from everyday conversation. Both in building the A-frame and in writing his poetry, Al used what he found lying around him. That's point 1.

Point 2 is that the A-frame is a house that will never be finished, as Al said repeatedly. It grew organically while they were living and while he was working there. This is a very interesting way of looking at a house. Most people try and finish their spaces, because only then will they truly be able to enjoy them (or so they think)! I'm sure Al and Eurithe felt that way, too, but at some point, Al seems to have given up and fallen in love with the idea that the house would continue to grow and change with them, which, as I say, is very interesting from an architectural perspective.

In 2012, Jean asked me to become a member of the board of the newly founded Al Purdy A-frame Association and asked me to manage the updates that were required for the house to be inhabitable by writers. I of course agreed! How could I pass up an opportunity like that?
It does present all kinds of interesting problems, though. It was obviously not going to be a standard residential renovation. As one of our goals was to get heritage designation (to ensure the preservation of the house and also to open doors for potential funding), we began by putting together a comprehensive conservation ‘plan,’ a document that spelled out exactly why the house was of historical significance in order to make decisions about how to proceed with the updates. We quickly realized that both the rustic quality of the house – its bricolage quality – and its non-static nature, were vital to its heritage significance. How does one do a good renovation of a house while maintaining these qualities? Furthermore, how does one preserve it while also leaving the door open for growth and change? What even were we to call the work that needed to be done? Was it a renovation? a restoration? A couple of heritage architects I spoke with suggested ‘rehabilitation,’ but that sounded a bit off to me. Were we sending the A-frame to rehab?

We were very lucky to find the perfect contractor for the job in Matti Kopamees, who had just moved to the County from Toronto. A musician and carpenter who had worked in public broadcasting at some point in his shadowy past, Matti knew what I was talking about when I said this had to be a very careful project. I gave him a reading list, we signed a contract, and we started work on the house in the fall of 2012. Work proceeded throughout 2013, and as I write this, we are just completing phase one in preparation for our first writer’s occupancy starting on Tuesday. Our approach has been to preserve as much of the house as is reasonable, keeping original materials and form where possible. Where we needed to make changes, we have attempted to build in a similar manner to the original, but not to copy it precisely, rather to subtly indicate that something has changed. In one bedroom where we had to replace the horizontal pine paneling, for instance, we have used vertical ash boards, transitions demarcated in precise locations with metal trim. Similarly, all the new light switches use stainless steel faceplates. In a nod to the resourcefulness of the original method of construction, we have attempted to re-use and repurpose materials wherever possible. The new ash wood we have used both on the interior and exterior of the house is milled from a tree that we had to take down on the property. The concrete culverts that the Purdys had at one point intended to use as a shore well, and had sat on the property for decades, were used to make a sump pit next to the house. When we had to replace part of the old limestone chimney, the new stone, like the old stone, was taken from farmers' fields and other sundry locations.

On the Flood Plain—2023

In 2012 APAFA was formed to preserve the Purdy home as a literary site and cultural activities facility. The building was judged to be sound except for outdated plumbing and wiring which were upgraded. Roof and decks were replaced, and the cinderblock foundation was repaired but not replaced. Since then the crawlspace has been flooding due to changing drainage patterns largely due to climate change, and this has damaged some substructure, threatening the entire structure.

In 2023 professional consultation confirmed the core building is in excellent condition and can still be preserved for the long term if it is raised, placed on an elevated concrete rim with a properly sealed and drained crawlspace and if damaged structural members are replaced.

As with many aspects of the building, the Purdys economized on the foundations, using cinder blocks that would not pass code today. The original cinder blocks deteriorated over time and were upgraded ten years ago but have continued to settle, especially on the side facing Roblin Lake, where the floor inside the house has begun to subside. Adding to the problem is the fact that the level of Roblin Lake has changed. The water table has risen, resulting in water pooling under the floor of the main building.

The Prince Edward County Vital Signs Report notes, “We cherish our cultural heritage. It helps give The County its unique sense of place. We’re proud of it and we work to preserve the buildings and landscapes that embody it.” To the national and international literary community, the Purdy A-frame is the gateway to the County.

The Writer-in-Residence program has run approximately 28 weeks a year (as a seasonal property, the A-frame has closed for winter and colder months). Recently, we have expanded our ambitions with a campaign to fortify and winterize the A-frame, a move that will enable us to double the impact of the residency program by making it an all-seasons offering.

Work to be done involves lifting the building, excavation and removal of old foundation, installing new reinforced footings, pouring a new concrete wall, pouring a raised concrete floor, installing drain tile and sump well, damp proofing, replacing support beams and posts, installing new decking front and back, building a new all-weather driveway, and final landscaping.

Outbuildings will also have to be moved and raised. We will be renovating decks and walkways so they are accessible; and we will be winterizing the building by insulating the building and installing a heat pump, to allow for year-round residencies.

A capital budget of $330,000 was set and our most pronounced fundraising campaign in a decade was launched. Work began mid-July 2024.