Sleeman home may have been ordered from an Eatons’catalogue

By Ken Johnston
Editor

HOME FOR SALE–Blueprints are $2.50 and the complete package including windows, doors and frames delivered to your nearest railway station for $945. Note we will refund your blueprint cost once you order your home. Contact Timothy Eaton Co.

Well that was the good old days; some 90 years ago when the Eaton’s Catalogue sold more than just household wares, it sold houses too.
The catalogue house business was mainly a western Canada phenomenon but it is estimated that several of the packages were ordered and delivered to the Rainy River District.
One such home thought to be Eaton’s Home #63 is John and Dora Trenchard’s of Sleeman, Ontario.
While there is no paper trail to prove it was an Eaton’s home it definitely looks like one of the homes in the book “Catalogue Houses Eatons and Others” by Les Henry. In the preface Henry says, “If great aunt Mary Jane said it was an Eatons’ house, then it is an Eatons’ house.”
The Trenchard home was built in 1917 by Alex Hunter. The main floor had a kitchen, dining room, living room and library. The living and dining rooms featured elegant hardwood flooring and the kitchen had battleship linoleum which lasted well into the 1960s. Living and dining room windows also featured piano windows with stained glass above the regular windows.
The kitchen had a pantry and dumb-waiter. There was a sink in the kitchen with a hand-pump which brought water from the cistern in the basement to the main floor. There were two wells in the basement, one of which is still there today.
The second floor has a linen closet, four bedrooms each with a walk-in closet, and a bathroom. The home had a septic system but it is believed the water was heated on the wood-stove and carried upstairs for baths until regional hydro lines went through (date unknown).
Joe Trenchard purchased the home around the time hydro went through and put hydro and running water into the home.
A door lead out of the master bedroom to the second floor veranda on two sides of the house.
There was also a set of stairs up to the third floor or attic.
1917 was the year the most Eatons’ homes were sold and built. So it is quite possible that Trenchard’s home is one of them.
In those days the lumbermen associations of Winnipeg and hereabouts were not so thrilled with Eatons’ catalogue homes. Prior to Eatons venturing into the home building business the mainline lumber yards sold the materials to prospective builders in the area.
Eatons offered a very good price and often shipped the packages all the way from British Columbia. It was a case of the local business feeling the pinch of the “Big Box” store back then; in this case Eatons.
But eventually the local lumber yards began producing similar type packages; deciding that if you can’t beat them join them.
In the case of Eatons they preferred to ship entire train car loads at one time. They encouraged people ordering a house that did not fill a car to capacity (19,000 board feet) to share with their neighbours. So it is likely there are at least one or two more, maybe even more Eatons’ homes in the Rainy River area. Homes could also be strictly done to an Eatons’ plan or plans could be custom designed or as was often the case slightly modified.