Up the Gatineau! Articles
The following article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 51.
An Outhouse for Lottie
Brian Doyle
Our first and special outhouse is long gone. Toppled away years ago by sliding clay.
But the memory of it lingers on.
Our outhouse was in stark contrast with our cabin.
My father, Hulbert Doyle, built a very crude and clumsy fishing and drinking cabin in 1939.
It’s still sitting there on that Gatineau River shore just north of Martindale which is just north of Low on a small piece of O’Sullivan farm land bought from his aunt, Minnie O’Sullivan, for $40.
The bill of sale was written on the back of a brown paper bag. There was no deed. We were squatters those days.
Hulbert was widely known for his sense of humour but not for his skills as a builder. For instance, many of the log-ends on the corners of the cabin weren’t even squared off and to this day bear the pointed ends and axe marks they had when they were felled. And the windows are crooked.
On the other hand, my maternal grandfather, Bob Duff, from Scotland, was a remarkably skilled craftsman: a cabinet maker, a master carpenter and wood carver. He’d emigrated from the old country to join the many artisans who were recruited to Canada to restore the Centre Block of the Houses of Parliament after that disastrous fire there in 1916.
Grampa Duff’s task was carving different wooden molds for various plaster cornices and other Gothic decorations which now adorn the magnificent Hall of Honour we enjoy to this day.
Grampa Duff also built our outhouse.
The seat of the outhouse was a single slab of polished white pine coated with thick applications of clear shellac showing the pretty delicate patterns of the wood.
Every household in the countryside at that time subscribed to an Eaton’s catalogue. More than often, back issues of that catalogue came in handy in the standard outhouse.
White Swan toilet tissue, however, was featured in ours.
And it rolled off a hand-carved dowel of polished maple.
The walls of our outhouse were made of hand-planed, sanded, sweet-smelling cedar planks and the slanted roof was covered in various pastel shades of rustic textured shakes.
The door, crafted in tongue and groove birch, was painted a soft coral pink accented by a glittering glass doorknob. The delicate boards were horizontal, contrasting in a sophisticated way with the vertical walls.
Into one side wall was carved a window in the shape of a waning gibbous moon, in the other side, a sun window. In the back wall, a strawberry window.
My mother, Lottie (Duff), supplied delicate, rope-tie curtains with blueberry patterns framing each window.
At the rear of Lottie’s outhouse, at ground level, was a rectangular portal hidden by a canvas skirt.
Inside was a box about the size of the bottom drawer of a small bedroom bureau. This box had whittled handles on each side making it easy to take hold of and slide out when it was due to be emptied once each week.
You slid out the box, hoisted it waist high and carried it up the hill a certain distance where it was sandy in the raspberry patch.
Your handy spade was there, stuck upright in the hole you’d already dug.
You dumped the effluent from the bureau drawer into the hole and topped it with sand. Once a week.
Then, using the blade of your spade, you scraped the drawer clean several times using loose sand each time. Then you carried the drawer back to the sweet-smelling outhouse, lifted the canvas skirt, and slid the drawer smoothly back into the rectangular portal.
Around the front and back inside now, you drizzled down the hole in the seat some Lysol and, for finishing touches, you sprinkled mint leaves or raspberries or gooseberries or a handful of delicate cedar needles or any other appropriate accents available.
(My father often suggested we go down immediately to Jack Noonan’s general store in Low and order an expensive bottle of perfume from Paris to dump in there but my father was a sarcastic person and he was just being sarcastic.)
Lottie’s outhouse contrasted drolly with our sagging log shack. It was the proverbial petunia in an onion patch.
Grampa Bob, a man with an artistic sense and a love of symmetry, fine workmanship and elegance, carved into the lintel above the coral door with the glittering glass handle some classic Gothic style lettering.
Into the indented letters he painted glue. Into the glue Lottie sprinkled pinches of sparkling glitter.
The heading read:
HAPPY LANDING
