The Lowrey Packing Shed – Ravine Deli & Bakery

The original Lowrey Packing Shed was located at 1366 York Rd. which is now the main entrance to Ravine Vineyard Estate Winery. Built in the late 1920s, it was used to sort the farm’s peaches, pears, and plums, and to store fruit

destined for the markets or processing. Most often however,  the fruit would go to the canning factory in the village of

St. Davids. The Lowrey Bros. Canning Factory was built along Four Mile Creek Rd. in an old building that

once was a mill. This facility changed through the years and was later owned and operated by Canadian Canners, Aylmer-Del Monte, Kraft Foods, and then CanGro up until its closing in Ju

ne 2008.

With its large rolling doors front and back, and its roofed porch, it received the wagon loads of fruit from the Lowrey farm at just the right level. The long green grader and sorting tables inside were a beehive of activity with long days in the heat of harvest. Work in the packing shed was a real family affair with a definite pecking order in place.

The Lowrey Packing Shed is a one and a half storey building that had an apartment on the upper floor with an outside stairway entrance. Many of the family members lived in the “Packing Shed Apartment”, including Blair and Norma Jane for the first four years of their marriage. The winery, designed by Stevens Burgess Architects, is intended to be a streetscape that includes the Lowrey Packing Shed which now houses a small deli restaurant and bakery with a full-prep kitchen below it. The Packing Shed was physically moved right through the vineyards down the main entrance to the winery, and placed in a staging area adjacent to the construction site. This had to be accomplished before the end posts could be put in place because it was so wide. It rested there for almost a year as approvals and preparations were made to start construction. On a cold November night in 2006, an arsonist destroyed the original building and left the family heartbroken and in shock. It was a major setback, but the architects re-grouped and created all of the necessary plans to reconstruct the packing shed as it was meant to be.

The Wm. Woodruff House – Hospitality Centre

The home in which the tasting room and hospitality centre of Ravine Vineyard is located, is considered to be one of the top fifty most architecturally significant houses in all of Canada. It was first built as a log home circa 1802 by David Secord, a major in the 2nd Lincoln Militia, who is claimed to have fought in every significant engagement in the Niagara District during the War of 1812, and he commanded his regiment at the battle of Lundy’s Lane on the 25th of July 1814. His buildings in St. Davids included three houses, a grist-mill, a blacksmith shop, and a general store, and were all destroyed by fire that month. This demolished house was re-built by incorporating the huge stone and brick fireplace and chimney that still stood. It became the one and a half storey structure representing the old kitchen area of the Wm. Woodruff House. The summer kitchen was reportedly added in the following year, 1815.

It was not until 1824 that Wm. Woodruff purchased the house and property in partnership with his older brother Richard. William Woodruff prospered as a Member of Parliament in Upper Canada, a merchant, and a magistrate, so in 1827 he built the large two-storey Wilderness Georgian addition. The house is notable today because it is such an authentic example of Loyalist Georgian architecture with characteristic features of the style, such as a central welcoming panelled front door, twelve over twelve paned windows in a geometrically symmetrical five over five plan, and parged chimneys flanking both sides of the house limited by its distinctive end gables. It became one of St. Davids’ most popular social places where William and his wife Margaret raised seven children and entertained friends and dignitaries of Upper Canada. Even the rebel, William Lyons Mackenzie found sanctuary in the house for two weeks as his captors searched in vain for him during the Rebellion of 1837. For over 165 years it was a highlight on the streetscape of the little farming village of St. Davids, until it was moved in 1970. Its story has been a valiant one because it survived fire, sixty years of neglect, complete dismantling, several relocations and a final resurrection and homecoming.

The Woodruffs lived in the house until the 1890s when the last Woodruff moved out. The family then rented the house until they sold it in 1967. Norma Jane Lowrey Harber, owner of Ravine Vineyard, remembers it vividly how the people in the village affectionately called it the House of Nations. So many families from afar rented and lived there over the years when they first came to this area. In 1963, architectural historians Marion Macrae and Anthony Adamson, in their book, The Ancestral Roof, wrote wistfully about its decline captioning a photo of the house, now obviously weathered and unkempt, as “the valiant beauty of a dying house.”

The purchaser, Judge R. J. Cudney, an ardent preserver of Canadiana, bought it on the condition that he would save the house. He then sold it to Douglas Doerr who wanted to restore it on a site in the Caledon Hills area. Fortunately, they hired a meticulous Norwegian architect, Finn Friis, who carefully numbered each post, beam and plank as it was dismantled, mapping and sketching each room, creating the still preserved set of blueprints to guide the rebuilding, without which its reassembly would have been a mystery.

Unfortunately, Douglas Doerr died before he, too, could realize his dream, so the house was sold to and moved by Bruce Chambers from Bond Head, Ontario. He eventually felt unable to tackle the Woodruff home project, and put it up for sale again. Peter Rumgay, the former editor of Century Home Magazine, and his wife Jane, bought it in the summer of 2001 with the intention of rebuilding it on a site on the shore of Lake Ontario in Port Hope in 2004.

Meanwhile, Norma Jane and Blair Harber were in the process of changing the minds of the village town planners, who had rationalized the farm as a housing development in view of the village’s expanded system of sewers. None of Norma Jane’s family, including her mother Norma, wanted to see the farm developed as a subdivision. To keep the legacy of her ancestors intact and to maintain the agricultural zoning of the property, Norma Jane and Blair began to acquire the land that her siblings had inherited as part of their father’s large farm. The agricultural zoning would stay alive by planting a vineyard and building a winery, even though it is entirely within the urban boundary of the Village of St. Davids. At 57, Blair, with a successful business in Fort Erie, never thought he would become a farmer, but life sometimes has blissful surprises for the willing.

The village planners saw the merit of the Harber’s idea and rethought their vision, allowing them to move forward with their project – full steam ahead. As their project unfolded, one serendipitous event occurred after the other. Providence would set in and it seemed that their lives up to that point had been in preparation for the preservation project that would soon completely engage them. But there would be more involved than just preserving the Lowrey land. When they were dreaming about how the winery and hospitality centre would look, Norma Jane asked one day, “I wonder what ever happened to the House of Nations, the old Woodruff House?” She knew it hadn’t been erected, so the search began.

When they finally located it, it was being stored in an old warehouse in Port Hope, still in pieces lying on the floor, lifeless and diminished. The end gables and front door were stacked against a wall and the bricks from the chimneys and massive oven sat stacked on pallets. The house had been a large part of Norma Jane’s childhood, so for her to see it reduced to bricks and boards was a sad, almost “out-of-body experience.”

Until they could plant the vineyard and prepare the site, Blair managed several truckloads with all of the house’s elements to a large space in one of their buildings in Fort Erie, Ontario. All posts and beams up to 40ft long, rafters, dormers, fireplace mantles, doors, windows, stairways, end gables, interior trim, hardware, hearth stones, and pallets of original bricks were among the countless components taken to Fort Erie for restoration. The Woodruff House was to move once more, in preparation for the fifth and final time from 2008 to 2009, when it came back home to St. Davids, restored and reconstructed just a couple hundred metres away from its original site, after languishing in pieces for nearly thirty-five years. Heading the restoration project was noted Toronto architect Jane Burgess, who just happens to be Blair’s cousin. Jane and business partner, Karl Stevens, came to share the Harber’s affection and deep commitment to the project. Arnold Traven of Queenston managed both the workshop and on-site construction and restoration activities.

When it was finally erected, and the rooms started to take shape, so did the memories they held. “It still takes my breath away”, states Norma Jane. Perhaps a person can’t go home again, but a valiant house certainly can. A reunion will be planned to reconnect the families and friends of those who used to live in this landmark of our village. Many have already dropped by and related wonderful stories of life and times in this beloved “House of Nations”.