Talk about a
move...
Heritage Scarborough home
dismantled stone by stone,
moved and rebuilt in Scugog

This picture of the front entrance and hall shows the original wood
door with sidelights and transome at the entrance.

John and Marg Bruce have a beautiful heritage stone home here in Scugog, but there’s a twist. It was built in Scarborough in 1862.

“My wife Marg and I had always dreamed about owning a heritage home,” said John. “In 1973 while driving around Scarborough we saw a lovely old stone house all boarded up near Markham Road and Steeles Avenue. We found the name of the developer and asked him what was happening to the house.”

When they were told the century old home was going to be bulldozed, John asked if they could purchase it. The developer agreed, with the stipulation that they had only 60 days to get it off the property.

John and Marg Bruce stand in front of their 1862 stone home on a
secluded 60 acre property between Port Perry and Greenbank.
The ambitious couple dismantled the heritage home in Scarborough
and had it rebuilt in Scugog.

This marked the beginning of a true labour of love for John and Marg – the dismantling, moving and rebuilding of a heritage stone house here in Scugog.
Marg was born and educated in P.E.I, but when some of her friends came to Toronto to teach she decided to join them. She taught at Fairmount Park Senior Public School in Toronto and it was at this school that she met her future husband, John, who was a woodworking teacher.

John was born in Toronto, the son of an Irishman, Tom Bruce, but had been raised fully aware of his direct connection with the Bruce family that had settled in Cartwright Township. Dr. H. A. Bruce’s grandfather was a brother of John’s great-great grandfather.

After getting the developers blessing the real work began. Recalling the preparation, John said, “We checked the building over thoroughly and after getting some advice we decided to completely dismantle the home and rebuild it entirely as it had been. We numbered the stones and then took hundreds of detailed photos carefully labelling them,” he said.

With the documention completed, John and Marg and John’s father, Tom, began the task of carefully taking the home apart, stone by stone.
“At one point we filled three five gallon cans with the original square headed nails,” said John with a smile.

John and Marg had always wanted to be closer to the land that their distant relatives had settled, so they began to search for property somewhere in Scugog on which to rebuild their home.

They found and purchased a lovely 60 acre property a few miles south of Greenbank which had no buildings on it and provided a perfect setting for the house.

They then bought two barns, one from Russell Till in Greenbank and another from near Guildwood Gate in Scarborough.
Once again they began the arduous chore of disassembling the buildings. “My wife and my dad and I tore the barns down and then rebuilt them on our Scugog property in 1974,” John said.

When completed, they moved into a 15 foot trailer on the property and used the reconstructed barns to store their furniture and clothes until they could sell their Scarborough home, to finance the rebuilding of the stone house.
During this time the couple commuted each day to their schools in Toronto. At that time we only had our first child Melanie,” said Marg.

Now ready to rebuild the home, they transported the tons of stone by truckload after trucklad from Scarborough to their new property in Scugog.
John explained that “After we had the basement hole dug, I built the frame and then hired a stonemason to rebuild all the stone work following the photographs we had taken.

Chalk numbers (2, 5,11), can still be seen on the stones from when
the stones were marked and photographed before being disassembled.

We eventually hired Angelo Calabrese of Highland Creek to do the stone work and at times we had as many as eight stone masons working on the project.”
Angelo rebuilt the stonework as it had originally been built in 1862 – a style referred to as ‘random course’. They used lime mortar, which takes a week to cure, so each course had to dry before they could apply the next course.

The woodwork, floorboards, wainscotting, baseboard etc., was all installed as it had been in the original building. The exception was in the fireplaces which were partially built with bricks from the old Port Perry Catholic Church which had been located at the corner of John and Casimir St.

This church was built as a Methodist church in 1874, sold to the Roman Catholic community in 1885 and was torn down was torn down in 1975.

In the fireplace of the Bruce house is a crane crook used to hang cooking pots. This was brought from his great-grandmother’s cottage in Donegal in Ireland. Also built into the fireplace is a functioning bakers’ oven.

The living room fireplace is built of stone. The central stone in that fireplace was brought from Turnberry Castle in Scotland, the alleged birthplace of Robert the Bruce.

Outside, the front porch is surrounded by railings which were originally on the Sebert House Hotel in Port Perry. The Sebert House Hotel was located where the CIBC is now located and was torn down in 1980.

The Bruces began the reconstruction of the heritage home on May 24, 1975 and moved in on December 23 that same year. Ever since then the home has been the centre of their lives.

Two more children, Stewart and Colleen were born here and Melanie was married in the home.

Now John and Marg are retired and enjoy the company of their grandchildren in this magnificent heritage home – the home that they had lovingly rebuilt in 1975.

By Paul Arculus
Focus on Scugog