For the Record. Joan Grierson

Worked in the office of William Lyon Somerville, Architect, Toronto: residential work.

      1930 Married American architect Carrol Harding and moved to Weston, Massachusetts.

      1941 Worked in the office of Page and Steele, Architects, Toronto, then returned to Boston, Massachusetts. Records are incomplete.

      1958 Married George P. Carlton.

      1961 Elizabeth Carlton died in Peterborough, New Hampshire, at the age of sixty-one.

      In 1929, while working in Toronto, “Betty” Lalor spoke at the Art Gallery of Toronto on the development of a Canadian style in architecture. The same year, she worked independently on the conversion of a farmhouse to a summer residence on Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Ontario. The project was published in the July 1929 issue ofCanadian Homes and Gardens.

      SMALL BREAKFAST DORMER in the sloping east roof features shelves shelves and cupboards to hold dishes and serving trays.

      FARMHOUSE renovation plans.

      DRAWINGS OF THE OLD FARMHOUSE “before” (opposite) and “after” (right). “The chief problems presented to the architect were to enlarge the living room to a size in keeping with summer hospitality, to provide greater verandah space and to create a more interesting exterior. The roofline was lowered, the small balcony moved to the side, the verandah now offers a more spacious welcome and the use of small-paned windows softened the general aspect of the house.” (Canadian Homes and Gardens, July 1929)

THE 1930s

      EVENTS

       The devastating effects of the Depression are widespread. The numbers of jobless soar, and there are demonstrations in London, New York and Paris.

       Mackenzie King returns as prime minister in 1935, after his Liberal party defeats R.B. Bennett and the Conservatives.

       Franklin Roosevelt is president of the United States.

       Joseph Stalin purges thousands of dissidents.

       In 1936, the Spanish Civil War erupts.

       In 1937, the Japanese intensify their invasion of eastern China.

       Adolf Hitler is made chancellor of Germany. He annexes Austria, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia before invading Poland.

       September 3, 1939, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany; Canada declares war a week later.

      1937 VW PROTOTYPE VEHICE. Volkswagen, the “people’s car,” designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

      HARDOY OR BUTTERFLY CHAIR, designed by Jorge Ferrari-Harding for Grupo Austral, 1938.

      LIFE

      This is a hard-times decade, without unemployment insurance, universal health care or welfare. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is established in 1936: radio offers some escape into the world of entertainers, game shows, soaps and music. Jazz gives way to swing, with the big bands of Guy Lombardo, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

       Drive-in movies, laundromats, sliced bread, Skippy peanut butter and Superman appear.

       Women claim a place in the sky: Amelia Earhart solos the Atlantic, flying from west to east, and Beryl Markham follows suit, east to west. Skater Cecile Smith of Canada is runner-up to world champion Sonja Henie.

       Cairine Wilson and Iva Fallis are the first Canadian women to be appointed to the Senate.

      CAPITOL THEATRE and office building, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1930, Murray Brown, Architect; MARINE BUILDING, Vancouver, 1930, McCarter and Nairne, Architects; RESIDENCE OF LAWREN HARRIS, Toronto, 1933, Alexndra Biriukova, Architect.

      STATISTICS 1931 POPULATION OF CANADA 10,376,786 Population of U.S. 122,775,046 Architecture graduates in Canada 16 WOMEN 266 men

      BOOKSSuch Is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan; The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

      FILMSThe Silent Enemy, a film about the Ojibway of Northern Ontario battling hunger; The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland.

      RADIOThe Happy Gang on CBC; Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds.

      MUSIC Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians; “Anything Goes” by Cole Porter; “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” by Jay Gorney and E.Y. Harburg.

      THEATRE Royal Winnipeg Ballet founded.

      ART Canadian Group of Painters (including Lawren Harris, A.J. Casson and A.Y. Jackson) grows out of the Group of Seven.

      ARCHITECTURE

      The Depression had a devastating effect on the profession in the years leading up to the Second World War. As early as 1931, architectural offices in Canada had reduced their staffs drastically, and many architects were out of work.

      In the world of design, modern architecture made a name for itself at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. It became recognized not only in Europe but in the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibit titled The International Style, which introduced modern architecture to the American public. The next year the Chicago World’s Fair opened, marking a “Century of Progress.” The buildings were described as a shock to the middle-aged, but to the young, a measure of the future. The New York World’s Fair in 1939 gave further impetus to modernism.

      In Europe, the Bauhaus, now headed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved to Berlin in 1933 but within months was closed by the Nazi government. Its members dispersed but continued to teach, in England and in the United States.

      It