It's a concept many homeowners might find hard to imagine today, but for rural folks on the Prairies in the early 1900s, it was a commonplace practice: ordering houses out of an Eatons' catalogue.
In a book called Catalogue Houses: Eatons' and Others, Les Henry has chronicled the phenomenon, which typically involved the lumber and other materials for the house arriving in rail cars from British Columbia.
"People raised in a mail-order house love it forever," adds the Saskatoon-based author. And he speaks from experience: His book's cover features the mail-order house where he spent his childhood, on Brunswick Farm near Milden, Sask. Mr. Henry's Aunt Mary Jane always had said the house came from Eatons, although he has so far been unable to confirm that. His early experience made him curious about the houses, which were most commonly built between about 1910 and 1930.
For their time, they must have seemed like veritable mansions, Mr. Henry says. Most had hot and cold running water, electric lights and indoor plumbing, he notes, and one 1918 model even had a central vacuum system.
"The prosperity in Canada in 1917 was unbelievable and has never been reproduced," he says.
For years, Mr. Henry wondered if his family house had really come from Eatons and whether he would be able to find it represented in an old catalogue.At the time, Mr. Henry was a professor in the University of Saskatchewan's department of agriculture. His job involved travelling along Prairie back roads and through small towns.
During these trips, he often spotted dwellings that seemed to be of the right age and appearance for a mail-order home.
"Teaching soil science, I pounded every mile of pavement in Saskatchewan."
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Henry decided it was time to find out more. He wondered: "Who has the last name of Eaton in Toronto and swings the biggest stick?"
Mr. Henry wrote to Fredrik Eaton, great-grandson of Timothy Eaton, the founder of the retailing empire. From there he found his way to Judith McErvel, who worked in the company's archives. Information from Ms. McErvel formed the basis of his research.
In the early years of last century, Mr. Henry discovered, farmers and the lumber industry were waging a war of words over how lumber orders were measured. Farmers regularly complained that they were being short-changed in their orders. Mr. Henry says the row really revolved around the difference between rough and finished lumber, but the dispute made farmers inherently distrustful of lumber companies.
In that acrimonious environment, Eatons saw a marketing opportunity and entered the business in 1910. The company could use its trustworthy reputation and famed money-back guarantee to sell houses by mail, promoted by special catalogues called plan books.
Mr. Henry discovered that the first house offered by T. Eaton Co. Ltd. was Design 101. It was advertised as an "attractive eight-room house" with a simple two-storey, gable-end design, a full verandah and a back porch. The complete lumber package, including windows, doors and frames, was $945 delivered to the railway station nearest you.
Eatons would supply complete blueprints and other details for $2.50; customers who ordered a house had their $2.50 refunded.
The company would ship only carload lots; if your order was too small to fill a rail car, you were told to join in with a neighbour.
Mr. Henry says Eatons was by no means the first or only company to sell these houses. Rivals included Sears Roebuck & Co., Aladdin Co. Ltd. and United Grain Growers Ltd. Still, the author says, the Eaton name carried a cachet, and does so to this day.
"That resonates, especially in the West," he says. "There was Simpson-Sears, too, but somehow Eatons had more pizzazz. They had a way of doing business that enamoured people."
In one edition of the plan catalogue, Mr. Henry notes, all of the houses were identified by names beginning with the letters EA. The 30 houses ranged from Eatoncourt to Earnscroft.
The most popular style was the Earlsfield, which featured a double gambrel roof that made the house distinctive from miles away. Mr. Henry says dozens are still standing today.
"There's hardly a town in Saskatchewan I can't go into and find an Earlsfield."
In today's market, the houses are valued for their high quality and historic past. Mr. Henry says they are quite commonly moved from one location to another because the owner may want to build a new house without giving up the land. The buyers, meanwhile, often want the house but not the rural lifestyle.
Mr. Henry says many people think Eaton houses were prefabricated but, in fact, they were not even precut. Eatons supplied all of the necessary lumber, millwork, hardware and blueprints, but the buyer had to hire a contractor to build the house. As a result, many of them are one-of-a-kind.
Sometimes, Eatons sent a little too much wood and customers had enough left over to start on a garage or an outhouse as well.
By contrast, some rival companies, such as Aladdin, made houses that were entirely precut in the factory.
Mr. Henry continued his research after his retirement. The academic spent many days and weekends with his partner, Inga Cariou, travelling to mail-order houses. The pair often found farmhouses that have been in the same family for generations.
Near Waseca, Sask., for example, Everard and Winifred Pike built one of the grandest houses in the district in 1918.
Their youngest daughter still lives in the home, which is painted in its traditional trim and style.
As Mr. Henry got to know each homeowner, he gathered catalogues, plans, advertisements, invoices and photographs.
"With the wonders of eBay, they're quite easy to get," he says of the many plan books and catalogues he collected. After he had visited dozens of houses, sifting through the attics and basements of many, the author formed Henry Perspectives to publish his material. He decided the topic was too specialized for most publishers, so he didn't approach any.
"I was pretty sure I had a niche market."
Today, when he fills orders for his book from his Saskatchewan neighbours, he sends out a copy first and tells the buyer where to send the money. A cheque for $29.99 plus taxes, shipping and handling always arrives, he says. "The countryside in Western Canada is still a very special place. City slickers -- especially in the East -- can't understand that."
The author still hasn't found his own family's home represented in a plan book, but he says it was quite common for homeowners to tinker with the plans or to send in a drawing of their own design and receive the lumber in return.To this day, he relies on stories he heard from family members. Despite the poverty of the Depression years, the Henry family held round dances in the living room and square dances in the attic.
"In the thirties, they still had a good time," he says. "There were a lot of good times in these old houses."
To buy Catalogue Houses Eatons' and Others by Les Henry, write Henry Perspectives, 143 Tucker Cr., Saskatoon, Sask., S7H 3H7.