When Michael Dent was a young boy he climbed up a cherry tree near his home at 33 Islington Ave. and to his surprise there was a hornet’s nest in it. He got stung and stung until someone called his mom, Gloria, who told him to climb down. He remembers his mom spraying a bottle of Raid and taking him to the hospital.
He was fine.
This is one memory Michael won’t forget. He won’t forget it because it happened at the property of the nearly 200-year-old stone home his family lived in since he was four years old.
The stone home still stands today.
His parents bought the home in 1960 for $11,000. He said they purchased it from then Guelph mayor Alf Hales. The property was severed and the Dent family got .99 of an acre. Prior to taking possession the house was abandoned and wasn’t in the most suitable condition. His parents did what they could to make it a home for them and their six children.
Before Hales owned the house Michael said it was owned by the Caines family.
“I learned from an old guy who was going around there giving horse tours of the new development. He said that he had been to the property of 1949 with his father. When they've had a farm sale, auction. They've auctioned off everything in the farm, and it had been a pony farm and the orchard made a lot of sense,” said Michael.
The municipal register of cultural heritage properties in the City of Guelph lists 33 Islington Ave. as being built in 1855.
The land was taken in the 1830s, Michael said. So he believes the house started being built then. It’s mostly built out of field and quarry stones. The walls are three feet thick. “It’s actually kind of cool in there in the heat of the summer because the stone keeps it cool. Upstairs not so much but downstairs,” he said.
Michael credits the array of apple trees on the property as to why his mom’s apple sauce tasted so good.
He remembers his cherry tree incident but he wasn’t the only Dent sibling who had dealings with high heights on the property. His younger sister Liz Dent at almost five-years-old was supposed to be keeping an eye on her brother Stephen who was only a year and a half at the time, still in diapers.
There was an extension ladder by one of the apple trees. “I watched him go up the ladder, and he is at the top of the ladder, shaking it. He was a really, really happy baby, like I don't remember him crying at all, but laughing and shaking the ladder,” said Liz.
She called her mom for help. Her mom told her to hold the ladder as she climbed up it with bare feet to get her son.
“So the enduring smell from my childhood and that I can still smell now, is apples. You know, just happens to be the season where they're on the ground,” said Liz.
She lives beside her former family home at 37 Islington Ave. and has lived there since 2001. There wasn't enough frontage to make a 35 Islington Ave., said Michael. Their dad Ralph had a hand in the design since he wanted it to suit his home next door. Part of the intention of Liz living so close was to take care of her mom. Her dad wanted this since both he and his daughter, Christie, were terminally ill. They died in 2006, months apart.
The decision to sell the family home last year was because no one could take care of it anymore. Liz and Michael’s mom, who turned 98 on Sept. 16 is in long-term care.
Selling the home brought up two feelings for Liz; relief and dismay. Relief because the home is getting the care and renovations it needs. Dismay because one of the first things to go was the solarium.
Her dad built the solarium, a glass enclosed wrap around porch, roughly a quarter of the size of the home. Most of the family’s parties were held there. It had its own fireplace.
Two six-foot long tables with a six-seater round table lined the solarium. Two wooden candelabras her dad made held four candles each and stood in the middle of the tables. As it got dark outside the reflection of the candles could be seen on the window panes, turning eight candles into 16.
Since the porch was on a bit of an angle, the tall people would sit on the sloped side and the shorter people would sit on the other.
Dinners, special occasions whether it be in the solarium or at the dining room table inside the home, would consist of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, a Spanish salad like ceviche, since the family spent two years living in Peru for Ralph’s job.
“And there'd always be ratatouille or something strange. There'd be something vegetarian, because my sister Christie was vegetarian pretty much her whole life. So my mom would make sure that there was something for her. My brother, Kevin, was occasionally vegetarian, occasionally not. My dad always liked apple pie,” said Liz.
There would be turkey on all special occasions, “that would be a big production,” she said.
Everyone would have a job whether it be cleaning the imprinted leather tables from Peru, polishing the silverware or taking apart the candle holders to get out the old wax.
The thing about the Dent home is everyone was invited. Family, friends, and strangers who turned into friends. Michael and Liz shared that it was a hub for neighbours. A safe place for friends. And a lifeboat for several Dent family members.
Anke Kruse, who lives just outside of Rockwood, bought the home in 2023 and it has since gone through about eight months of renovations set to finish mid-October.
She’s happy Michael and Liz didn’t sell the home to a developer. Kruse gave them a letter with her intentions of what she wanted to do with the home.
She is turning it into a net-zero ready home with two separate three-bedroom apartments, for someone to hopefully purchase, live in and rent the other unit for rental income.
Net-zero ready means getting the home energy efficient before solar panels are put on, said James Savoie, co-owner and builder at Frontiers. Part of getting it ready means installation throughout the home, making sure the home is air tight, high quality windows, ventilation with heat recovery like a fresh air machine and thermal bridging so there isn’t energy escaping outside the home.
It will be up to the new owners whether they decide to have solar panels installed or not.
“So 200 years ago, when they built this and didn't have any insulation in it, they would heat the house, and they would stay warm, but they would lose all that heat energy through the walls, and in doing so, of course, they're wasting energy, but they're also drying the walls up,” said Savoie.
This is a good thing because the masonry the home is made up of needs to remain dry. If it gets wet and stays wet things like mould and air quality issues can occur. There would also be a risk of freezing and expanding, which could lead to structural issues.
“I wanted to show not only the beauty, the absolute beauty, of these old heritage homes and old stone homes when you fix them up a little bit, but also that it can be old meets new, modern. Our times right now, we can deal with it. I believe we can deal with even with a 200-year-old home, we can have it environmentally friendly, high performance home,” said Kruse.
She believes this home will stand for another 200 years “if we don’t get a war or something.”
