When my five siblings and I were kids, a drive anywhere seemed interminable, and if the destination was an amusement park the drive was worse. Thankfully, we always knew we were getting close to Cavendish when we saw the Ketchup House in New Glasgow. The house had little to do with ketchup—but it was a landmark burned into our memories by virtue of its being red.
On the one hot day of this July (remember it?), my husband, Stephen MacInnis, and I enlisted a few other dab hands with paintbrushes, and we got our shoulders sunburnt ketchup red while painting our little house yellow—a colour called "Summer Sun," to be exact. Trim in "Superwhite" and "Salem Green."
It had taken us some time to choose colours for our house. All we knew was that we wanted colours that would be rich and vibrant and would cheer us through the winter months. We also wanted to counterbalance the bland tyranny of vinyl siding, its washed-out taupes and creams.
We wanted to memorialize the stand-out colours from our childhood memories before vinyl siding came into fashion. Island house paint seemed more distinctive, then. Drives in the country would take us through Acadian communities where lively colours clashed and sang from every house. Benignly neglected paint on one house might reveal the owners' preoccupation with kids and dogs and farming, above the exterior aesthetics of their home. And then there'd always be a community in which all the bungalows had been painted in the same season from the same cans of mustard and brown (or orange and white) paints that had been on sale at Canadian Tire the previous winter.
It's been heartening to see in the last few years that Island houses have been reverting to bolder palates. Whether the "heritage colours" of the poncier neighbourhoods in Charlottetown or the multi-hued trims of country houses with gingerbread detailing on the porch, these houses recall our tradition of pride in our homes and pride in our landscape, for this Island—itself painted in stand-out vibrant golds and reds and blues and greens—is not for the faint of colour.
Our house might be the yellowest in Charlottetown, and our neighbours might think we're nuts—"Well, isn't that different, dear," one was heard to say—but no one will ever get lost in our neighbourhood again. They'll be able to tell their friends, "Just turn right at the bright yellow house. Can't miss it. Then you're almost there."
Close window to return to main page.