Peter Coffman
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Peter Coffman
@petercoffman.bsky.social
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Architectural Historian; Supervisor of History & Theory of Architecture program @carleton.ca‬. https://carleton.ca/aah/people/peter-coffman/ Photographer. Pilgrim. Occasionally a writer. Chief of Staff to two cats. Photos mine unless otherwise credited.
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For #SteepleSaturday this week: St. Mary’s, Auburn, Nova Scotia, built 1790.
A simple but handsome wooden tower, clad in clapboard, is viewed at a steep angle from below. Atop it is a slender, needle-like spire on an octagonal base. All are painted white with occasional black accents, and are brightly sunlit against a dark, moody sky behind and above.
November 29, 2025 at 1:44 PM
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I got to spend some time with Colleen Jones in 2009 when she did a story for the CBC about a historic Nova Scotian church that was being dismantled and sold to an American buyer. She was smart, kind, energetic, funny, curious and empathetic. RIP.

👇 She interviews the rector who authorized the sale.
Colleen Jones, dressed in blue jeans, a bright red coat and matching beret, looks thoughtful as she speaks with a man in a black coat and grey cap. The latter has his back to the viewer. Behind them is a small, historic wooden church that has been stripped of its siding and is most of the way to being completely dismantled.
November 26, 2025 at 2:52 AM
petercoffman.bsky.social
Well, this should be fun!
A screen with the words The Paradoxes of Trinity College Chapel/Peter Coffman” in front of a chapel apse with a rib vault and gothic windows.
November 20, 2025 at 1:20 PM
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But it looks like I’ll have to get up even earlier, and speak for longer, than I had planned….
A line from a conference program reading: “Final remarks/Trinity Chapel - 5:10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Peter Coffman
November 19, 2025 at 4:10 PM
petercoffman.bsky.social
Union Centre Building, Winnipeg.
A colourful mural painted on the exterior brick wall of an otherwise bland office building depicts labourers going about their work amid banners reading “United we stand”, “Unions make work better”, Prison bars cannot confine ideas”, “We fight for the right to a living wage”, and "One for all all for one”. A newspaper headline proclaims “City on Strike”.
November 17, 2025 at 3:02 AM
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I have to admit I find it a bit creepy that MS Word is now offering to help me summarize, find key insights and questions in, and prepare me to discuss a document that I’ve written myself. I suppose that if I’d used AI to write it, I’d also need AI to tell me how to discuss it. 🤷‍♂️
An on-screen computer prompt offering help to “summarize this document”, “Find key insights and questions”, and “Prep me to discuss this document"
November 13, 2025 at 3:48 PM
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Scott was also, very late in his career, architect of Trinity College Chapel at the University of Toronto. Nov. 20 will mark the 70th anniversary of the consecration of the chapel, and the College will host the symposium "Sacred Space: Conflicts and Convergences”. I will be one of the speakers.
An austerely impressive Gothic chapel viewed from the back through a pointed arch toward the altar and three stained glass windows.The walls are plain and unadorned, with emphatic vertical articulation between bays. The vault is a simple quadripartite rib vault.
November 9, 2025 at 3:03 PM
petercoffman.bsky.social
Of course, Canadian architecture is also this:
A gleaming glass building with a deeply curved facade is framed by more conventional rectilinear concrete and glass skyscrapers beyond. Mining infrastructure rises above a lot horizon and is brightly sunlit against a sky with wispy clouds. A picturesque row of varied commercial facades, some ornately decorated, stands out in bright sunlight against a dark sky with some clouds. A very simple log cabin, broad and low, its facade interrupted with nothing but two perfectly symmetrical rectangular windows, sits on a well-manicured lawn.
November 9, 2025 at 1:05 PM
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"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"
A ruined Gothic monastery is silhouetted against a dark sky, its pointed windows open to an empty void.
November 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
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I’m getting ready to co-teach our new course on Canadian architecture.

So, What *is* Canadian architecture?

Well, it’s a long story. Or rather, *many* long stories.
A lone, weathered grain elevator sits against a rolling, undulating, barren mandscape. A singloe road winds around it and into the distance. A slightly warm-tinted black & white photograph of an ornate, three-story wooden building. The lower two stories are white with pronounced dark trip around all of the many windows. The upper story is darker and has very large Serliana windows. The roof has a robust and picturesque skyline of towers and turrets, silhouetted against a dark sky with stormy grey clouds that seem to be in motion. A wooden gabled building facade with a gently sloping roof is perfectly bisected by a tall and very ornately carved totem pole. The sky behind is dark with billowy white clouds. A curvilinear, undulating, sheer white building facade contrasts starkly with the dark sky above. The facade is without any features such as window or ornament, Its white mass sits like an iceberg on the street.
November 8, 2025 at 1:05 PM
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And….
A highrise apartment block with a huge mural of Leonard Cohen on the side.
November 5, 2025 at 6:25 PM
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The idea could have legs….
A view of the trilithons of Stonehenge, with the title ‘Stonehenge’ and the postal code ‘Wiltshire SP4’ inscribed on one of them.
November 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM
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Happy Day of the Dead, if that’s not too paradoxical a sentiment.

👇Hillside Cemetery, Dawson City, Yukon.
In the foreground, a simple wooden grave marker with the name “John Carpenter” leans to one side, weathered with age. Beyond it, several similar markers are softly out of focus. The lawn below is covered in flowering weeds.
November 2, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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Not an original idea, but I used ‘Moving Surfaces’ to frame the Aberdeen Pavillion for the ‘Lansdowne’ photo in Andrew Waldron’s architectural guidebook, ‘Exploring the Capital’. The piece does act as a visual and imaginative anchor for the place.
A rhythmically undulating arc of steel in the foreground frames a brightly sunlit traditional, barn-like building in the distance.
November 2, 2025 at 1:53 PM
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It's All Souls Day! So here’s All Souls College, Oxford, by Nicholas Hawksmoor, 1716-34.
A brightly sunlit twin-towered stone facade is viewed through a semi-circular arch against a deep blue sky.
November 1, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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On Feb 11 1869, 5000 people watched as these trap doors opened and Patrick J. Whelan, convicted assassin of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, dropped out of the world. This place #OughtToBeHaunted. 🎃😱👻

Happy #Halloween!
A nighttime view straight up with stone walls on either side supporting a platform. The platform is dark except for the brightly lit outline of two trap doors.
October 31, 2025 at 1:06 PM
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The Fort Garry Hotel is said to be the most haunted building in Winnipeg. Seems likely enough to me (although I’ve never ventured further inside than the restaurant).
🎃👻😱
#Halloween
#OughtToBeHaunted
A monumental stone building, its façade varied with projecting sections and bay windows, is brightly sunlit agains a dark, almost cloudless sky. The roofline is picturesque and ornately ornamented.
October 29, 2025 at 11:50 PM
petercoffman.bsky.social
Enjoyed walking home from campus in daylight today, likely for the last time in a long while.
A walking/cycling path cuts through leaf-covered grassy areas, leading to a pedestrian bridge over a calm body of water.
October 29, 2025 at 11:15 PM
petercoffman.bsky.social
I think the burnt-out facade of St. Boniface Cathedral in Manitoba #OughtToBeHaunted. Perhaps by the ghost of Louis Riel, who lies buried in its churchyard. Or by souls who, for millennia, have traveled, worked, fought, and died on the Red River, which the cathedral overlooks.
An imposing, stone, sunlit cathedral facade with a triple arched entrance flanked by massive columns. Above the arches is a rose window, which opens up not to the interior but to dark sky. In the right-hand arch is the shadow of a human figure.
October 26, 2025 at 11:46 AM
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“It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope."

-Shirley Jackson, ‘The Haunting of Hill House'

#OughtToBeHaunted
🎃 😱 👻
An ornate Victorian house with multiple bay windows and gingerbread is brightly sunlit against a dark, foreboding sky.
October 24, 2025 at 11:33 PM
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He spoke daily with the dead. He read poetry and wrote books on economics. He served as Prime Minister for 21 years.

And he built ruins - places where the imagination is invited to come out and play. William Lyon Mackenzie King was the ultimate #Halloween PM. 🎃 😱

#OughtToBeHaunted
What appears to be the last wall standing of a ruined Gothic church sits in a landscape of grass and trees. Foliage and fragments of other ruined bits are visible through its pointed arches.
October 24, 2025 at 10:38 PM
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There’s an article to be written on what these stories reveal about the two countries.

"'Demolition by neglect': Vacant 24 Sussex costing taxpayers millions” 🇨🇦

"Trump Said He Wouldn’t Touch the East Wing. Then He Tore It All Down." 🇺🇸

In the end, all roads lead to (the ruins of) Rome.
A CTV News headline reading: "Politics News 'Demolition by neglect': Vacant 24 Sussex costing taxpayers millions" A newspaper headline and sub-headline, reading: "Trump Said He Wouldn’t Touch the East Wing. Then He Tore It All Down."
October 23, 2025 at 2:44 AM
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Thanks! The property owner came across that piece too, and responded by expressing a desire to kick me “in the balls”…. But I stand by everything I wrote. 🤷‍♂️

Here’s Magee House as it now stands, still in limbo and with a bleak future.
A three-story stone house, in conspicuous need of repair. The ground-floor windows are boarded up. The wall on the left side is gone, replaced with an apparently temporary covering that makes no attempt to match the stone facade. That facade is partly (less than one quarter) missing and temporarily patched up too.
October 22, 2025 at 2:15 PM
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I think Ottawa's Château Laurier #OughtToBeHaunted. Maybe by the ghost of its founder Charles Melville Hays, who went down with the Titanic while on his way to the grand opening. Or by some of the many personalities that famed portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh immortalized in his studio there. 🎃👻
A large, imposing, picturesque white stone building with asymmetrical towers and turrets gleams in the sunlight atop a hill with water in the foreground and a stormy sky above.
October 19, 2025 at 2:43 PM
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Dawson City, Yukon, #OughtToBeHaunted. By the ghosts of the thousands whose dreams and bodies were broken by the harsh realities of the Klondike Gold Rush. The very few who struck it fabulously rich can, I suppose, rest in peace.
Small, brightly lit wooden buildings are separated by a wide, empty dirt street beneath a dark sky with wispy cloud. A mountain looms in the distance.
October 18, 2025 at 12:35 PM