ELORA – For more than 150 years, Elora’s Drew House has stood at the corner of East Mill and Mary Street.
Originally built in 1855 by George Drew, a future judge and grandfather of an Ontario premier, this property has changed hands a few times over its history.
The story of the home and the people who lived there has been chronicled in a new book A Grand and Storied Home: The Drew House of Elora, Ontario by researcher Elysia DeLaurentis.
The Drew House now operates as a bed and breakfast run by Roger Dufau and Kathleen Stanley. Dufau, originally from France’s Basque region, first bought the property in 1977 with the intention of turning it into a restaurant, which didn’t come to fruition until 1999.
Dufau and Stanley explained they had both heard a lot of anecdotes and stories about the Drew House but they wanted something more official to tell their guests when they were asked.
This led to hiring DeLaurentis through her company Oakenwood Research, originally to create a historical pamphlet.
“We were supposed to do a little book and Elysia got really taken by the project,” Dufau said.
Stanley added they had to decide whether it was a book about a house or the people who lived there but the three of them together decided the story of people lends itself better to a book.
“It’s not just the story of stone, it’s not just the story of the building itself, it’s all these people who lived in the same space who have a similar connection to this building,” DeLaurentis said.
DeLaurentis’ job was to sort out what was true and what was an urban legend from the stories gathered by Stanley who recalled giving her three full pages that were “legends of the Drew House.”
DeLaurentis said she was surprised to find the well known heritage home wasn’t very well documented and ended up involving a lot of digging to, in a sense, solve the mystery of the Drew House.
This research involved a lot of time at the Wellington County archives but also finding relatives of those who once owned the house to hear some first-hand stories. She even tracked down an interview from the 1970s of the previous owner.
DeLaurentis was most surprised to learn in 1865 someone had tried to burn it down, which was not a rumour she had previously heard.
“George Drew was not uniformly loved in town, he was quite a boisterous personality by the sounds of it,” DeLaurentis said, adding this made him beloved but also rubbed people the wrong way.
Stanley said she was often blown away by what DeLaurentis would find in her research, both what was confirmed but also stories they had thought to be true turning out to be likely false.
“It seems for the most part there was a kernel of truth in each story but it wasn’t quite accurate,” Stanley said.
Despite the property’s age, a relatively small number of families have owned the Drew House as many held onto it for decades at a time each leaving their mark like the Drew family’s original built home and later expansion to include a coach house and servant’s quarters or the Denholmes building a stone bbq that still stands.
Dufau has followed suit, making it into a bed and breakfast with some rooms created from the hayloft of the coach house but he kept many original wood features. He’s owned it for nearly 45 years but he doesn’t see himself as an owner in the traditional sense.
“It really doesn’t feel like we own the property but we feel like we are the stewards of the property,” Dufau said.
Stanley added, “We are the caretakers, you do the best you can to keep it for the next because it’s going to be here long after we’re gone.”
The book can be found locally at the Magic Pebble in Elora, The Bookery in Fergus and at the Drew House itself on East Mill Street.
