19 September 1957

Back in the 50’s the school year in New Brunswick, Canada started on the Thursday after Labour Day, so it had to be a Tuesday.

I was starting Grade Seven.  My family moved to Moncton, New Brunswick in June from Bedford, Nova Scotia, a suburb community of Halifax and where my paternal  Great Grandparents settled when they immigrated from Ireland, I believe, in 1879. My siblings and I were beyond excited now living in a “city” with paved streets, playgrounds, shops within walking distance on Main Street, a neighborhood grocery store across the street and Sunny Brae School, up the hill at the far end of Curry Street. When I got home that afternoon, I asked my mother, “What is drafting…”. My mother’s response, “it’s what architects do to make buildings…”

In Grades Seven, Eight and Nine, boys had to take Manual Training and the girls had to take Home Economics.

Manual training consisted of Woodworking, Sheet Metal, Electrical and “Drafting”. I was terrible at planing, even worse at soldering and AC and DC currents were a struggle, but drafting, I loved it from the get go. Learning orthographic projection, line weights, pointing a 2H pencil with a Swiss Army knife and a sheet of sandpaper, making arrows and lettering. (One never says “printing” in a drafting room). Pure joy.

In Grade Seven my shop teacher was Mr. Stewart and in Grades Eight and Nine, it was Mr. West. They were great teachers. I’m not sure what their qualifications were, but I guess maybe the School Board told them at their hiring, that they would be shop teachers.

As Grade Nine was coming to a close, you were required to select a course that you would take for the next three years in high school. Academic, Technical, Commercial and Industrial. Since I already knew that I wanted to be an architect, I selected Technical. It was supposed to be the most difficult because of the extra study load of academic subjects and industrial arts subjects. It was also geared for students that would go on to university and study to be engineers and architects

My High School drafting teacher and mentor was Mr. Bill Quartermain. He was a strict but fair teacher, He always wore a freshly starched, ironed white shirt with a tie. He only took his suit coat off when he was at his drafting board and then he wore a Masonic Lodge like apron. I sense that he detected my enthusiasm  and natural gift for drafting. In the Summers, I helped take care of his property. He had his rules for mowing and tending his beautiful rose garden. We kept in touch well into the 1980’s. I greatly thank him for his encouragement and training.

Fast forward now to an overcast April day in 1969 when I received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Nova Scotia School of Architecture in Halifax. It was at “school” that I learnt how to develop my drafting style. It hasn’t changed that much other than my lettering has become a tad sloppy. So, here goes my attempt to portray buildings that I have discovered during my awesome adventures. Let’s begin in Key West, Florida. November 2016.

I was in Key West for a vacation, the week of the 2016 Presidential Election. While lounging by the hotel pool, I thought it was about time that I try to write about architecture and food, another one of my passions, on the east coast of North America. I was going to call the blog, Fleming and Whitehead after the street intersection in Key West and Highway One’s Mile Zero mark. The name sounded like a law firm, so I selected a name that contained two important drafting items, an HB pencil and a clean sheet of drafting paper. Writing is not my strength, it frightens me, maybe due to a lack of self-confidence but drafting is another story. It is much easier and it gives me pleasure to share with two dimensional images of buildings that I have discovered over the past thirty years of living in Arlington, Virginia and my native provinces on Canada’s east coast. As you can see it’s taken another Presidential Election year and over a hundred days of a new administration in nearby Washington, D.C.  to get the courage to press the “enter” button.