This classic work on early Canadian architecture explores the evolution of urban and rural house construction from settlement to conquest. It illustrates the ways climate, local materials, legislation and customs merged to shape original techniques and unique forms - and some of the most distinct and enduring buildings in the New World.

This book also explores the day-to-day lives of craftsmen and those early Canadians whose nation was under construction. The result is a lively mix of insight and anecdote, and a vivid portrait of laying a unique foundation on North American soil. As Professor Moogk concludes, "more than a house was being built, a cultural nation was being built."

Peter Moogk is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. His many publications include Vancouver Defended, Berczy, and La Nouvelle France, which received the Heggoy Prize in French Colonial History.

Peter Moogk's profile page

"Peter Moogk's Building a House in New France remains as important today as it was in the 1970s... Moogk's story is one of people working within legal and social systems to develop a most distinctive Canadian building tradition. His painstaking research for building contracts and other docutments of the day showed a generation of Canadian scholars that critical historical research is the basic ingredient of architectural history."
— Harold Kalman, author of A History of Canadian Architecture