A little bathroom humour

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Ron Cunningham at Caddy Lake, with a copy of his biffy book. (BILL REDEKOP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

CADDY LAKE -- Ron Cunningham tells the story of the time his parents visited him at the cottage, during years when many people still used outhouses, and lost their little dog, a Chihuahua.

"It was time to go and we couldn't find the dog. So we spread out and went searching," recalled Cunningham.

"At one point, my dad said, 'Do you hear a noise?' " He detected muffled whimperings that he traced to a hole behind the neighbour's outhouse where the earth had caved in. The dog had fallen through the outhouse hole.

"Then it became, 'How do we get him out?'" They lowered a pail through the biffy hole with dog food inside so the dog would climb in, pulled him out and began the odious task of giving the dog a bath.

A lot of things have fallen down outhouse holes over the years, most of which you wouldn't want to pull out. Cunningham has authored his share of it.

Now, he has authored and self-published a small bathroom reader titled, Back Yard Biffies.

He decided to document outhouse architecture while it's still standing. "When you see a biffy in someone's yard today, it doesn't mean it's still being used. Often, it's just there for nostalgia," said Cunningham.

It has many names, from honey house to earth closet, from biffy to the House of Parliament.

The books insists outhouses aren't really such a bad way to go (a bad pun), considering the average family flushes 35,000 gallons of water down the toilet per year. After 40 years of use at the cottage, the Cunninghams' outhouse had just a few inches of sediment at the bottom without a single flush.

The "inventor," loosely defined, of the outhouse was a Rev. Henry Moule. No one ever said, "I'm going to take a Moule," but that is the myth surrounding Thomas Crapper. Crapper didn't invent the flush toilet but rather a better siphoning system for emptying flush toilets. In truth, the word "crap" long predated Crapper's invention in 1880.

Good information to know before these "Manitoba skyscrapers," as a plaque in Cunningham's very spiffy biffy describes them, disappear from the landscape. His outhouse has an array of little plaques with cute sayings, fuzzy illustrations (like a triptych of baby raccoons), a heater, a mirror, a naked light bulb and magazine rack.

Out of 50 cottages on Cunningham's block at Caddy Lake in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, he estimates six still have outhouses, and two of those are still used, including his own, but only collaterally. The Cunninghams went to a modern flush toilet in the late 1990s.

Cunningham also informs that the cut-out crescent moon on the outhouse door was originally meant to indicate it was the women's; another constellation, a star, indicated the men's. The book includes a gallery of outhouse photos. They conjure the image of people looking out their windows and spotting a gangly stranger (Cunningham) sneaking into their yard to photograph their outhouse.

In fact, the outhouse book sprang out of Cunningham's hobby of photographing old farm buildings. He would either ask the landowner's permission, or take the photos with a telephoto lens from the road. He would usually crop the outhouse out of the picture. In time, he realized he had a unique collection of outhouse photos. So he decided to have some fun with them.

The book also contains many outhouse anecdotes. Cunningham once had a bat flying around the head of one terrorized female visitor to his outhouse. Of course, there was also the old trick of turning the wooden door latch when someone was inside so the person couldn't get out. That this prank was played at the same time as the bat's visit seriously added to the woman's trauma.

You can still put in an outhouse today, subject to local municipal bylaws, but it isn't easy under provincial regulations. An outhouse has to be at least 30 metres from a shoreline, 15 metres from a drilled well, six metres from other buildings and three metres from the property line. Outhouses today are mostly put up for cottages in remote settings. Manitoba Conservation doesn't require you register your new privy.

The book is sold throughout Manitoba.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 8, 2011 A6