One man’s veranda is another woman’s gallery...

Howard Richler

During a recent party at a friend’s summer home overlooking the St. Lawrence, I commented that the “veranda commanded a magnificent view of the river.”

This anodyne declaration drew the rebuke of another guest who insisted that we were standing on a “porch” not a “veranda.” The hostess then said rather firmly, “you’re both wrong. It’s a gallery.”

A spirited discussion then ensued. Some people were insistent that a veranda must be covered, while a porch need not be. To complicate matters even further, one person averred that since the said veranda/ porch was built well above the ground, why couldn’t it be referred to as a balcony or a deck? Here at last we reached some sort of consensus and most of the attendees felt a balcony was something quite different and a deck was at ground level, similar to a patio but built of wood. Another person declared that it depended on your origins and that while Ontarians tended to opt for the word porch, Quebec Anglos were prone to say gallery. Veranda was thought to be a word from India, thus the insistence on it being covered and possibly screened.

It was an interesting albeit incon­clusive conversation and I am happy to say it ended without too much rancour having been unleashed. Since I had started the controversy by my initial innocuous declaration of it being a veranda, and since I was the supposed “language expert,” I was given the burden of investigating this semantic debate.

Here are my findings:

I feel confident asserting that the assembled revellers were not revelling on a balcony. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (COD) describes balcony as a “usually balustraded platform on the outside of a building, with access from an upper-floor window or door” and the Encarta World English Dictionary describes it as “a platform projecting from the interior or exterior wall of a building, usually enclosed by a rail or a parapet.”

But after eliminating balcony, matters become fuzzy.

The Oxford Guide to Canadian Usage (OGCU) has this entry for porch, veranda, patio, deck: “A porch can be large or small, covered or uncovered. Thus the term porch can be applied to the structures that some people call either verandas or stoops. Veranda usually labels a structure that is quite grand, attached to a large, elegant house. Patio and deck are newer terms, describing more recent additions to domestic architecture. Unlike porches, they are generally attached to a back or side entrance; neither is normally roofed. A patio is usually stone or cement, while a deck is made of wood; both are large enough to allow several people to sit in a group.”

However, this entry does not address the regionality of these terms. The COD defines veranda from Hindi varanda, from Portuguese varanda, “railing,” as a “usually roofed porch or external gallery along one or more sides of a house, especially the front,” but it adds that in Australia and New Zealand it refers to “a roof over a sidewalk in front of a shop.” If that isn’t confusing enough, the COD’s first definition of “porch” is “a covered shelter for the entrance of a house,” but its second definition adds, “North America, a veranda.” Also, a porch originally only referred to a covered entrance affording protection, but in many North American locales the term would be widely used to refer to all but the largest verandas.

Excluded from the OCGU variety of porch was the term gallery. The COD states that in North America, particularly Quebec, Newfoundland and the Gulf States, this is “a veranda, especially one surrounding a building on all sides.”

In conclusion I will say that one man’s veranda is another woman’s gallery is another guy’s porch…

Howard Richler will be attending the Ruth Richler Memorial Lecture, Aging Gracefully and Gratefully, Sunday, June 8 at 8 pm at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom. He can be reached at howard@theseniortimes.com.