Home and Garden 2026: MacVicars' treehouse catches eyes around Auburn

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

In 2027, Wes MacVicar’s home in Auburn will turn 100 years old. In preparation for such an auspicious occasion, he’s been hard at work restoring a few of the building’s architecturally-important exterior elements - namely, the roof and front porch. But, as undeniably lovely as the home may be, it wasn’t MacVicar’s primary residence that brought The Citizen out to Auburn for a Home and Garden feature - it was his treehouse.

 

The MacVicar family treehouse is located midway up a large coniferous tree, visible from the road. It seems almost to be growing from the tree, rather than built into it. MacVicar completed the treehouse about 10 years ago. Like many great architectural endeavours, the treehouse project evolved over time. “I would take my summer holidays, and just poke away at it,” MacVicar recollected. “It took about three years - just a couple weeks here and a couple weeks there through the summer. It really was a thing of love for me.”

 

While he may not have had any formal architectural renderings or training, MacVicar makes up for it with instinct and persistence. “I wasn’t a builder at all,” he confessed. “When I was a kid, I tried to build a little platform in a plum tree and it didn’t work. So I thought, well, I’ll try it again. I just usually designed it on the fly. I might have had a little bit of drawings… but generally it was like, ‘Oh, that’s not going to work,’ and I’d have to do this and that… I just haberdashed my way through there.”

 

The result is a structure that feels both improvised and intentional, assembled from re-claimed materials with their own histories. “All the wood is either from my dad’s bush that we milled up there… and then I bought the rest from the Amish,” MacVicar said. “The windows are all re-claimed too. I re-claimed the tin from a building in Seaforth that was damaged in a big windstorm. The vents are made out of pews from the church. The only thing new on it, really, are the bolts and the screws.
If there is a guiding principle behind MacVicar’s treehouse, it’s restraint; an effort to work with the tree, rather than against it. “I didn’t want to de-limb the tree at all,” he pointed out. “I was able to basically build it without defacing the tree. The limbs are sort of growing out of it.” Over time, the structure has settled into its surroundings. “When it was first new, it really stuck out,” MacVicar said. “But now that the patina is all greyed up… it just kind of blends in now.”

 

Up close, the details reveal themselves slowly: a pulley and pail for hauling treasures, a ladder worn smooth by use and small gestures of personality throughout. “Normally there’s a flag on there - we usually fly a New Brunswick flag for my wife,” he said. “At one time, we had a swing.”

 

Like any structure - particularly one suspended in a living tree - it demands attention. “I usually try to tighten up this ladder every year,” MacVicar told The Citizen. “I normally take it in every winter… because it gets quite weathered and a little bit sharp. As the tree expands, it is kind of buckling the boards a little bit. “I put it together… with screws, so the screws are just going snap, snap, snap. I’m actually amazed it’s still standing!”

 

And yet, the treehouse endures. “I kind of dreamt that the kids would maybe sit there and read… but of course, my kids didn’t do that,” he said, laughing. “It just fits in so naturally.”

 

That natural fit may be its greatest achievement. The improvised approach, the re-claimed materials, the evolving structure, the quiet persistence - it's all come together to create something enduring. Not just a treehouse, but a small, elevated testament to patience, curiosity and the kind of craftsmanship that doesn’t announce itself so much as settle in, and stay. “It was a sweet little project,” he told The Citizen. “I thought it was for my girls, but I realized that they weren’t so enchanted with it… it was mostly for myself, to tell you the truth.”