The Globe and Mail

Since his teen years, Toronto designer Andy Thomson, 36, has been passionate about minimal living. His architectural thesis at Ryerson University, for instance, involved dwelling for a year in a tent, testing the outer limits and possibilities of self-containment. Later on, he and his wife lived in a Volkswagen van until their first child came along, and then, instead of doing the standard Toronto thing and moving into a house, they just got a bigger van. The first commercially viable fruit of Mr. Thomson's past two decades of experimenting with simple lifestyles went to market last week. It's called miniHome, and that's exactly what it is: a small (350 square feet) factory-manufactured house that is similar in some basic ways to the mobile homes that populate trailer parks across North America. Produced by Northlander Industries of Exeter, Ont., the structure rides on a steel chassis and stout tires, for example, and it has a detachable hitch, making it easy to haul wherever it needs to go.