Heritage White Oak Tree in Cambridge

- Sergeant Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

While many of us may be familiar with the designation of built heritage properties under the Ontario Heritage Act, recently municipalities have been using the Ontario Heritage Act to designate individual trees as heritage trees.  Municipalities like Burlington, Pelham, Thorold, Cambridge, and most recently Brant, have designated individual trees under the Ontario Heritage Act.

First enacted in 1975, the Ontario Heritage Act enables municipalities to pass by-laws designating individual properties as having cultural heritage value through Part IV of the Act.  This designation provides some protection for the property from demolition, as well as regulates potential alterations to the property to maintain its heritage value.  Larger areas can be designated under Part V of the Act as Heritage Conservation Districts.

In recent years the definition of cultural heritage resources covered under the Ontario Heritage Act has been expanded to include not only the commonly understood Built Heritage Resources, defined as “one or more significant buildings (including fixtures or equipment located in or forming part of a building), structures, earthworks, monuments, installations, or remains that have cultural heritage value,” but also Cultural Heritage Landscapes.  Cultural Heritage Landscapes are defined as a “geographical area that human activity has modified and that has cultural heritage value.”  These areas can include “one or more groupings of individual heritage features, such as structures, spaces, archaeological sites, and natural elements, which together form a significant type of heritage form distinct from that of its constituent elements or parts…villages, parks, gardens, battlefields, mainstreets and neighbourhoods, cemeteries, trails, and industrial complexes of cultural heritage value.”  The addition of Cultural Heritage Landscapes as well as other amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act made in 2005, have included natural landscape features, such as trees, as integral parts of cultural heritage landscapes and built heritage properties that should be protected.

With these changes in the understanding of cultural heritage, municipalities began designating individual trees under the Ontario Heritage Act.  In 2008 the City of Cambridge passed a by-law to designate a 130 year-old White Oak tree under the Ontario Heritage Act.  This tree survived a disastrous flood of the Grand River in 1974.  Several one-hundred year old workers’ cottages in the vicinity of the tree had to be demolished after the ’74 flood, with the construction of a levee system along the banks of the Grand River and the raising of the grade of the land by five feet.  At that time John Kingswood, forester for the City of Cambridge, decided to save the then 100 year old White Oak Tree on the grounds.  He constructed a well around the tree and a system of drainage pipes to feed the tree’s root system.  Today the heritage designated White Oak tree is a center-piece of the Cambridge Sculpture Garden on the banks of the Grand River in downtown Cambridge.  At the time of its designation, Cambridge’s White Oak was only one of ten heritage designated trees in Ontario.

The most recent heritage designated tree in Ontario is a massive Black Walnut tree located in Brant County.  Estimated at more than 150 years old, the tree may have originally been planted as a cultivated nut-bearing tree on a country estate.

While there are few examples of preserved built heritage in Ontario dating back over 200 years, there are at least two heritage designated trees that have been standing for over 250 years.  Oakville has designated a 250-year old White Oak that was narrowly saved from being cut down for a road expansion project in 2006.  Nearby Burlington designated a 300 year-old White Oak, that for hundred of years appeared on surveyors’ maps as a significant landmark distinguishing borders like Brant’s Block, and the border between Burlington and Aldershot.

The designation of these trees and others in Ontario speaks to a growing realization that cultural heritage isn’t just about old buildings and quaint downtowns, but the preservation of diverse elements of our landscape, including natural heritage and trees, that capture our human history and the history of our environment.

By the early 1900s Brantford, Ontario was the third largest manufacturing centre for exported goods in all of Canada, after only Toronto and Montreal.  Once known as the “Birmingham of Canada,” and the “Combine Capital,” Brantford’s reputation as a “City of Industry” was driven by a host of industries, especially agricultural implements.  Until the 1980s Brantford was a booming industrial city, boasting the highest paid factory wages in Ontario, including the auto industry.

But by the end of 1988 Brantford had lost two of its most significant industries, and unemployment in the city sky-rocketed to 24%.  Throughout the 1990s Brantford suffered the effects of industrial decline and decay.  Over 88 acres within the city were now abandoned and contaminated post-industrial sites or brownfields.

The Greenwich Mohawk site represents this history, from booming industrial hub to abandoned contaminated factory site.  At 52 acres it is the largest of Brantford’s brownfields.  For twenty-five years the Greenwich-Mohawk brownfield has loomed large in the community’s conscience as a horrible memory of Brantford’s industrial decay, and as a symbol of Brantford’s current problems and difficulties in moving forward.  In many ways the Greenwich Mohawk site represents the intersections between industrial history and environmental history, and how both shape a community’s understanding and appreciation of its own past and its current self-image.

Brantford’s economic development was spurned by the opening of the Grand River Navigation Company’s canal that linked Brantford by water to the Welland Canal and important cities like Buffalo.  In 1832 the Grand River Navigation Company began work on a system of canals, dams and locks along the Grand River in order to make the river navigable from Brantford down to Dunnville.  The “Brantford Cut” or “Brantford Canal” was the final part of the system to be built and opened to great fanfare in 1848.  This canal brought freight and passengers right into Brantford’s downtown and increased trade and attracted new businesses to the area.  Beginning in the 1850s Brantford was also quickly incorporated into the maze of rail-lines that soon linked it to places like Hamilton, Toronto, Port Dover, London, Buffalo, and Detroit.

Brantford’s industrial development began in earnest in the 1850s with a host of new industries including foundries, stone ware factories, stove factories and various mills.  From the 1870s to the 1890s Brantford became home to several significant agricultural implement manufacturers.  It was during this period that the agricultural implement giants Massey-Harris and Cockshutt were established in Brantford.  Starting in the early 1900s several of Brantford’s industries built larger new factories on what became the Greenwich-Mohawk site.  Industries on this site included: the Verity Plow Company (an affiliate of Massey-Harris, later Massey-Ferguson); Adams Wagon Company (an affiliate of Cockshutt that would later become the Canada Carriage and Body Co., then Brantford Coach and Body, and finally Trailmobile); Sternson Chemicals and the Cockshutt Plow Company.  Cockshutt built a new office and factory on the site in 1903.

These industries covered the entire 52 acre site.  Thousands of people worked in these industries daily.  And all around the site, in an area known as Eagles Place, a working class neighbourhood of charming brick cottages was quickly established.

The Greenwich-Mohawk site was a bustling industrial hub in what was a booming industrial city.  But this all changed in the 1980s.   Between them Massey-Ferguson and Cockshutt/White Farm Equipment employed over 7,000 workers in the early 1980s in a city of only 80,000.  But in 1985 Cockshutt/White Farm closed its doors in Brantford.  And in 1988, Massey-Ferguson also shut down its factories in the city.  After Massey-Ferguson, most of Brantford’s other major industries closed their doors throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.  Besides the social and economic problems of de-industrialization in Brantford there was also an environmental legacy: brownfield sites.  Brownfields are defined as “abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination.”

Greenwich Mohawk Brownfield site today

In Brantford the fifteen worst brownfield sites cover over 88 acres.  But the massive 52 acre Greenwich-Mohawk site represents to the citizens of Brantford the story of industrial decline and decay.  For residents of the adjacent Eagle Place area, once a thriving working-class neighbourhood, the Greenwich Mohawk brownfield is a daily reminder of all the lost factory jobs, and the social and economic consequences associated with this loss.  For the residents of Eagle Place the abandoned industrial site is also an environmental and public health danger.

There have been several dangerous fires on the site.  While the major industries on this site left in the 1980s and 1990s, other companies used the site in the interim.  In 1992 there was a disastrous explosion and fire at a recycling facility on the site.  Five years later there was a fire produced from 7,000 burning tires at an illegal tire dump on the site.  On account of the carcinogens benzene and toluene released from burning tires residents of Eagle Place had to be evacuated from their homes.  Several other fires occurred on the Greenwich side of the site in 2002, 2004 and 2008.

As with other post-industrial sites the Greenwich-Mohawk brownfield is contaminated with a variety of substances.  As early as 1976 there were reports of “oil-like” substances in the storm sewers and run-off from the brownfield site.  The Greenwich Mohawk brownfield is less than a kilometer from the Grand River.  There have been numerous environmental assessments and studies of the Greenwich Mohawk site starting in 1994.   Soil sampling and ground water sampling found several types of contaminants: Petroleum hydro-carbons from gas/diesel and heavy industrial oils; heavy metals like lead; xylene used in solvents and paints; toluene from paints and adhesives; polyaromatic hydrocarbons produced from boilers and generators; PCBs used in transformers, fluorescent lights, and capacitors; asbestos; and benzene produced as exhaust and in chemical manufacturing.  All these substances have lasting environmental impact on the soil and groundwater, and most of them are known to cause cancer and genetic damage in humans.  The sources of most of these contaminants can be traced back to the industries that operated on this site for decades without environmental oversight.  According to one of the environmental studies, “test holes dug over a large area of the plant show the soil is virtually saturated with oil.  A former employee of the Cockshutt Company testified that the company “disposed of waste oil and paint products on the soil.”  Other sources of contaminants include foundry sand, lead paint, and inground dip tanks.  Since the closures of the major industries in the 1980s, the Greenwich Mohawk site has gone from the industrial heart of the city, to an abandoned and toxic site, and a potential danger for all those living in its vicinity.

How can the city of Brantford and its citizens reconcile the history of this site with its redevelopment and future use?  Many in Brantford want to erase the physical remnants of the city’s industrial history, past greatness and more recent failures.  This sentiment was evident in the city’s recent decision to expropriate 41 buildings on Colborne Street, the main street of Brantford’s downtown.  According to many, these buildings represented the longest stretch of pre-Confederation buildings left in Ontario.  Despite a public and professional outcry in Brantford and beyond, the city last year demolished over 3 blocks of historic buildings in its downtown.

1903 Cockshutt Plow Company Office Building today

Many have expressed a similar desire to demolish all that’s left of Brantford’s industrial history.  In 2002 the 1903 Cockshutt Office Building, all that remains of the massive Cockshutt Plow Company factory, was threatened with demolition.  The Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre successfully fought the demolition and had the building designated under the Ontario Heritage Act.  However, five years later the new owners of the building, the City of Brantford, tried to remove the heritage designation to make way for the building’s demolition.  The Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre again fought to preserve the Cockshutt building, and successfully saved its heritage designation.

For nineteen months the city of Brantford worked on negotiating a deal with the development company Terrasan, which would see the remediation of the Greenwich Mohawk site and its redevelopment into housing, commercial space, and parks and green space.  The Terrasan plan also included the adaptive reuse of the heritage designated Cockshutt office building into an industrial heritage centre that would preserve and promote Brantford and Canada’s industrial history.

However, Brantford’s city council recently voted to end negotiations with Terrasan, leaving the future of the Greenwich Mohawk site and the Cockshutt building in limbo.  Once again there have been various calls to demolish everything on the site, including the heritage designated Cockshutt building, and eradicate the physical remnants of Brantford’s industrial history and the painful reminders of the city’s deindustrialization.  While heritage advocates in Brantford have raised the alarm over the Cockshutt building on the Greenwich Mohawk site, one only needs to look at the empty three blocks along the south side of Colborne Street in Brantford’s downtown, to be worried about the future of heritage in Brantford.

Chiefswood from the Grand River

August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.

- “The Song my Paddle Sings,” E. Pauline Johnson

From Brantford’s downtown the Grand River meanders lazily, coming back on itself through a large ox-box, before reaching the tiny community of Newport.  Just past Newport the south shore of the Grand River forms the boundary of the Six Nations reserve.  From Newport the Grand River next flows through the town of Onondaga, and just a few kilometers past that, the river flows past a large white house on a hill.  This is Chiefswood.

George Henry Martin Johnson, a Mohawk chief, constructed the house from1853 to 1856 using walnut trees from the surrounding area, as a present for his English-born wife, Emily Susanna Howells.  The impressive home has two “front doors” – one facing the river welcoming those traveling by canoe, and another facing the road.  These two doors are key to the original function of Chiefswood and its significance today.  George Johnson’s family and Chiefswood represented a bridge between the two worlds of the Six Nations, and white settlers and authorities.

George Johnson’s grand-father Jacob was born in the Six Nations’ traditional territory in Upper New York State.  After the American Revolution and the destruction of Six Nations’ villages, Jacob followed Joseph Brant to the Haldimand Tract, the land on either side of the Grand River granted to the Six Nations’ by the British Crown in recognition of their loyalty during the American Revolution and in compensation for their lost lands.   George Johnson’s father, John “Smoke” Johnson, was born in the Haldimand Tract just outside of what would become Brantford.  Smoke Johnson fought in support of the British in the War of 1812, and became an influential figure in both the Six Nations’ community as well as neighbouring white settler communities.  Like his father, George Johnson also acted as an intermediary between the Six Nations’ and white settlers and authorities.  Fluent in Mohawk and English George worked as an interpreter for the Anglican mission on the reserve and later for the British Government.  With his marriage to English-born Emily Howells, George and his family bridged the two worlds.

Chiefswood was a physical bridge between the two worlds.  Here members of the Six Nations landed their canoes to visit and seek assistance or advice from Chief George Johnson.  Here also white settlers and government representatives stopped from their travels on the road to meet with George Johnson and gain his valuable services as a diplomat and interpreter between the two communities.

Pauline Johnson

Chiefswood is also significant as the birthplace and childhood home of E. Pauline Johnson.  Pauline Johnson came to fame across Canada, the United States and England as a writer and performer in the late nineteenth and  early twentieth century.  Pauline Johnson was proud of her Six Nations’ heritage proclaiming, “My aim, my joy, my pride, is to sing the glories of my own people.”  Yet Pauline was aware of her mixed heritage and her ability to bridge the two worlds through her art.  During her stage performances Pauline would alternate between her “native” dress of buckskin and bear-tooth, and fashionable “English” dress.  Pauline retired from the stage to Vancouver, and died in 1913 from cancer.  Her ashes were buried in Stanley Park where a monument to her still stands today.

Chiefswood still stands today as a testament to the Johnson family and their roles as intermediaries between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures and communities.  Recognized as a National Historic Site since 1953,  Chiefswood has operated as a museum since 1997.  While the site was damaged by water from frozen pipes last winter, it will soon open again soon to share its unique history as a bridge between two worlds.

Six Nations' protest at Caledonia

It’s been five years since members of the Six Nations began their protest and occupation at the site of the Douglas Creek Estates housing development in Caledonia.  The events at Caledonia garnered national attention and caused heated confrontations between both sides.  Five years later the land is vacant expect for one finished house, a burnt-out tractor trailer and Haudenosaunee flags, remnants of the Six Nations occupation.  The Ontario Government has purchased the land from the housing developer and provided financial assistance to residents of Caledonia affected by the protest and occupation.

But little has been settled.  On the five year anniversary members of the Six Nations, including the three women who started the protest, returned to the site, the land which they call Kanenhstaton or “The Protected Place.”  Many residents of Caledonia are still angry about the ongoing native land dispute, and only a few days ago took their message to Ottawa.  The recent book by Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford about the Caledonia protest and occupation, Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us, has been dogged by controversy.  Last November Blatchford’s scheduled appearance at the University of Waterloo was canceled after protesters took to the stage claiming that Blatchford “does not explore issues central to the aboriginal occupation, such as historic land claims and treaties.” The ongoing land dispute at Caledonia, and other outstanding land claims in the Grand River Valley, as well as elsewhere in Canada, speaks to the significance of history and what Laurier Brantford’s Program Coordinator for Contemporary Studies Peter Farrugia calls “the immanence of the past in the present.”

A few weeks ago the University of Waterloo was the site of a very different talk.  Professor Roger Epp, a political studies professor from the University of Alberta, gave two public lectures at the University of Waterloo’s Conrad Grebel College.  Epp talked about his book, We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays, which addresses settler-aboriginal relations in the prairies.  Yet for people like myself, living in the Grand River Valley, Epp’s assertion that “we are all treaty people, by inheritance, by virtue of living where we do,” has a contemporary meaning and resonance.

Haldimand Tract

I was born and raised in Cambridge, Ontario, a city built along the banks of the Grand River and its tributary the Speed River.  Growing up I learned bits and pieces of my hometown’s history: Cambridge was formed in 1973 by the amalgamation of the communities Galt, Preston and Hespeler; Galt, where I live, was founded in 1816 by the Scottish immigrant William Dickson and his business partner Absalom Shade.  What I didn’t learn was that Cambridge, along with all the land and communities within six miles of either side of the Grand River, from its source near Dundalk in Grey County, to Port Maitland, where the river empties into Lake Erie, is within the Haldimand Tract.  The lands of the Haldimand Tract were granted to the Six Nations by the British Crown in 1784, in recognition of their loyalty to the British during the American Revolution and in compensation for lands they lost in Upper New York State.  The proclamation by Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Province of Quebec, granted the lands to the Six Nations “which them and their posterity are to enjoy for ever.”

“For ever” lasted only 57 years.  By 1841 the Six Nations’ lands had been diminished from approximately 950,000 acres to 46,000 acres, less than 5% of the original Haldimand Tract, as they were relocated to the site of the present-day Six Nations Reserve.  Local histories are vague as to why and how this happened.  Brantford: Grand River Crossing by Janet Kempster and Gary Muir, explain the formation of the town plot of Brantford from Six Nations’ land in 1830: “Conscious that they occupied Indian territory, and uncertain of the legalities of their land transactions, the settlers managed to obtain formal titles for their properties from the authorities.  Furthermore, the Six Nations Indians were induced to surrender 807 acres to the Crown as a town plot.” (p.26)  Local history in Brantford tends to downplay, if not ignore the settler-aboriginal story.  The Brant Museum and Archives is the local museum in Brantford housed in a Victorian home.  The museum has been open since the 1890s, and the majority of its exhibits and artifacts reflect life in late 19^th century Brantford.  There is little mention of the Six Nations or the Haldimand Tract.

Sketch of the Mohawk Village on the Grand River with the Mohawk Chapel, ca. 1793

Brantford is also home to two other local history sites that present a very different view of Brantford’s history: the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Mohawk Chapel.  The Woodland Cultural Centre is situated on the site of the Mohawk Institute, a residential school that operated from 1828 to 1970.  Since 1972 the Woodland Cultural Centre has served as a First Nations’ educational and cultural centre.  Just down the road from the Woodland Cultural Centre is the Mohawk Chapel.  Built in 1785 the Mohawk Chapel is the oldest Protestant church in Ontario, and is the only remaining building from the original Mohawk Village on the Grand.

But the history presented at the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Mohawk Chapel appears to run parallel to that of the Brant Museum and Archives, what Epp calls the two solitudes of settler and aboriginal communities.  Brantford is a mere 25 km from the centre of the Six Nations Reserve, but the two seem worlds apart.  While many living today in the Haldimand Tract would like to keep it this way, with little or no reference to the history of settler-aboriginal relations in the Grand River Valley, the on-going land dispute in Caledonia brings this very history to the forefront.

The Caledonia land dispute is one of 28 outstanding land claims filed by the Six Nations against the Government of Canada between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s.  The Douglas Creek Estates property in Caledonia is part of the Plank Road/Port Dover Claim originally filed in 1987.  These claims document the alienation and erosion of the Six Nations’ lands in the Grand River Valley through the actions of white squatters, dubious land sales and titles, and the unscrupulous actions of the Six Nations’ government-appointed trustees.  According to the Six Nations these 28 outstanding land claims represent hundreds of billions of dollars.  But the Canadian Government has set a limit of $150 million for specific land claims.  The Six Nations recognizes that the Canadian Government cannot financially settle their land claims, and instead calls on the Canadian Government to uphold the spirit of the treaties to provide for the “perpetual care and maintenance” of the Six Nations.  Today, there is very little progress being made towards the settlement of the Six Nations’ land claims in the Haldimand Tract.

From living in the Haldimand Tract, working in Brantford, and visiting the Six Nations Reserve, the history of settler-aboriginal relations in the Grand River Valley resonates in my everyday present life.  It is a history that not only informs our present but needs to be reconciled with our present and future.  I now understand that I am a treaty person.  But we as Canadians, inside and outside of the Haldimand Tract,  need to recognize that we are all treaty people.

ActiveHistory.ca and Left History are delighted to announce the launch of Left History‘s theme issue on Active Histories. We are also delighted to launch our sixth short paper on our website, “Disappointment, Nihilism, and Engagement: Some Thoughts on Active History” by York University SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow Stuart Henderson.

The table of contents for the full issue are below the cut. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the Active History theme issue, we are distributing FREE copies to our readership (quantities are limited, so we will be generally operating on a first-come-first-serve basis). Please e-mail info@activehistory.ca with your name, mailing address, and a brief two sentence rationale for why you’d like to receive the issue. We would then be happy to send it to you free of charge. For information on Left History or to express interest in subscribing, please e-mail lefthist@yorku.ca.

LEFT HISTORY 15.1 Table of Contents

WHAT IS ACTIVE HISTORY?

Jim Clifford, “What is Active History?”
Tom Peace, “The Call of Passive History.”
Joy Parr, “The Terms of Engagement: Elements from the Genealogy of Active History.”
Victoria Freeman, “What is Active History?”

REFLECTIONS ON ACTIVE HISTORY

Stuart Henderson, “Disappointment, Nihilism, and Engagement: Some Thoughts on Active History.”
Craig Heron, “Workers of the World, Give Me a Call!”
Karen Dearlove, “Community History, Active Historians and Activism.”
Tim Groves, “Historical Plaques: Images from the Missing Plaques Project.”

ARTICLES

Nick Witham, “Kolko and the Functions of Revisionist Historiography during the Reagan Era.”
Ian Hesketh, “Weapons of Another Kind: Henry Thomas Buckle and the Case of Thomas Pooley.”
Wendy Cheng, Laura Barraclough, and Laura Pulido, “Radicalising Teaching and Tourism: A People’s Guide as Active and Activist History.”

ACTIVE HISTORY LOOKING FORWARD

Geoffrey Reaume, “Psychiatric Patient Built Wall Tours at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, 2000 – 2010.”
Joel T. Helfrich, “On Being an Active Historian and the Usefulness of History: The Case of the Ongoing Struggle for dzi? nchaa si’an (Mount Graham).”

REVIEW ESSAYS

Bryan D. Palmer, “The Democratic Revolutionary: Reviving Lenin.”
Michelle A. Hamilton, “Canadians and their Pasts.”

PLUS TWENTY-FOUR BOOK REVIEWS.

Demolition of forty buildings in Brantford's downtown - courtesy of Kalvin Clark

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll notice that I talk a lot about Brantford, Ontario.  Since completing my PhD in History from McMaster University I’ve been working as the Executive Director of the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre (CIHC), a not-for-profit organization in Brantford dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Canadian industrial history and the establishment of a museum site in Brantford to do just that.  This experience has expanded my understanding of how local communities understand and experience history, and the challenges of being an active historian.

In my last post “History, Heritage and Municipal Elections,” I discussed how the issue of heritage preservation was becoming a topic of debate in the realm of municipal politics.  In Brantford the need for a municipal Heritage Master Plan entered the political landscape last summer.  At the annual general meeting of the CIHC in June 2010, I gave a public presentation describing various examples of the adaptive re-use of industrial buildings in the Grand River valley, providing several examples from nearby Cambridge, Ontario.  In 2008 Cambridge became only the third municipality in Ontario, after Toronto and Niagara Falls, to adopt a municipal Heritage Master Plan which provides guidelines for protecting, conserving and enhancing the city’s heritage resources.  Recently, the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals recognized Cambridge’s Heritage Master Plan with the 2010 Heritage Planning Award.

Since my talk last June, the idea of a Heritage Master Plan for the city of Brantford has had wide circulation.  Brantford the issue of heritage preservation came to the forefront in the wake of the demolition of forty buildings in the historic downtown core, many of which dated to pre-Confederation times.  Although the grass-roots movement to save these buildings failed, what emerged was a new Brantford chapter of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, which was recently recognized with an award for its local advocacy.  Other grass-roots efforts paid off in Brantford when an independent investigation concluded that the municipal task force responsible for the expropriation and demolition of the forty buildings downtown, the so-called “South-Side Six,” violated the Municipal act by holding in-camera meetings and failing to give the public adequate notice of its activities. Brantford heritage advocates were also rewarded with the results of the October 25^th municipal election.   Of the “South-Side Six,” the five councilors plus the mayor who pushed through the expropriation and demolition of the buildings in the downtown, only two councilors were re-elected.  Brantford’s newly-elected mayor Chris Friel immediately spoke of his plans for a Heritage Master Plan and Heritage Trust for the city, as well as his support for the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre museum.

While it’s been a tough year for those trying to preserve and promote heritage in Brantford, it is rewarding to see the dedication and activity of regular citizens driven by a desire to protect what’s left of Brantford’s physical reminders of its past.

It’s that time again.  Municipalities across Ontario are gearing up for the October 25^th municipal elections.  Along with the lawn signs, debates in local community centres, door-to-door canvassing, and the usual issues of property taxes, jobs, garbage collection and pot-holes, the topic of municipal heritage preservation has entered the political landscape.

Under the Ontario Heritage Act municipalities can pass by-laws to formally designate properties of cultural heritage value or interest.  Formal designation of heritage properties is one way of publicly acknowledging a property’s heritage value to a community.  Properties can be designated individually or as part of a larger area or Heritage Conservation District.  The protection and preservation of a community’s built heritage is therefore primarily a municipal concern and varies widely from community to community.  In Ontario municipalities like Cambridge, Niagara Falls, and Toronto have adopted Heritage Master Plans to enhance their ability to protect the community’s heritage resources.  The City of Brantford, on the other hand, recently completed demolition of 41 buildings in its downtown, believed to have been the longest stretch of pre-confederation buildings left in Canada.

But in Brantford, as well as other municipalities across Ontario, local groups are bringing the issue of municipal responsibility for heritage preservation to the candidates.  In the City of Toronto, for example, Heritage Toronto and the Toronto Historical Association hosted a public mayoral debate and forum to discuss the state of heritage in Toronto in 2010.  In Brantford, the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre (CIHC) distributed a heritage questionnaire for all municipal candidates based on questions drafted by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.  The questionnaire is intended to gauge candidates’ positions on issues pertaining to built heritage and responses will be published on the CIHC website and local media.  Reactions to the questionnaire have ranged from it being called “gutsy” to comments describing heritage advocates as “a group of leftists”.  Either way, for residents of smaller municipalities like Brantford, or Ontario’s largest city Toronto, the preservation of a community’s heritage resources is becoming a bigger issue.

Photo by James Cullingham

On July 4, American Independence Day, the Queen of Canada, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper called her throughout her recent visit, attended a Sunday morning service at St. James Cathedral in downtown Toronto. Four days after Canada Day, the choice of a service at St. James, one of the most visible manifestations of Toronto’s increasingly atavistic ‘English connection’, was a reminder of the living presence of history.  This was poignantly apparent in Queen Elizabeth’s personal decision (according to Kevin S. MacLeod, Canadian Secretary to the Queen) to present two peals of hand bells to the Chapels Royal of the Mohawks.

In so doing, as the Archbishop of Toronto Colin Johnson and the day’s homilist Cathedral Rector Douglas Stoute reminded the 700 sweltering bodies inside the Cathedral and the thousands lining King and Church Streets outdoors, the Queen honoured a relationship that pre-dates the existence of Canada by more than 150 years.

Photo by Norman Einstein

In 1710, a Six Nations delegation visited the court of Queen Anne asking for her support. The first Mohawk Chapel was built in 1712 in the Mohawk Valley. Following the American Revolution and the defeat of British forces, loyalist Six Nations people were awarded a sizeable land grant in the Haldimand Treaty of 1784; and the first ‘Mohawk Chapel” was erected by the Crown in 1785. The relationship between Crown and some Iroquois was enhanced by the continued loyalty of Grand River people during The War of 1812. The present day Mohawk Chapel, renovated in 1983 in Six Nations territory on the Grand River, is the only Royal Chapel in North America. It was so designated in 1904 by Edward VII.

Photo by James Cullingham

As a historian, one is struck by Elizabeth’s choice of July 4 as a date to commemorate the 300-year relationship between the British Crown and the Mohawk Nation. Further, given the contentious, sometimes even bloody, relationship between the Canadian state and the Six Nations since Confederation, the import of the Queen’s decision to pay such homage was not lost on the Mohawks present, or on attentive observers of indigenous-settler relations in Canada. The silver bells that Queen Elizabeth presented on July 4 are engraved with the words The Silver Chain of Friendship 1710-2010; according to notes provided by the government of Canada, they “are symbolic of the councils and the treaties that originated between the English colonies in North America and the Iroquois Confederacy.”

Photo by James Cullingham

Predictably enough, that historically replete moment at St. James was overtaken by news coverage of a woman approaching the Queen without permission; and of later visits to a horse race and the home of the annoyingly ubiquitous Blackberry. The next night Prime Minister Harper retreated to even safer ground when (following a black-out due to decaying infrastructure in downtown Toronto), he feted the Queen to a state dinner before an almost entirely caucasian crowd in a ballroom at the Royal York Hotel.  (A casual observer would have thought that even the government of Canada would be savvy enough to know that the crowd assembled in no way visibly represented the population of a multicultural Toronto, but whatever…)

Photo by James Cullingham

In his well delivered, but somewhat charmless, platitudinous remarks, which included boilerplate references to family, hockey and a kids’ charity run by a donut company, Stephen Harper paid no heed to the kind of history the Queen had underscored powerfully just the previous day.

References
Government of Canada, Media Guide and Itinerary: Tour of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth

By Karen Dearlove, Executive Director of the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre

Five city councilors and the Mayor of Brantford have been pursuing the demolition of forty-one heritage buildings on the south side of Colborne Street in Brantford.  Colborne Street is the historic downtown of Brantford and by many accounts this stretch of buildings represents the longest stretch of pre-Confederation buildings remaining Canada.  Yet for years Brantford’s downtown has suffered, as downtowns have across Canada, from the retreat to suburbs and box store retail outlets. 

Last year the city expropriated the forty-one buildings and applied for Federal stimulus money to demolish all of the buildings.  Despite lack of a plan for the site, a grassroots public movement opposing demolition, and recent news from the Federal government that the city’s environmental, heritage and archaeological studies were insufficient and alternate uses for the buildings instead of just demolition should be explored, last Tuesday the City began demolition.

For the many heritage advocates, several of whom had never been so involved in a civic issue before, the scene was heartbreaking.  For those fighting to save these buildings they felt that the very fabric of the history of their community was at risk.

While historians often find “history” buried in documents in archives and on reels of microfilm, many find their community history visible most in the built heritage surrounding them.  These buildings are more than bricks and mortar, they represent the past and continuity to the future.  In Brantford the fight is not over as heritage advocates continue their pleas to Ontario’s Minister of Heritage and Tourism Michael Chan, and plan for future campaigns to save other heritage buildings in the city.

But Tuesday June 8^th was a dark day for history, heritage and the city of Brantford.

The following upcoming events may be of interest to our readers (click on ‘continue reading’ below for full descriptions):

1) Job Posting: NiCHE project co-ordinator.

2) Active History news from the CHA.

3) Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre (CIHC): Afternoon of History and Heritage in Brantford – June 12th

4) Approaching the Past: A series connecting people teaching history – Ruth Sandwell keynote speaker – June 16

5) Psychiatric Survivor Archives, Toronto (PSAT) Fourth Annual General Meeting – July 3

6) Digest of this week’s blog posts

If you have something to announce to the Active History community please contact info (at) activehistory.ca.

1)  NiCHE is an international network of people interested in the study of Canada’s environmental history / historical geography. They are currently looking to fill a 2 year position: “Project Coordinator” to help manage the day-to-day operation of the network and to facilitate projects that engage a wide audience with Canadian environmental history.  The full job description can be found on the University of Western Ontario human resources page. Questions about the position can be sent to the NiCHE director, Dr. Alan MacEachern (amaceach@uwo.ca).

2)  The Active History group became an affiliated committee of the CHA during last weekend’s annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association.  This group serves as a meeting place and forum linking Active History projects (like ActiveHistory.ca and HistoireEngagee.ca).  This year a number of new projects were discussed and ideas shared.  Jason Young stepped down as co-chair and was replaced by Jamie Trepanier.  For more information please read the minutes: Active History CHA 2010 Lunch minutes

3) The Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre is hosting an afternoon of history and heritage on June 12th.  Presentations include “Historic Mills in the Grand River Watershed” by Warren Stauch, “Adaptive Re-use of industrial buildings in the Grand River Valley” by Dr. Karen Dearlove, and a round table discussion of ‘place and history’.  The event is being held between 12:30 and 5 p.m. at Laurier at Brantfor Odeon Theatre, Rm OD110, 50 Market Street, Brantford.  For more information please contact 519-732-1000 or info@canadianindustrialheritage.org.

4) On Wednesday June 16th (7-9 pm) we will be jointly hosting “Approaching the Past: A series connecting people teaching history” at Black Creek Pioneer Village.  This will be the first of a number of evening events open to anyone with an interest in teaching history, particularly teachers, academics, and public historians.  Ruth Sandwell will be the inaugural speaker.  She will be speaking on “History is a Verb: Using Historical Sources to Teach Canadian Rural History.”  For more information or to RSVP please contact Jennifer Bonnell at jennifer.bonnell@utoronto.ca or approachingthepast@gmail.com.

5)  PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVOR ARCHIVES, TORONTO (PSAT) FOURTH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2010 from 1-5 PM at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/U of T – OISE 252 BLOOR STREET WEST, 8th FLOOR, ROOM 105 (atop the St. George subway station).  Psychiatric survivors/consumers/current/former patients and allies are welcome to attend PSAT’s AGM to hear a report on past activities, discuss future directions and elect board members for the year ahead. This meeting is wheelchair accessible. Refreshments will be available.

6) This week in the AH blogosphere:

- Christine McLaughlin: 2010 G8/G20 Summit: Upcoming Action and Events

- Jeff Slack: Heli-Skiing and cultural heritage in contested landscapes

- Theresa Iacobelli: Congo: The Most Dangerous Place in the World for Women

- James Cullingham: Tormorden Fantasy

- A. J. Rowley: How Useful is the Library of Congress’ Twitter Archive