By Andrew Nurse, Mount Allison University

Ottawa House by the Sea is a museum on the Parrsboro shore in Nova Scotia.  It is anything but polished. Ottawa House is old, at least by Canadian standards, and it did serve as Sir Charles Tupper’s summer home for nearly two decades. But, it is a far cry from the Georgian-styled “mansion” promised on tourist web sites. One could, in fact, argue that Ottawa House epitomizes everything that is wrong with small-town historic houses.

I don’t want to make this argument. Nor do I simply look to contend that local history sites are potential venues for active history. This point is self evident. Instead, this post tries to make the case that Ottawa House is already the site of a very interesting type of active history, even if that history might not be immediately recognizable as such.

What is wrong with Ottawa House? The answer depends on one’s perspective. From the perspective of the modern tourist-oriented heritage industry – deftly explored by Ian McKay and others – one might say: just about everything. Ottawa House is set in a stereotypically picturesque location, but it is not easily accessible from main travel routes, it has next to no virtual presence, and the building itself shows serious signs of wear. It may have been gracious in its day, but its interior lacks the consistent look and feel that draws out for tourists the elegance it advertises.

From the perspective of professional historians, Ottawa House will appear more as a storage site then a lieu de mémoire. Officially, it tells a three-part story based on stages of settlement: Native, Acadian, then prosperous ship-building town tied to the Maritime economy. In reality, its rooms are so packed with objects that it appears more as a post-modern mélange then a narrative.  And, even the narrative is unclear. What causes social change? How did different peoples living on the Parrsboro shore interact? On these questions, the interpretive design is silent. In short, as both lieu de mémoire and interpretive narrative, Ottawa House fails.

What makes it interesting is precisely these failures. Ottawa House is clearly the work of amateurs, by which I mean a local history society run by volunteers. Its exhibitions are notable for two characteristics. First, they are a product of local activism. The artifacts on display were donated by community members, ransacking (one feels) their own attics. The slippery language of artificial authenticity (“similar,” “from the time,” etc.) is absent. What Ottawa House presents is a bunch of old stuff, saved by community members, and put up on display.

Second, Ottawa House strives hard to be “politically correct.” This is an overused term whose very overuse has made it meaningless so a word of explanation is required. There is no doubt that a critical analysis of Ottawa House could demonstrate that its displays are implicitly coded in ways that contribute to racialization, sexism, and class-based conceptions of the past. But, the people who put the displays together have tried to address these issues. They have tried, in other words, to devote space and energy to Original Peoples, women, and workers. Whether or not they succeeded will be a matter of debate. What is important is that they have tried to build an historic site that encompasses difference without collapsing it into a single plot line. Said differently, Ottawa House puts a local understanding of difference on display and makes what looks like a serious effort to treat this difference in as even-handed a way as possible.

Like many small-town historic sites, Ottawa House runs into problems. Its official discourse (if it can be said to have such a thing) plays with standard “golden age” themes in which history, at a certain point, just ends. The important local shipbuilding industry, for example, disappeared with the changing times but how and why and the effects of this change are not addressed. It leaves one with a semi-pervasive sense of nostalgia that is very similar to many other small-town historic sites in the Maritimes.

For all its shortcomings, the history on display at Ottawa House tells an interesting story. Through its displays and artifacts, it is a story that links the local history of the Parrsboro shore to wider historical dynamics: to trade and transportation networks, the mercantile economy, Confederation, and patterns of population displacement. Ottawa House has its standard and forced series of firsts (“legend has it …,” etc.) that are supposed to appeal to tourists, and its connection to colonial grandés, but these heritage industry standards are downplayed in the face of the House’s accumulation of ordinary things from days gone by. Moreover, these ordinary things are not purely local, at least in origin. They come from all over the place, demonstrating the way in which goods moved across networks and ended up in specific places at specific times. The criteria used to set up displays seem to be a particular objects use value in the past; not its aesthetics or supposed authenticity.

The end result is that visiting Ottawa House is something other than a trip down a nostalgic lane.  By virtue of its very lack of polish, commitment to community artifacts, and desire to treat different social groups fairly, we get a museum that presents more than a frozen past. It is not perfect, but it shows an active past, where goods moved along a range of trade networks to reach destinations far from their starting points.

Ottawa House’s clogged rooms give us a different sense of the past. If the standard historic site is concerned with “authenticity” and period consistency, Ottawa House is concerned with interchange, use, and the accumulation of artifacts that might or might not create a consistent look and feel. In its very diversity, it creates a sense of activity: of people working, and going to school, making meals, and adding to their households according to their own inclination or taste or wealth.

It is also a product of community activity and so, in this sense, meets two different objectives of an active history: to convey a sense of the past as something other than a static vacation land and to promote a broader community involvement in the consideration of the past.  What more could those of us interested in an active history ask for?

By Karen Dearlove

Restored tall grass prairie at Chiefswood National Historic Site

Historic house museums and other restored living history sites provide visitors with firsthand experiences of what life was like during different periods of the past.  These types of sites generally involve restored historic buildings filled with period furniture and furnishings, as well as costumed interpreters.  Many of these sites now include historic gardens and other historic landscape re-creations as part of the visitor experience.  Like historic houses and artifacts, historic gardens offer a glimpse into the past.

There is a wide variety of historic gardens and landscapes in Ontario.  Fulford Place National Historic Site in Brockville, for example,  is home to recently restored significant historic designed gardens.  The original gardens were designed by the American landscape firm the Olmsted Brothers, known for their work on New York’s Central Park.  Using archaeological evidence of the original planting beds, historic photographs and sources, the Olmsted Brothers’ garden was brought back to life at Fulford Place.  Historic designed gardens range from restored elaborate designs like the Olmsted Brothers’ gardens at Fulford Place, to the whimsical “pocket garden” of McDougall Cottage in Cambridge.

Historic gardens take many forms, not just elaborate designed landscapes.  Vernacular historic kitchen gardens, or vegetable gardens, provide opportunities to educate about agricultural history, culinary history and household economies of the past.  In the Grand River watershed the living history site Doon Heritage Village, features several examples of historic vernacular gardens.  The Martin Farm Garden is a restored “four-square” kitchen garden, rife with religious symbolism drawn from Mennonite life.  In the nearby Sararas-Bricker garden a variety of heritage vegetables are grown that would have fed the family and supplemented the household economy.  The Joseph Schneider Haus museum in nearby downtown Kitchener also features a kitchen garden representing the early pioneer family.

Another type of historic landscape is the restored tall grass prairie found at Chiefswood National Historic Site.  Unlike vernacular gardens or designed gardens, Chiefswood’s tall grass prairie appears unplanned and wild.  As part of the restoration of the historic house in the late 1990s a Historic Landscape Conservation Study was conducted that utilized historical photos and accounts, as well as archaeological evidence to document the history of Chiefswood’s grounds from 1856 to the present.  The study concluded that during the period that Chiefswood was occupied by the Johnson Family, the grounds contained several distinct areas of use, including a productive nut grove (walnut, butternut and hickory trees), an orchard, a kitchen garden with a melon patch, cultivated grape vines and raspberry bushes, and a large grassy meadow.  The results of this study outlined plans for the restoration and conservation of Chiefswood’s grounds to their historical state.

Towering Indian Cup plant in Chiefswood's tall grass prairie.

Complete restoration or rehabilitation of the grounds was deemed largely unfeasible, and instead, rehabilitation or adaptive re-use was considered the most appropriate course of action for Chiefswood.  The study recommended rehabilitation of the meadow into a tall grass prairie featuring plants indigenous to the area.  Tall grass prairies are natural grassland habitats that used to be found throughout the central United States, Ontario and Manitoba.  Today, less than 1% of this original habitat remains, much lost to agriculture, development and invasive species.  Common plants in Chiefswood’s tall grass prairie include Ohio Spiderwort, Wild Bergamot, Milkweed, Virginia Mountain Mint, St. John’s Wort, Yellow Coneflower, and the towering Indian Cup Plant.

At Chiefswood visitors can walk along pathways through the tall grass prairie, and with the use of seasonal brochures (Spring, Summer and Fall), can identify the different plants and learn about their traditional medicinal and other uses.  The Indian Cup plant, for example, which grows to an astounding 12 feet tall at Chiefswood, was commonly used by different First Nations people for pain relief and to prevent vomiting.  The sap from the plant was also collected and chewed like gum.  Chiefswood’s tall grass prairie not only provides an important habitat for indigenous plants rarely found elsewhere in the Grand River watershed, but an opportunity to explore a historic landscape that demonstrates how First Nations people in the Grand River watershed interacted with their natural environment.

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 Andrew Nurse, Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University

Photo Credit: http://www.eastmarket.com/smash/honour_roll.htm

The failed campaign to “Save the Memorial Library” (STML) at Mount Allison University is a fascinating study of the importance – or, lack thereof – of history in contemporary Canadian culture. For the better part of the past nine months, a small but determined group worked to stave off the demolition of Mount A’s largely unused Memorial Library building. The Library was built in the 1920s to commemorate World War I dead but has not been used as a Library for at least a generation. The campaign organized an on-line petition, wrote a never-ending stream of letters to the editor, and even urged students to make a human chain around the building to protect it. My aim is not to wade post hoc into the merits of this campaign. Instead, my goal is to look at the STML controversy from perspective of “active history”: what does this debate over the Library tell us about history and historical culture in Canada today? What can those of us interested in “active history” — the dynamics of history in contemporary life — learn from this contentious issue? Clearly, I can’t address this entire issue in one short blog, but I will suggest that there are several matters to which we should pay attention. 

First, those interested in active history might note that history has been both omni-present and strangely absent in this controversy. The STML campaigners argued that Library was a “cenotaph” (a war memorial), that it was architecturally important, that old buildings should be preserved because they are particularly attractive, that it was a site of memory, that it is an ethical trust to preserve memorials, and that those favouring destruction are not connected to local history or culture. To sustain their case, the STML campaign referred not simply to memory but to local pride and ethics: the living had a moral responsibility to remember the dead. This point was reinforced with reference to archival sources that supposedly provided irrefutable proof of their case. In short, STML was about history and how history should be honoured and respected. The level of emotion it engendered demonstrates how intense debates about history can become.

Yet, history was also completely absent. I am not faulting anyone, but making an observation. To the best of my knowledge, not a single professional historian was interviewed for a Memorial Library news story. The STML campaign did not ask a single professional historian to assess their case (or, help them make it); no trained architectural historians were asked about the value of the building; nor was any historian asked about the use of archival evidence. In short, the STML campaign did not feel that they needed historians to make an argument about history, conduct historical research, weigh archival evidence, or assess the historical value of architecture.

Nor was the STML campaign alone in ignoring professional historians. It seems that the wider community didn’t feel the need for historians, or even (at times) for history. The STML campaign is the work of a relatively small group of intensely committed people. The degree to which the university community engaged this issue is a matter of debate. One example: the student body (despite urging from activists) ignored the issue. In a recent issue of The Argosy, a student leader noted that not a single student had asked the student council to take a stand, one way or another. A court case seeking an injunction did not involve any historians as witnesses; nor, from what I understand, did the provincial minister who denied an application that would have converted the Memorial Library to a heritage site.

This might not lead to particularly positive conclusions about the relevance of professional historians, but it is also true that few historians seemed particularly interested in wading into this controversy. Mea culpa. Historians were neglected but they also opted out. Am I odd in thinking that people who have devoted their professional lives to the study of the past and its meanings had nothing to offer? The STML controversy demonstrated an interesting characteristic of contemporary historical culture: it does not seem to need or want contributions from historians while historians don’t seem particularly interested in engaging at least some historical issues.

For me, the role of historians is not to arbitrate historical significance, but I do think that an opportunity to engage the meaning of the past has been missed. Engaging this issue carries a risk because historians needed to confront the different sides with tough questions about the complexity of the past, the character of war and its effects on Canadian society, and how and why people die and kill in the name of the greater good. For example, the STML campaign mobilized a war narrative that was shockingly simplistic and, according to the best scholarship we have on WW I, inaccurate. The STML narrative never moved beyond a “Coach’s Corner” Cherryesque discourse. All dead “paid the ultimate sacrifice” and “gave their lives for us.” The politics and ideology of World War I and its effects on Canada were never discussed.

Effectively engaging this issue required making people uncomfortable by disrupting cherished storylines (whether about sacrifice or archival evidence). It seems to me that the historians (again, mea culpa) who could have engaged this issue shied away for precisely this reason. Perhaps that is the most important lesson to learn: an active history will not necessarily earn historians any brownie points. Active history requires courage because it may make historians unpopular. If we want to contribute a new relevance for history, however, this may be a price we need to pay.

Andrew Nurse lives in Sackville NB and teaches Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. His current research focuses on the history of participatory democracy and the history of arts activism in Canada. He can be reached at anurse [at] mta.ca.

Two years ago Brant County proposed selling a series of county-owned buildings that they deemed “surplus.”  According to the county, selling these eight buildings would save the county over $3 million over the next fifteen years.  The county would save on operating and capital costs, especially the costs of provincially mandated accessibility up-grades required for all public buildings.  Brant County is a mostly rural county with an overall population of approximately 36,000.  The largest community and county seat is Paris, Ontario, a scenic community on the Grand River with a population of 8,800.  The eight buildings that Brant County planned to sell are scattered throughout the county, spread throughout the small rural communities.  The Harley/Burford Township Hall, built ca. 1904, was used for a variety of purposes: weddings, dances, community celebrations, township meetings, community functions, and most recently as the home of the Burford Township Historical Society.  The St. George Memorial Hall, located in downtown St. George, was built in 1855, and is dedicated as a memorial to local war veterans.  The building currently houses the South Dumfries Historical Society Museum & Archives.   Also in St. George is the St. George Old School, built ca. 1893 as a public school, and recently used as a day care.  Community centres in Onondaga (built ca. 1874), Bethel (built ca. 1844), Pine Grove and Howell (ca.1874) and Northfield (ca.1900), were also on the surplus list.  The last building, the Langford School, built in 1886, began as a one-room school house for the surrounding community, and in 1964, became a community centre, and later housed a day care.

All these “surplus” buildings served the local communities in one use or another: school house, community centre, daycare, township hall, local museum and archives.  They served as significant meeting places for these rural communities.  They helped to create and maintain a sense of community in areas with little centralized infrastructure and facilities.  Longtime residents of these communities, as well as the organizations currently using these buildings quickly voiced their concerns with the county’s plan to sell these buildings.  In St. George, community members accused the county of disrespecting the war veterans to whom the St. George Memorial Hall is dedicated.  Others expressed concern that without a gathering place for residents, the rural areas would lose their sense of community.  And lose their history.  The South Dumfries Memorial Hall and Harley/Burford Township Hall house significant collections of local history artifacts and archives, maintained by volunteer-run historical societies.  Members of the Burford Township Historical Society feared that without the building to house their collection, their valuable local history could be lost.  Supporters of the Harley Museum vowed to fight the county over the sale of their building.

Etchings on the exterior bricks of Langford School made by past students.

Supporters of the Langford School also began to organize and formulate plans to save the old school.  For nearly a century the handsome brick one-room building served as the local school for children from the area around the village of Langford.  After the school closed in 1964, the building was used as a community centre for the area’s residents.  Throughout its history the Langford School was also the meeting place for the local Women’s Institute, which among other activities faithfully preserved the history of the local families.  The history of these students and families is etched into the exterior bricks of the old one-room school house.  For the residents of Langford, the bricks of the Langford School were a significant historical record of the community.  They feared that if this building was sold by Brant County, the land would likely be bought up by foreign landholders that have been purchasing huge tracts of farmland in the area for development.  If this were the case, the old Langford School would like be demolished to make room for new subdivisions.  Supporters of the Langford School created a group, Friends of Langford School, and a Facebook group.  They worked with a non-profit group in the area, Sustainable Brant, to manage the building, and approached Brant County for a lease on Langford School.  The Friends of Langford School also consulted with the Ontario Heritage Trust and approached the  Brant County Municipal Heritage Committee about designating the old school as a heritage building.  They proposed re-opening the Langford School as a community centre, and operated as a non-profit organization.  After months of negotiations with the Brant County council recently voted to give the Friends of Langford School a five-year lease on the building, allowing the group to pursue grants from organizations like the Ontario Trillium Foundation, for capital expenses and program funding.

With the City of Brantford’s decision to demolish 41 buildings in its historic downtown last year, the decision to save Langford School is very good news for those who feel that preserving built heritage is an important part of preserving local history.  For now the bricks of Langford School will remain to tell the stories of all the students that spent there.

Outdoor swimming hole in Soper Park.

Growing up in Cambridge next to Soper Park, the park became an extension of my backyard.  I spent many days exploring the park, wading in the creek, catching crayfish and racing home-made boats.  As a child the creek seemed mysterious and ancient.  It was dammed with stone and concrete dams, and walled in with massive stones, broken by sets of concrete stairs that led down into the water.  I used to image they were ancient ruins.  Only as I grew older did my father tell me that the creek had been dammed and walled as an outdoor swimming hole, which he used to visit as a child.  Under the silt of thirty years, you could still uncover the concrete floor of the swimming hole.

Today the ruins of the swimming hole in Soper Park have been replaced with a vibrant, naturalized creek, which has become a thriving ecosystem for significant species such as the brown trout.  Between 1995 and 2001 the City of Cambridge undertook a naturalization of the creek in Soper Park in an effort to bring the creek back to life from a “sterilized” swimming hole, to a cold water creek.  The stone walls of the creek were largely removed, and where the creek had been straightened and dammed, the project attempted to return the creek to a more natural and historical route.  Indigenous grasses, trees and shrubs were planted alongside the creek to prevent erosion and provide habitat for animals.

Outdoor informational sign in Soper Park.

For the City of Cambridge the rehabilitation of the creek was undertaken within a balancing act of public opinion.  Many people were concerned that by returning the creek to a more “natural” state, the well-known heritage features of the parks, including the stone embankments around the creek, would be lost.  While retaining heritage is often the “greenest” choice, in the case of restoring natural heritage in public parks choices have to be made between retaining certain heritage features over restoring the natural environment.  The City of Cambridge explained the process and publicized the work through public meetings, newspaper stories, outdoor informational signage at the park, and a Cambridge Natural Heritage Tour booklet available for free.  A “Friends of Mill Creek” organization was formed providing volunteer services to maintain the health of the rehabilitated Soper Park creek.

This latest chapter in the history of Soper Park represents a more modern approach to urban public and green spaces, to restore these areas to their “natural” state.  Throughout its history Soper Park has undergone many different phases of development and redevelopment.  The land was once known as “Jackson’s Field” and as a site where traveling circuses that regularly visited the area would pitch their tents and water their animals.  The land was purchased by the Town of Galt (which later became Cambridge) in 1905 for use as a public park.  The newly formed Galt Parks Commission hired renowned landscape architect Frederick G. Todd to form a plan for the park.  Todd’s plans called for the creek to be kept “as natural as possible,” but admitted that other “natural” areas, like the swampy land in the north end of the park, was “neither pleasing to look at nor is it pleasing to walk through.”  In this area Todd suggested that the creek be deepened and the banks lined with boulders to alleviate its natural swampy tendencies.

Peony Garden in Soper Park

Todd’s plans for the park were endorsed by the town, but work was slowed by a lack of funds and the First World War.  In the 1920s a local citizen whose house overlooked the park, Dr. Augustus Soper, personally took on further improvements to the park.  While Soper built on Todd’s plans, he made many extensive changes to the parks “natural” areas.  The creek was completely enclosed with stone embankments, and three dams were built to create the outdoor swimming pools.  A frog pond was filled to create the largest lawn bowling green in western Ontario, and the cedar swamp in the north end of the park was drained.  Soper constructed field-stone gates at the entrances to the park, which were dedicated as memorials to the community’s war dead from the First World War.  Laneways were constructed throughout the park to make it accessible to the automobile.  Other additions to the park included an impressive Peony Garden, Galt Arena Gardens – the oldest continuously used enclosed ice-rink in Canada, a miniature golf course, tennis club, and an outdoor public pool.

Naturalized creek in Soper Park today.

Today Soper Park is an impressive example of establishing a balance in a public park between public recreational uses and the restoration and protection of natural heritage.

Editors Note: Yesterday and today ActiveHistory.ca offers two perspectives on the recent controversy that erupted in Halifax over the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High School.

It should come as no surprise that the recent controversy over the renaming of a junior high school erupted in Nova Scotia.  On 22 June 2011, the Halifax Regional School Board voted unanimously to change the name of Cornwallis Junior High.  The school board was concerned about the legacy of Edward Cornwallis, the city’s founder, who in an effort to secure the town site placed a bounty on Mi’kmaq heads.  The board’s decision has caused considerable controversy and according to the media it seems that many people want the school’s name retained.  The changing of the school’s name, however, fits within a long history of name changes in Nova Scotia.  It presents a good opportunity to reflect on the diverse roots that make up Nova Scotia’s population and the province’s relationship with its past.  Renaming landmarks is a sign of a growing and evolving society that is in critical dialogue with its past.

Today, few places in Nova Scotia are known by their original names. The community known as Annapolis Royal was once called Port Royal by the French and Tecopsgig by the Mi’kmaq.  Truro was known as Cobequid and Wagobagitk.  Sydney had a plethora of names including Cibou, Riviere Denys, Dartmouth Harbour and Spanish Bay before it was named after Thomas Townshend, the first viscount of Sydney.  Halifax itself was renamed in 1749, replacing the Mi’kmaq name Chebucto with that of the presiding president of the British Board of Trade.  In each of these cases, place names have changed to reflect emerging social and political conditions – most recently the political and military domination of the British Empire.

Each change left a significant legacy.  Many people embrace the names brought by the British, but others continue to use the names from earlier eras.  Today, some Mi’kmaq residents still consider the province as Mi’kma’ki (the land of the Mi’kmaq), while for some Acadians it remains Acadie (the land of the Acadians).  These place names have roots that precede, or at least emerged contemporaneously with, Nova Scotia.  They have coexisted for centuries, with each, at various times, dominating how this large Atlantic peninsula and the places within it have been defined.  None of these definitions have completely disappeared.  The communities for whom they held meaning continue to exist.  The heritage of past place names haunts the debates of the present.

Two concepts of place lie at the heart of the tensions over the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High.  Most of us are familiar with one of the more-mainstream visions.  Halifax is one of Canada’s premier cities with a rich military and cultural history of which Canadians should be proud.  Edward Cornwallis bears much of the responsibility for building a successful European settlement on the shores of Chebucto Bay.  The other vision is less familiar.  In this vision, a Mi’kmaw fishing village (Chebucto) was overrun by European settlers, reducing their access to important marine resources and customary forms of subsistence.  When the Mi’kmaq resisted this intrusion, Edward Cornwallis placed a bounty on Mi’kmaq heads in an effort to re-inscribe the local landscape from a Mi’kmaq to British geography.

Historians and activists differ over what aspects of Cornwallis’s career were most important: the creation of Halifax or the reduction of Chebucto.  One group argues that Cornwallis’s scalping policy reflected European attitudes towards Aboriginal people and the tense climate of war in the mid-eighteenth century.  Although they caution that this policy should not be celebrated, Cornwallis deserves a prominent place in Nova Scotian history and its commemoration.  Place names and monuments in his honour serve as a good reminder of this important city founder and also of how the past is different from the present.

The other group, which is best represented by Mi’kmaw author and activist Daniel Paul, believe that the 1749 scalping policy amounts to ethnic cleansing.  This was a clear policy to push the Mi’kmaq off their land.  The scalping policy was the most obvious sign that the Mi’kmaq would have little say in the transition from Chebucto to Halifax and Mi’kma’ki to Nova Scotia.  In this context, Paul argues that Cornwallis’s name should be vanquished from the twenty-first century Nova Scotia landscape just as thoroughly as Cornwallis had sought to rid the Mi’kmaq from Halifax.

There is truth in both perspectives.  Cornwallis’s scalping policy mirrored similar European policies in both New England and New France.  But calling him a man of his time goes too far.  Just like you and me, Cornwallis had choices to make.  Some of Cornwallis’s contemporaries – particularly those affiliated with the Indian Department – took different approaches, choosing to negotiate with Aboriginal people rather than attack them.  Even the Board of Trade sought to rein-in Cornwallis’s approach to the Mi’kmaq because of its potential to create tensions with Aboriginal people further west.  The eighteenth-century British Empire was a heterogeneous entity, where imperial officials had considerable flexibility in the decisions that they made.

The renaming of Cornwallis Junior High touches on the ambiguities of Nova Scotia’s eighteenth-century history and its many name changes.  Halifax was not created from a virgin forest.  It was built without Mi’kmaq consultation on land that the Mi’kmaq used regularly.  In deciding to rename Cornwallis Junior High, this decision reminds the Canadian public that the past has different meanings for different parts of the population.  For some Nova Scotians, Edward Cornwallis is a figure who should be celebrated; for others, he represents the erosion of their community’s autonomy and independence.  Our public institutions should accommodate these differences and challenge the public to consider how past decisions affected and shaped different parts of Canada’s population.  Some of Canada’s great moments brought about significant hardship for some people living in our country.  Our place names should not ignore this legacy.

Despite the success of Will and Kate’s recent visit, Canada is no longer defined solely by its British heritage.  Cornwallis Junior High should be renamed.  The Halifax Regional School Board’s decision fits into a long Nova Scotian tradition of changing names with evolving social and political conditions.  As Canadian society increasingly recognizes and listens to the diverse communities within our borders, some place names need to change.  As previous name changes have demonstrated, this does not mean that the past will be forgotten; rather name changes reflect a growing and evolving understanding of our past.  This is a sign of a healthy society; one that uses history to learn from the past rather than merely seeking glory from it.

For more information about Edward Cornwallis and the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High see:

The story has been covered in the National Post, The Coast, The Chronicle-Herald as well as over the radio and television waves.

Here’s a short list of historians who have written on some of the issues at stake:

John Grenier, The Far Reaches of Empire

Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages

Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest

John G. Reid, Essays on Northeastern North America

William C. Wicken, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial

William C. Wicken, The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928

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.

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.

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.