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.

Share/Save

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.

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.

Share/Save

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

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.

Share/Save

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 School Board plans on increasing access to their collection through an educational loan program.  The proposed program aims to expose school children to the artwork and artifacts in an educational setting.  The program would allow school children to both learn and engage with material culture and would see items from the collection being temporarily loaned to Toronto schools.   The School Board has acknowledged the fact that in some cases preservation and security measures will have to be put in place prior to certain items being loaned to schools.  Additional information on the loan program can be found here and here.

This proposed program is great in terms of increasing public access to a private collection and in the unique way it plans to teach children about art, culture, and heritage.  The downside? The proposed program will serve only the schools and children which are part of the Toronto District School Board.   Currently, no additional plans exist to extend the program to visiting school groups, or allow the general public access to the collection.  It is also not currently clear which items from the collection will be part of the loan program.

This example highlights a frequent dilemma in the art and heritage community.  Who decides what portion of a collection should be accessible to the general public? It is not logistically possible for any museum or art gallery to provide constant access to all items in their collection.  Exhibit space is limited in any heritage intuition, making it necessary to be selective in deciding which items are to be displayed to the public at any given time.  Additionally, from a preservation standpoint, placing artifacts on display puts an artifact under stress.  For example, fragile paper documents are very susceptible to light damage, making it impractical for such items to be on display for long periods of time.  Artifacts need to spend time in storage as a means of allowing them to ‘rest’, restoration to take place, and general collection maintenance to occur.

In addition to the quandary of selection, a loan program such as the one proposed by the Toronto District School Board presents another level of logistical problems.  Many museums provide hands on educational programming for children.  However, the materials which children handle in most educational programming are replicas, or deaccessioned items. This allows hands on exploration to take place without any risk of damaging irreplaceable artifacts.  The program suggested by the Toronto District School Board collection is intriguing as it proposes to loan out many original artifacts and art.  Policies and precautions will need to be put in place to protect the valuable nature of the items in the collection. Ideally, the developers of this program will strive to combine the desire to promote interaction with the need to preserve the collection for future generations.

Krista McCracken is a public history consultant and is currently working as a Digitization Facilitator for Knowledge Ontario.

Share/Save

It’s a story that has grown far bigger than Brantford.  Articles in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, and the KW Record have drawn attention to what’s happening in downtown Brantford.

It’s a story about heritage buildings, those trying to save them, a city council, a university, and academics caught in the middle.  It’s a story that raises questions about academics’ responsibilities in the community, academic freedom and activism, and the universities they work for.

At risk are 41 buildings located along three blocks of Colborne Street, the main street of Brantford’s downtown.  More than half of these buildings were constructed prior to 1867, and some claim this to be the largest stretch of pre-Confederation buildings left in Ontario.  It’s true these buildings have seen better days, as with much of Brantford which has suffered hard since the closing of major industries in the 1980s.  But Brantford has experience a significant resurgence in the past decades, due in large part to the growing Laurier Brantford campus downtown.

But that is now part of the problem.  Laurier Brantford and the Brantford YMCA have conducted studies, and applied for federal funding (unsuccessfully) to build a joint facility in the downtown core, specifically on the site of the 41 heritage buildings on Colborne Street.  The City of Brantford recently expropriated these buildings without any firm plans for the site other than the proposed (but not funded) Laurier Brantford-YMCA facility.  The City of Brantford has decided to completely demolish all 41 buildings with the help of Federal stimulus money.  Despite the lack of a plan for the site, and in the face of protest by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, the Heritage Canada Foundation, and the Ontario Heritage Connection, the demolition has already begun.

There are many others in and around Brantford that are protesting the demolition of Colborne Street.  And several of these are academics at Wilfrid Laurier University, including Leo Groarke, former dean of Laurier Brantford, and Lisa Wood, an English professor at Laurier Brantford.

Groarke, Wood and other academics have vocally opposed the rush to demolish these buildings without concrete plans or considerations of restoration or adaptive re-use.  They have shown leadership in a community concerned about protecting and preserving its heritage.  They are great examples of the community involvement frequently encouraged by universities.

But in this case they have faced criticisms by their own institutions.  Wood was called into a meeting with the principal of Laurier Brantford, because Brantford Mayor Mike Hancock (who also sits on the Board of Directors of Laurier Brantford) threatened to hold Wood and Laurier Brantford liable for any delays in demolition caused by Wood’s activism.  Wood never claimed to be representing Laurier Brantford in her protest of the demolition of Colborne Street, but the response by Laurier Brantford and the Mayor of Brantford suggests that academics are not free to act in the community, and questions the role of universities and free speech.