Active History

Invitation to Toronto’s semi-centennial in 1884. Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Room, “1884. Reception. VS”.

By Kaitlin Wainwright

Today marks 180 years since the former Town of York was incorporated as the City of Toronto. It was given a new name, distinguished from New York and a dozen or so other places in the province. The city’s earliest neighbourhoods were the five wards named for the patron saints of the British Isles: St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and St. David, and for St. Lawrence, a patron saint of Canada. Subway stations and public spaces remind us of these past neighbourhoods, building layer upon layer of commemoration.

Toronto recently celebrated its 175^th anniversary as a city in 2009 with gatherings, parades, and a video designed to inspire pride in the city. Five years later, public events geared towards celebrating the establishment of the City of Toronto are calling upon us to gather where others stood before us. With a civic election looming in the fall, the media is again providing the advice that “[r]emembering the past is a useful step toward moving forward together.” But what pasts are being remembered?

I am a closeted patriot: I find points of pride in my identities and their symbols, but I also believe there is value in understanding these symbols from a critical perspective. As we often must be reminded, commemoration tells us as much about our present as it does about our past. When I consider acts of commemoration, I often wonder if the reason we wrap ourselves up in them like a security blanket is not because we see the past through a present lens, but because commemorations are about shared history and the stories that we tell about ourselves.

David Lowenthal suggests that “in celebrating symbols of their histories, societies in fact worship themselves.”  When discussing commemoration, personal pronouns are used: My heritage, our past. Memory — not history — is the guiding force behind acts of commemoration. So, on Toronto’s 180th birthday, I want to ask: What symbols of Toronto’s past are we celebrating? How does Toronto’s collective memory impact its present? Continue reading →