Happy Guy Fawkes Night everyone!
This year I got to watch an effigy of Guy Fawkes burn at Old Fort Erie. The spectacle is coupled with their annual Halloween Historic Ghost Tours, something mindbogglingly spooky in itself.
I managed to get some pretty fantastic video. Enjoy 
Think of it as Yule Log, but for Guy Fawkes Night.
One of the benefits of having historical interpreters as friends is that they are all licensed to handle explosives.
I wasn’t too surprised that some of the more interesting people I follow on Twitter pointedly did not attend Nuit Blanche this year. It has become too big and too corporate and there were too many people to casually enjoy the art infused cityscape. Lines, lines, everywhere lines and all that.
But I am kind of disappointed. Has Nuit Blanche has jumped the shark? (Alas.)
Thanksgiving was its usual shuffle between my hometown and Jesse’s family farm. I woke up early on the holiday Monday to explore the three late 19th and early 20th century barn structures on the property. Ontario Barn trivia and more pictures follow the cut:
19th Century Canadian Art: An Iceberg, a Ship and Some Walrus near the Entrance of Hudson Strait, from the Archives Canada website.
I’ve been working for the Cabbagetown-Regent Park Museum for about a month and a half now. It’s really given me a chance to get to know Cabbagetown, an area I had hardly visited before I started working here. One of my favourite gems of the area is Riverdale Farm, a gorgeous city-owned-and-run working farm and living museum found along the old course the Don River, just east of downtown Toronto. (Located 3 blocks east of Parliament Street along Winchester Street.)
Riverdale Farm started its life like most of arable Ontario: As an actual farm. The land was purchased from the Scadding Estate in 1856 with the intent of building a jail (What would become the Don Jail) and, to keep the prisoners busy and well fed, a Jail Farm. In 1880 the land was designated parkland, although it was still maintained by Don Jail inmates, and became known as Riverdale Park. Keep reading →
Just to prove I am, indeed, alive, I have a new, albeit quick, post up at Spacing Toronto.
Evergreen Brick Works (nee Don Valley Brick Works) is looking for people to share their interesting stories about their experiences, be they through work or play, with business or family, on purpose or purely by accident, in order to better interpret the public history of Evergreen Brick Works.
If you are interested in sharing your stories about what you’ve been up to in and around the Lower Don Parkland and Don Valley Brick Works you can contact: heritage@evergreen.ca or 416-596-1495 x 550
Or, if you would rather, you can recount your own experiences in the comments section over in the original Spacing post.
Last weekend I had the chance to attend the 2009 Ontario Heritage Conference in Peterborough, Ontario. I had decided that I wasn’t going to post anything about the conference because a) the content, however inspiring/educational, was just so amazingly overwhelming I wouldn’t know where to begin and b) I forgot my camera and didn’t think my prose alone could do the conference justice.
But since I’m writing something up for the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario anyway, I figure I might as well post some of it here:
James Howard Kunstler, New Urbanist and author of “The Geography of Nowhere” was the first keynote speaker of the conference. I was excited, because I had seen his TED lecture (online, obviously) and had an idea of what an enigmatic and brilliant speaker he is.
The crux of the keynote address, beyond his initial arguments for the end of the car and suburbia as we know it, was that we have forgotten how to build places worth caring about, and have ceased to make places adequate for every day human activity. We need to protect our heritage streetscapes because they are not only excellent examples of built environments that work but are the only places we have that still do. As the large-scale industrial economy collapses we need to return to small-scale locally driven building projects that emphasize quality, craftsmanship and functional solutions to community needs.
While pre-war architecture was designed to be familiar, logical and comforting structures that facilitate long-term use and revitalization cycles, celebrated post-war architecture was designed to unhinge and disturb, to completely redefine everything we feel a building is and should be. Buildings designed since the advent of our car culture, from 75 storey skyscrapers to squat one storey pizza huts, were designed for one purpose only and will not experience cycles of adaption and re-use like so many of our surviving Victorian buildings have. They were also built to fall apart, at a time when energy and materials were cheap and nobody was thinking beyond the new ideas of the day.
Kunstler is fascinating, passionate and intelligent. His keynote address was an invaluable experience for heritage professionals and enthusiasts alike. His speaking style was clear, directed and he easily wove the most pressing issues humanity faces today, such as the failing industrial economy, global warming and peak oil into a tapestry supporting the protection and revitalization of our built heritage.
His flamboyant and exaggerated performance emphasized the most extreme repercussions of our current lifestyle in a way that made them seem inevitable. He is the sort of speaker who can convince even the most determined skeptic that it is, indeed, time for us to reevaluate how we allocate our resources.
He was unique at the conference in that he didn’t play it safe, emphasizing the controversial and stimulating quite a bit of heated discussion amongst delegates. Overall the moderation of the speakers and presenters was excellent. Discussion and presentations were consistently interesting, intelligent and informative throughout the conference. There was, however, a lot of repetitive discussion. Because there were so many public figures, (including Glen Murray and Adam Vaughan! *faints*) on the panel there was a tendency for panelists to attempt to out-eloquent each other. Too many of the panelists agreed on the fundamentals, so all conflict and subsequent discussion was over small details. In some cases, the panelists were merely preaching to the choir, speaking about the issues and perceived solutions that many heritage-minded individuals already agree on, as opposed to exposing delegates to new ideas.
That is always the challenge when organizing a conference of like-minded individuals. In an attempt to appease everyone sometimes the real issues are lost. Heritage folks don’t agree on everything, to the contrary, there is a vast amount of argument over best practices between Municipal Heritage Committee members, heritage planners, architects, municipal council members and heritage developers, all of whom are truly passionate about our built heritage. These integral differences fuel passionate discussions every day in the heritage sector, and, in my opinion, should be what we are trying to come to terms with at a conference like this.
Next year I’d like to see a few panelists who are known to be anti-heritage to explain their point of view, for example, someone who regularly who votes against heritage initiatives or a developer who is known to demolish rather than re-use, one what supports façadism, or one that has tried to adaptively reuse a heritage property, but has found it too difficult.
All in all, the conference was probably the most innovative in years. Its interdisciplinary focus on Municipal Cultural Planning and its well-known keynote speakers and panelists attracted a wide variety of people in record numbers.
I had an amazing time, what I’ve written here doesn’t even begin to describe all that the conference offered. But, unfortunately I have more awesome work to do for the ACO, and have to stop for today. Lately my writing has been neglected, mostly due to my fulfilling but heritage-related tome draining job.
Hopefully I’ll be writing more soon!
Doors Open Ontario is a series of cultural heritage festivals that take place between late spring and early fall in municipalities across Ontario every year. This year nearly fifty municipalities will literally open the doors of their buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and social significance and invite residents and visitors alike to discover first-hand Ontario’s hidden heritage treasures, some of which have never been open to the public.
I’ve never attended a Doors Open event before. I’ve joyfully volunteered (and will again this year) at quite a few across Ontario as a tour guide or property supervisor, but I’ve never actually had the chance to spend an afternoon poking around the great heritage buildings of a place.
If you live in the GTA you’ve probably noticed that this weekend is Doors Open Toronto. There are people everywhere; wandering around, taking pictures, paying uncommonly apt attention to their surroundings. I suspect that Doors Open appeals the the deep human desire to see what people are really up to behind closed doors.
We are an inherently nosy species.
Don Jail, pictured above, is a massive pre-Confederation prison that was designed to facilitate reform instead of repeated incarceration. The revolutionary design by William Thomas provided each inmate with access to daylight, heat and ventilation. This October it will be completely renovated and restored, Doors Open is one of the last opportunities to see it before it is adapted for modern use. If Twitter is any indication a lot of people planned on touring the eastern properties today, and incidentally that was also my plan. The lure of a Victorian Gaol followed up by fresh Mill St. beer was far too tempting.
Past the cut you’ll see some of what I got up to today:
Last night I braved the eastern wilds of the Distillery District to go to the fifth annual Toronto the Good party, an event in honour of fair city Toronto organized by the amazing folks at ERA Architects Inc, Spacing Magazine, Toronto Society ofArchitects and [murmur].
Despite a plethora of social blunders (on my part, for I have the social grace of a yak) I really had a great time.
I got the chance to meet a lot of the people that I usually admire from afar, something new for me, but something that I think is going to be kind of important in the future.
This summer I’m hoping to get a lot more involved with what is going on in the City proper. For the first time since I’ve moved to Toronto I’ll be downtown regularly, working as an Architectural Conservation Assistant for the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (!!!!!). I really think it’ll make a difference. I love where I live in Etobicoke, but it is a hell of a trip downtown and back, especially in the evening after the regular commuters and their more rigorous transit schedule have left!
I had a bit of free time downtown this afternoon so I decided to check out What Has Architecture Done For You Lately? (WHADFYL?), the newest exhibit at the Design Exchange.
Curated by Zahra Ebrahim, the founder and Executive Director of archiTEXT, the exhibit encourages all people, not just architects, to join in a discussion of architecture + the economic, equality, emotional, health, and environmental challenges facing our global cities today.
By utilizing an accessible vernacular, visual art and audience participation, Zahra Ebrahim has very successfully created a stimulating show that has the potential, in my opinion, to both challenge the professional architect and inspire those who are just developing an appreciation for the built environment.
If you are interested, I have another post up at Spacing Toronto.
“Save Our (Heritage) Schools: The adaptive re-use of our dying institutional buildings” is largely derived from my notes for the Preserving Heritage Schools workshop organized by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario and Community Heritage Ontario that I attended last Februrary.
Enjoy!
Just because I am suffering from a hideous bout of bloggers block doesn’t mean I’m not up to a lot of interesting things. I have about five half-finished (quite-interesting) posts sitting in my drafts queue that I, for the life of me, can’t seem to finish. I suspect the fact that I have once again run my computer into the ground, causing it to run like molasses and making even the most simplest of tasks arduous and painful doesn’t help.
Last Saturday and Sunday I attended Part One (of Two) of the Heritage Planning Workshop run by the University of Waterloo School of Planning and their infamous Heritage Resources Centre. So far, the workshop has been amazingly helpful. It started off with an international review of heritage, built heritage and conservation legislation and finished off with an in depth analysis of the Ontario Heritage Act and the Ontario Planning Act and the tools this legislation provides municipalities for protecting our cultural heritage landscapes.
The workshop takes place here, at The Grange in Mississauga, a place I had never visited but that I’ve encountered many times before on the Ontario Architecture website!
Also known as the Robinson-Adamson House, this gorgeous Regency style summer home was built for John Beverly Robinson in 1833. We were told that the facade consists of more window than wall!
The long french windows found on most Regency style homes are not at all suited for harsh Canadian winters; they let a lot of heat escape. These windows are particularly elaborate, and particularly unsuitable for anything but a summer home. At the time that this house was built there was no local glass producer. The small panes used to construct these windows were probably transported at great expense from Montreal, the US, or perhaps even directly from Europe. Such elaborate fenestration was probably meant as a symbol of wealth, power and prosperity.
The wooden and glass transom and windows all have decorative Neo-Classical moulding. The building also sports a Neo-Classical frieze and an oversized cornice. All of the decorative wood elements have survived to the extent a which they have because of a brick cladding which covered all of these elements until the building was restored in the 1970’s.
The low cedar shingled hipped roof is typical of the Regency style, but these dormers were probably added later in the 1850’s.
Here you can see the original tree lined laneway, a tell-tale sign of a former farmstead. A ‘Grange’ is essentially a gentleman’s farm, they are often used to entertain guests and conduct business. This house was never really meant to be a permanent residence and was used more as a summer retreat for the well-off businessman.
The interior of the home is almost hilariously crooked, there are very few right angles to be found. The building is currently used by the Mississagua Heritage Foundation as exhibition and meeting space.
And who is that dashing young mannequin in the background?
Why it’s Rudy (Rudolph) the solider, one of four of such mannequins to be made for one of the Ontario Fort’s (I forget which) in the 1920’s. His name is sewn on the back of his head. I made a pass at him, but he declined. (He is obviously saving his heart for my good friend Kate, a seasoned soldiers wife at Fort Erie.)
I am very slowly learning the geography of Toronto on foot.
I spent yesterday evening marching up and down Front Street playing ‘name that architectural feature’ and harassing a series of coffee shops and pubs with my laptop and piles of printouts, while Jesse attended a training session at the Rogers Centre in preparation for the upcoming baseball season.
Good news: It looks like Blue Jays Toonie Tuesdays will be back this year.
Bad News: All of two dollar seats will be in a designated dry zone due to several ‘alcohol related’ fights last year.
Alas, the over-passionate belligerently drunk fans were always the best part of sitting way up in the nosebleeds.
I really love when the seasons change. Whether it be from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter or winter to spring, I always feel inspired. Yesterday I decided to take a break from my job search and took a trip on the 501 Queen Streetcar to Birds and Beans Cafe, my preferred Etobicoke caffeinating station. It’s one of those places that doesn’t mind if you come in to work or read, they have free wifi and organic, fair-trade, bird friendly coffee that they roast and grind themselves. These people know coffee like wine-lovers know wine, they even have a giant coffee flavor descriptor wheel hanging on the wall. If you are ever in Mimico, I highly suggest you check it out. Anyway.
As I left I decided I could avoid work for a longer time if I walked home, so I did. While snaking through the short streets between Lakeshore Blvd and Lake Ontario I happened across Norris Crescent, an attractive looking federally administrated housing co-op that leads to a little lakeside park. Now, I know what you are thinking: ‘attractive looking’ and ‘housing co-op’ are seldom used as mutual terms, but believe me this place was nice, affordable low-income housing.
The narrow street with parking along its right side had little traffic and the wide sidewalks were populated with several troops of playing kids (although I managed to get a picture without any children in it, for obvious reasons.) The two-storey alternating red and yellow brick buildings are set close to the street, with low ‘cast iron’ fences around the front lawns and a row of aging trees lining the street. It reminded me of the familiar layout of many of the 19th century neighborhoods in my hometown.
The large windows that dominate the facades of these buildings give the impression that there is always someone watching the street, and I got the feeling that someone always is. All of the front stoops contained a couple of chairs and, at the time, most of the front stoops were being used by teens and adults for socializing. It’s a really warm and welcoming neighborhood, and although I have no data on the socio-cultural reality of life on Norris Crescent, it was definetly a nice place to be on a spring afternoon.
At the end of Norris Crescent is Norris Crescent Parkette, the western termination point of Phase 1 of Mimico Waterfront Park, a 10.6 million dollar waterfront revitalization project that opened to the public last June. This curved, paved boardwalk was being used as a launching point for two girls on roller blades.
Bruce Mackay, 1976, 17 min 23 s
A 1976 documentary about innovative housing and community design as a way to conserve energy. Two planned mining towns, one in Quebec and another in Manitoba, are examined, as well as solar-heated homes in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. This film was produced by the NFB for the Canadian Habitat Secretariat, Urban Affairs.
This fascinating National Film Board documentary starts with a quick history of Canadian construction and settlement planning before launching into a series of innovative 1970’s approaches to creating sustainable and livable Canadian communities. Passive heating and cooling, solar energy, mixed use of public spaces, dense and diverse town centres, economic diversity, and household agriculture are just a few of the ideas built into the mining towns of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba and Fremont, Quebec and experimental design homes, such as Provident House in Aurora and The Ark of PEI.
What’s most striking is that we are still struggling to integrate a lot of the concepts presented by the Canadian Habitat Secretariat, Urban Affairs into Canadian cities thirty-three years later.
I guess overcoming the challenges of the past, and planning workable, thriving Canadian municipalities isn’t as easy as we thought it was going to be.
Also interesting, although I’m not quite sure what make of it, is the new Toronto Star map of Toronto Neighbourhoods. I’m interested to see how the City reacts to being categorized in such a way…
You’ve certainly aged well, old friend.
If you are reading this you might be interested to know that I’ll be occasionally contributing to the Spacing Blog from now on!
My first entry, “Amalgamated Heritage: The Lost Streetscapes of Bronte”, is really just an edited version of a post you can already find here. (Although I prefer the Spacing version, hands down.)
Photo by Squeakyrat
Last Saturday I attended a mini-conference on the adaptive reuse of heritage schools.
I’ve been chipping away at a more substantial post on the topic, but for now here’s some of the pictures I took along the way.
“Preserving Heritage Schools”, presented by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario and Community Heritage Ontario, addressed many of the issues surrounding the preservation school buildings with cultural heritage significance in Ontario communities.
The workshop took place at Kensington Market Lofts located at 21 Nassau Street. Kensington Market Lofts is itself the former Provincial Institute of Trades and was at one point part of George Brown College.
At the end of the day we were given a tour of the facility, including a trip up to one of the third floor rooftop decks!
“This growing dissent within the architectural and preservation communities represents the paradigm shift now in progress as the grip of historicist doctrine is gradually broken. In its place, a new conservation ethic is emerging, drawing together traditional architecture, new urbanism and historic preservation in pursuit of a built environment that is beautiful, sustainable and just. In the new paradigm, the architecture of our time will be the result of a critical engagement with the architecture of place, seen as a continuously self-renewing field of character and civility.” -Steven Semes, “New Buildings Among Old: Historicism and the Search for an Architecture of Our Time.”
This Saturday I attended an Old Home Restoration Workshop hosted by the City of Burlington, Heritage Burlington and Edifice Magazine, the only magazine in Canada dedicated to owners of old homes.
Christopher Cooper, Editor-in Chief of Edifice Magazine, facilitated the workshop. Starting from the chimney top and working down to the basement, Chris Cooper guided/chided his way through an examination of proper repair methods, restoration best practices and general maintenance of a heritage home. The workshop was primarily targeted to homeowners, but also catered to contractors, craftsmen and heritage enthusiasts.
I don’t own a house myself, nevermind a heritage home, but I did find the workshop extraordinarily useful. I especially valued the diagnostic tools that were presented, such as how to recognize a salvageable wood window and how to identify and eliminate the causes of dampness and decay. Chris himself is an amazing resource, offering instant advice backed by 25 years of research and experience. The workshop was designed to provide homeowners with the knowledge base needed to properly repair and care for their heritage homes, but the same training will allow me to more confidently assess the needs of the heritage property owners I’ll be working with in the near future.
And hopefully, someday, I will have the chance to buy a heritage home with cracked plaster, painted shut windows and failing masonry all of my own.
I’ve been meaning to wander on down to the Harbourfont Centre for the Building On History exhibit ever since it opened, but haven’t had the chance. Jesse isn’t as intrigued by the city as I am, mostly because he grew up here, so sometimes it is hard to convince him to do touristy things with me. Luckily last Monday was the second annual Family Day in Ontario, both Jesse and I had some time off, and both of us were bored out of our minds after a weekend indoors.
Building On History is currently on display in the architecture gallery at the York Quay Centre, one of the many buildings that make up the greater Harbourfront Centre. Three Canadian architecture firms that specialize in restoration and adaptive reuse were invited to create installations in response to the idea of ‘building on history’. The result is a really interesting collection of exhibits that explore some of the questions and misconceptions that the public generally has about heritage conservation.
Jesse and I also went for a lovely walk along the harbourfront. A lot of the facilities in use at the Harbourfront Centre are historic structures formerly associated with the shipping industry that have been adapted to suit the needs of a community cultural centre.
Look behind the cut for a more detailed account of the Building On History exhibit and my journey about the Harbourfront Centre:
This little gem of a documentary aired February 5th on The Nature of Things. It chronicles the journey of Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume on his cross-country VIA train ride through Canada’s big cities. The result is a concise, if a tad over-simplified examination of the successes and shortcomings of Canadian urbania.
If want to watch the whole documentary and live in Canada you can find it here on the CBC website.
More than anything this program reaffirmed my desire to visit Halifax. The last time I was in Nova Scotia I was only seven years old and blind as a bat (although I didn’t know it at the time).
