With hundreds of buildings under construction, the city is changing before our eyes. It’s getting harder by the day to envision the Toronto that once was.
Sometimes the connection to the past gets really clear, as it did for the residents who protested this week to preserve Postal Station K, an art deco building on the site of the old Montgomery’s Inn, the seat of the 1837 rebellion.
But in general, we are losing the city’s history on a regular basis as a consequence of neglect or development. Our lax heritage regime just isn’t doing its job.
One problem is that it isn’t under enough citizen pressure. It’s often difficult to focus public attention because so much of our history is no longer visible. Compare this to Sudan, where I go often to do archaeological work. There the temples and buildings we excavate can often be seen on the surface – the pyramids at Meroe, for example, are standing after more than 1,600 years because of the dry climate and a lack of development.
But Toronto, too, has a rich cultural heritage going back hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years, though much is beyond our reach. As a consequence of natural and human-made changes to our waterfront, for example, a great deal of our aboriginal heritage won’t be retrievable.
Blame some of this on the changing shoreline of our lake over the last 11,000 years. After Lake Iroquois (the old name for a larger Lake Ontario with its edge still visible between Davenport and St. Clair) broke through and flowed out the St. Lawrence river, water levels dropped, creating a waterfront 20 kilometres south of where it is today.
Then over time, the lake slowly rose to a point where its edge was at Front Street. Subsequent landfilling pushed the lakeshore to its modern location in the late 19th and 20th century.
Most aboriginal settlements were close to bodies of water for food and transportation reasons. But with the natural shoreline getting covered by fill or water, many of the first people’s major sites are now gone.
The largest ones we know about mostly date, at the earliest, from the 17th century and the contact with Europeans, like aboriginal town sites, Teiaiagon at Baby Point overlooking the
Humber and Ganatsekwyagon on the Rouge. Then there are the mostly temporary camp sites, like the one found a few years ago at Withrow Public School.
In addition to our First Nation heritage, there are sites (many lost) that mark the presence of 17th- and 18th-century European traders, including the three French forts built on the western waterfront. One of these is the 18th-century Fort Rouillé, the remains of which were recently discovered at Exhibition Place.
The amazing thing is that while much of the city’s land has been disturbed over time, a huge amount of it with archaeological potential remains. In 2005 the city began to implement the Archaeological Management Plan, which has a useful online tool for property owners or residents wishing to understand the historical potential of a piece of property – check the archaeological maps at toronto.ca and see how much history there is left to uncover.
Those developing the maps reviewed historical documents to identify past dwellings and applied knowledge of where aboriginal settlements were typically located, taking into consideration nearness to water sources, the elevation of the land and the nature of the soil.
The danger, though, is that without more emphasis and resources, many important finds will be ploughed under by developers, despite regulations that if major artifacts are discovered, builders have to excavate.
Archaeological assessments are not overly expensive – under $5,000 for most sites – and certainly within the budget of multi-million-dollar development projects.
History is on the edge of being recovered all the time. The foundations and remains of the first Parliament site just east of Berkeley and south of Front were recently discovered under a parking lot. During construction of the Shangri-La condo at University and Adelaide in 2008, the buried foundations of the Bishop’s Block, a 19th-century townhouse project, revealed themselves and were excavated. About 130 banker’s boxes of artifacts were found including glass bottles, ceramics and children’s toys. Even in an area greatly altered, there is still potential for the recovery of things past.
But we need to have good laws and resources to help property owners protect heritage – it takes money and expertise to do it right. Ontario got its first professional government archaeologist in 1888, but today such a post does not exist in Toronto.
A chief municipal archaeologist could encourage residents to promote the protection of artifacts, and allow us to understand the reasons why a small British garrison town chosen for its defensive location prospered and developed into one of the most multicultural cities in the world. If we fully grasp this, perhaps we can better plan for Toronto’s continued evolution.
There is a rich history under our soil and in our structures, but city governments haven’t always been good at revealing or protecting it. Council needs to find the resources so coming generations don’t fault us.
What the city needs to do to save Toronto’s history:
1. HIRE A PERMANENT STAFF ARCHAEOLOGIST to coordinate excavations and curate a collection of artifacts. Though developers are required to do excavations if significant archaeological remains are found, the firms doing the work often keep the findings. They belong to all of us.
2. GET TOUGH with landowners letting a building decay in order to avoid heritage restrictions. Ensure the Heritage Property Standards bylaws have teeth. The idea is to be proactive and if necessary fund the preservation of the building by jacking up the owner’s tax bill.
3. BE GENEROUS WITH REBATES The city issues fewer than 30 Heritage Property Tax Rebates rebates yearly to residents for restoration of their properties. Not really enough, since Toronto has added approximately 6,000 buildings to the Heritage Inventory since 2000.
4. TIE CASH TO A PROMISE The city should ensure a historic building is protected for all time by getting those receiving public money for restoration to sign an agreement committing to long-term preservation.
5. PUMP UP THE GRANTS Currently developers can get city money to restore the front of a historical building, but grants for the other parts of the structure are so paltry that typically just the front is preserved. Time to reverse the trend of facadism.
6. MAKE THE PAST OFFICIAL Revise the Official Plan to ensure that cultural heritage landscapes are preserved.
7. KEEP HISTORY IN THE ‘HOOD Develop more detailed policies for the identification, designation and protection of Heritage Conservation Districts.
8. BE FLEET OF FOOT IN EMERGENCIES The city needs protocols to deal with threats to heritage buildings and archaeological sites from floods, fires or development pressures.
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