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From the Globe:
MAKEOVER: IN TIME FOR THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE WAR OF 1812
Fort York's latest battle - for funding
Dust off the epaulettes and shoo away the beer festivals, the historic site is starting to get some friends in high places
JEFF GRAY
February 14, 2009
Retreating British soldiers, relinquishing the capital of Upper Canada to invading Americans on April 27, 1813, had one last-ditch trick: They blew up their ammunition stores with the enemy just outside the walls of Fort York, creating what one witness called a "a great confused mass of smoke, timber, men, earth," killing or wounding more than 250 U.S. troops.
Nowadays, it makes sense that Fort York's cannons are instead pointed at the cars roaring by on the towering concrete Gardiner Expressway, which looms overhead. Threats to the fort, the site where this city's future was sealed and an independent Canada was born, have long come not from Americans but from the indifference of Torontonians themselves.
And it is not just the indignity of the hulking Gardiner and the nearby flashing billboards. Landfill and a concrete plant - soon to be a park - have long cut off the fort from the lake, as the railways cut it off from the city to the north. A condo boom has now added a wall of glass-and-steel towers to dwarf the fort's 19th-century battlements. School trips are down. A proposed light-rail line just west of the fort's walls has raised alarms.
However, with plans forming to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 in June of 2012, the city and the site's supporters say it is time to make amends with the ghosts of Fort York - the city's only official national historic site - and treat it with the respect it deserves, starting with a $15-million visitors centre. But the battle to raise the cash from recession-weary governments and private donors is just beginning. "It has laid there forgotten," said Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, co-chair of the city's War of 1812 bicentennial committee. Now champion of the fort's revival, he says Torontonians need to be reminded of the war's importance.
He insists that early signs are good. The city has committed $5.7-million, and the federal government - the Conservatives promised to commemorate the War of 1812 in their election platform last year - cut a cheque last year for $617,000.
The city's attitude toward the site appears to be changing. There is now a Fort York Boulevard, a new entrance and new neighbourhood springing up around the fort. A new art installation, meant to mimic the reflection that water would create on the underside of the Gardiner, is slated to recall the 19th-century shoreline that abutted the fort. Pedestrian bridges are planned to link the site to dog walkers, joggers and cyclists in the neighbourhoods to its north. City officials are even investigating whether Fort York could win UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
And, Mr. Pantalone said, as of this summer, the fort will no longer be forced to rent out what is essentially a military graveyard to a summer beer festival that features beach volleyball and rock concerts.
"If you care about your national historic site, you don't prostitute it," he said, even though the massive event represents about a third of the fort's 80,000 annual visitors.
Greg Cosway, founder of the Beer Festival, took issue with the idea that he was pushed out, saying he and the city "mutually" agreed to change venues, with this year's festival moving to Exhibition Place. He insisted it wasn't inappropriate for a historic site: "If you got a bunch of young soldiers together back in the day and said, 'Hey, what about a beer event?', I am sure they all would have been keen."
A citizens group, the Friends of Fort York, has started a foundation in an effort to raise as much as $5-million in private donations to help pay for the visitors centre and the site's makeover. More than $100,000 has come in, the group said.
Fundraising consultant Nicholas Offord, who did a feasibility study for the Fort York Foundation, said the outlook is good, despite the economic downturn and the fact that Toronto donors have recently put up hundreds of millions for the renovated Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario.
"There is a community of people in the city of Toronto who think that the history of the city needs to be better celebrated ... and better promoted," Mr. Offord said, adding that close to half of the city has visited the fort at least once. "And I think this is right up their alley."
He said the small scale of the project, at $15-million - although other plans to landscape and restore the fort run as high as $32-million - is modest. "That's a very manageable number," Mr. Offord said. "It's not like we're building a $200-million museum."
Perhaps we should be, given that without the fort, there would certainly be no Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, no ROM, and no Canada, according to Carl Benn, the author of Historic Fort York, 1793-1993, and head of the history department at Ryerson University.
Of course, the fort was not the only factor. But had the Americans not left York after occupying it for six days and then been repulsed the next summer by its rebuilt fortifications, they might have realized their aim and captured Upper Canada, turning it into a satellite of New York State.
Toronto, instead of becoming a 21st-century cosmopolitan national financial capital of 2.5 million, would now look a lot more like a tiny dead-end rust-belt U.S. port, such as Rochester or tiny Oswego, N.Y. - population 20,000.
"The leading war hawks in upstate New York were hoping to create a situation where Upper Canada would be a hinterland for their business interests," said Prof. Benn, the city's former chief curator, who worked at the fort as a historical interpreter in the early 1970s.
In addition to the makeover for Fort York, the city is cooking up other events commemorating the War of 1812, possibly including performances linked to the Luminato arts festival in June of 2012. The city also plans to mark the bicentennial - being celebrated in other Ontario and U.S. communities too - with a "heritage trail" marking key points, such as the spot in what is now Parkdale where U.S. troops first landed.
Sandra Shaul, in charge of the city's 1812 plans, said the trail should appeal to more than just military history buffs, perhaps with numbered sites and a Web-based guide that could be used for other themed walks, instead of standard-issue historic plaques: "There's more plaque on the walls here than on teeth in the dentist's office. What you want is something more flexible."
Stephen Otto, who founded the Friends of Fort York in 1994 and has been fighting for the site ever since, said he is hopeful that the federal government will add to the $617,000 grant, since the national historic site has never received substantial funds from Ottawa.
There is clearly money to be had: Witness the federal government's pledge to spend $20-million restoring the city's Brick Works site in 2007. With talk of economic stimulus on everyone's lips, it is also worth noting that the fort got its first major restoration in 1932, as a make-work project in the Great Depression.
"It is the only national historic site in the largest city in the country," Mr. Otto said. "And you can't make more of them."
***
National Historic Site
Family Day provides an occasion for history buffs to get their geek on at the largest collection of original War of 1812 buildings in Canada. A self-guided audio tour reveals the fort from its earliest days as the harbour defence planned by John Graves Simcoe in 1793 through to the Battle of York in 1813, to its opening as a public museum in 1934 and beyond. Download the tour from http://www.city-surf.ca to your MP3 player before your trip to Fort York, or use the MP3 players available onsite.
Location: 100 Garrison Rd. at the end of Garrison Road, off Fort York Boulevard or Fleet Street.
Hours: Monday to Friday
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Regular admission: adults $7.62, seniors and youths $3.81 children $2.86 (plus GST). Children five years and younger are free. (Free parking.)
Email: fortyork@toronto.ca
Call: 416-392-6907.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...4.FORTYORK14/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Ontario/
AoD
MAKEOVER: IN TIME FOR THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE WAR OF 1812
Fort York's latest battle - for funding
Dust off the epaulettes and shoo away the beer festivals, the historic site is starting to get some friends in high places
JEFF GRAY
February 14, 2009
Retreating British soldiers, relinquishing the capital of Upper Canada to invading Americans on April 27, 1813, had one last-ditch trick: They blew up their ammunition stores with the enemy just outside the walls of Fort York, creating what one witness called a "a great confused mass of smoke, timber, men, earth," killing or wounding more than 250 U.S. troops.
Nowadays, it makes sense that Fort York's cannons are instead pointed at the cars roaring by on the towering concrete Gardiner Expressway, which looms overhead. Threats to the fort, the site where this city's future was sealed and an independent Canada was born, have long come not from Americans but from the indifference of Torontonians themselves.
And it is not just the indignity of the hulking Gardiner and the nearby flashing billboards. Landfill and a concrete plant - soon to be a park - have long cut off the fort from the lake, as the railways cut it off from the city to the north. A condo boom has now added a wall of glass-and-steel towers to dwarf the fort's 19th-century battlements. School trips are down. A proposed light-rail line just west of the fort's walls has raised alarms.
However, with plans forming to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 in June of 2012, the city and the site's supporters say it is time to make amends with the ghosts of Fort York - the city's only official national historic site - and treat it with the respect it deserves, starting with a $15-million visitors centre. But the battle to raise the cash from recession-weary governments and private donors is just beginning. "It has laid there forgotten," said Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, co-chair of the city's War of 1812 bicentennial committee. Now champion of the fort's revival, he says Torontonians need to be reminded of the war's importance.
He insists that early signs are good. The city has committed $5.7-million, and the federal government - the Conservatives promised to commemorate the War of 1812 in their election platform last year - cut a cheque last year for $617,000.
The city's attitude toward the site appears to be changing. There is now a Fort York Boulevard, a new entrance and new neighbourhood springing up around the fort. A new art installation, meant to mimic the reflection that water would create on the underside of the Gardiner, is slated to recall the 19th-century shoreline that abutted the fort. Pedestrian bridges are planned to link the site to dog walkers, joggers and cyclists in the neighbourhoods to its north. City officials are even investigating whether Fort York could win UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
And, Mr. Pantalone said, as of this summer, the fort will no longer be forced to rent out what is essentially a military graveyard to a summer beer festival that features beach volleyball and rock concerts.
"If you care about your national historic site, you don't prostitute it," he said, even though the massive event represents about a third of the fort's 80,000 annual visitors.
Greg Cosway, founder of the Beer Festival, took issue with the idea that he was pushed out, saying he and the city "mutually" agreed to change venues, with this year's festival moving to Exhibition Place. He insisted it wasn't inappropriate for a historic site: "If you got a bunch of young soldiers together back in the day and said, 'Hey, what about a beer event?', I am sure they all would have been keen."
A citizens group, the Friends of Fort York, has started a foundation in an effort to raise as much as $5-million in private donations to help pay for the visitors centre and the site's makeover. More than $100,000 has come in, the group said.
Fundraising consultant Nicholas Offord, who did a feasibility study for the Fort York Foundation, said the outlook is good, despite the economic downturn and the fact that Toronto donors have recently put up hundreds of millions for the renovated Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario.
"There is a community of people in the city of Toronto who think that the history of the city needs to be better celebrated ... and better promoted," Mr. Offord said, adding that close to half of the city has visited the fort at least once. "And I think this is right up their alley."
He said the small scale of the project, at $15-million - although other plans to landscape and restore the fort run as high as $32-million - is modest. "That's a very manageable number," Mr. Offord said. "It's not like we're building a $200-million museum."
Perhaps we should be, given that without the fort, there would certainly be no Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, no ROM, and no Canada, according to Carl Benn, the author of Historic Fort York, 1793-1993, and head of the history department at Ryerson University.
Of course, the fort was not the only factor. But had the Americans not left York after occupying it for six days and then been repulsed the next summer by its rebuilt fortifications, they might have realized their aim and captured Upper Canada, turning it into a satellite of New York State.
Toronto, instead of becoming a 21st-century cosmopolitan national financial capital of 2.5 million, would now look a lot more like a tiny dead-end rust-belt U.S. port, such as Rochester or tiny Oswego, N.Y. - population 20,000.
"The leading war hawks in upstate New York were hoping to create a situation where Upper Canada would be a hinterland for their business interests," said Prof. Benn, the city's former chief curator, who worked at the fort as a historical interpreter in the early 1970s.
In addition to the makeover for Fort York, the city is cooking up other events commemorating the War of 1812, possibly including performances linked to the Luminato arts festival in June of 2012. The city also plans to mark the bicentennial - being celebrated in other Ontario and U.S. communities too - with a "heritage trail" marking key points, such as the spot in what is now Parkdale where U.S. troops first landed.
Sandra Shaul, in charge of the city's 1812 plans, said the trail should appeal to more than just military history buffs, perhaps with numbered sites and a Web-based guide that could be used for other themed walks, instead of standard-issue historic plaques: "There's more plaque on the walls here than on teeth in the dentist's office. What you want is something more flexible."
Stephen Otto, who founded the Friends of Fort York in 1994 and has been fighting for the site ever since, said he is hopeful that the federal government will add to the $617,000 grant, since the national historic site has never received substantial funds from Ottawa.
There is clearly money to be had: Witness the federal government's pledge to spend $20-million restoring the city's Brick Works site in 2007. With talk of economic stimulus on everyone's lips, it is also worth noting that the fort got its first major restoration in 1932, as a make-work project in the Great Depression.
"It is the only national historic site in the largest city in the country," Mr. Otto said. "And you can't make more of them."
***
National Historic Site
Family Day provides an occasion for history buffs to get their geek on at the largest collection of original War of 1812 buildings in Canada. A self-guided audio tour reveals the fort from its earliest days as the harbour defence planned by John Graves Simcoe in 1793 through to the Battle of York in 1813, to its opening as a public museum in 1934 and beyond. Download the tour from http://www.city-surf.ca to your MP3 player before your trip to Fort York, or use the MP3 players available onsite.
Location: 100 Garrison Rd. at the end of Garrison Road, off Fort York Boulevard or Fleet Street.
Hours: Monday to Friday
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Regular admission: adults $7.62, seniors and youths $3.81 children $2.86 (plus GST). Children five years and younger are free. (Free parking.)
Email: fortyork@toronto.ca
Call: 416-392-6907.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...4.FORTYORK14/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Ontario/
AoD