You're citing NPS as an example of preservation 'guts'?... You're actually going to sit there and high-five preservationists for achieving a victory at what is just about one of the most famous and important buildings in the city?
Well, not NPS in general, but a particular element--
the walkways. And as I indicated: if Peter Milczyn's first-bright-idea together with a whole horde of Sunday-painter urbanists wearing the clumsy mantle of PPS judgment had their way,
removing the walkways could have been spun as the "victory" on behalf of making NPS more "meaningful", excessively-anal modern-preservation geeks be darned. Get my drift?
OTOH, if you want a situation that far better fits the "apathy/not meaningful" heritage tableau that you're ascribing to Toronto, consider the makeover of
Mississauga's Civic Square, bearing in mind that Mississauga City Hall was at least as important an architectural work for
its time as Toronto's was for
its time. While I'd strategically suspending judgment on what's being done, there's still something disconcerting about the deafening silence--something that'd be inconceivable in Toronto (or Hamilton, given the controversy over *its* City Hall renos). It's like...total blithe acceptance; including within the pertinent UT threads...
The problem here is that you like to pick and choose your own preservation priority list, in a self-serving 'architecture is more important than context/use' way. Convenient. Unfortunately it is not quite so simple as that, and certainly not the same in each and every single case. Yes, you see unlike you I do feel that there is more to understanding, preserving or articulating heritage than inventorying bricks...
We're not so much unlike as you think. But unfortunately, the difference btw/where we're coming from is roughly like the difference btw/the NDP and "Hey, NDPers! Let's Unite the Left! Support Gerard Kennedy!"
As a reminder: by my insisting
against the "woe is us, we don't care while Montreal etc cares etc etc" approach, it isn't to dismiss the fact that here, in Toronto, we have a problem. Rather, it's because it's superior strategy to view ourselves on a common playing field, even w/more apparently "enlightened" jurisdictions. And it helps to bolster a superior, more nuanced approach to the problem(s) in question...even with the scraps that we have. You may dismiss a lot of those concerns as meaningless data, but...look, as we know in this Web-based age, all that supposedly "meaningless" data in our midst can be actually be sexy. So, make the most of it.
However, the "common playing field" realm which I referred to isn't necessarily the one you're accustomed to. Which...brings us down to not Toronto demographics, but
Urban Toronto demographics. And as I've said before, there's a certain evident UT split btw/those who arrived w/a "new construction/development" lean, and those who arrived w/a "historical/existing conditions" lean. And in the former case especially, bolstered by the kinds of Sim City kids who've been conditioned through the whole skyscraper-message-board youthful rite of passage. More often than not, they're quite profoundly tin-eared t/w matters of heritage or preservation--partly because it's a realm painted unflatteringly by a certain message-boarding anti-NIMBY status quo; and partly, maybe, unfortunately, because such concerns
could be falling into the same common-knowledge cultural eclipse that's befallen classical music, opera, etc in recent decades.
Not saying you're "one of them", precisely; just that one's perspective can be conditioned by where one hangs and who one hangs with. But from a heritage standpoint, I'm sorry if you want to place those wide-eyed hostile ignoramii on a pedestal...
