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It is possible
that the archetypally obsessive Anglophilia of the Old Mill
complex and its affluent/middle-class Home Smithian west-of-the-Humber
offspring (Kingsway Park and its successors; the Royal York/St. George's
Golf & Country Club; et al) had a fortifying effect upon its environs. Of
all of the former Metro Toronto components, the ex-township/borough/city of
Etobicoke, in its dominant political and social culture, was perhaps most
redolent of a stolid, doughy, Upper Canadian "Family Compact" sensibility.
Politically, it was proudly "Common Sense before Common Sense was cool";
espousing thrift and prudence, good cautious private-businessy values and
minimal extraneous overregulation, a spartan (the antithesis of
Lastman-style parvenu flamboyance) but from all appearances apparently
workable approach to government that presaged Mike Harris by eons. (Its
strongest municipal legacy; ex-Mayor Doug Holyday, currently megacity
council's arch-maverick for epitomizing the Jack Benny School for Municipal
Governance.) The par-for-course hints of scandal and excess that flared
here and there were quickly, neatly swept into the skeleton closet, the
scars quietly patched over, and Etobicoke was good at that. The place
could be accused of entropic complacency, but the secure, prosperous,
sway-holding Central Etobicoke establishment earned its right to be
complacent, thank you. (Not that it mattered than many Etobicoke pockets,
especially in the south and north ends, were a little less than prosperous,
more ethnically diverse, and sometimes held by those dreaded New Democratic
politicians. Perhaps the attitude towards them was archetypally Harrisian
neo-conservative, that the prosperous middle could "show them the
way"...not that they had to filthy themselves by actually going down there…)
In an environment riddled by "Family Compact" conservativism (if not
always politically Tory --even the dreaded local New Democrats have been
pragmatically conditioned to Etobian prudence and parsimony), there comes a
natural, admirable pre-occupation with "roots". Thus, in order to document
and celebrate the legacy of pioneering settlers, the communities, the farms
and dwellings and outbuildings quickly disappearing though suburban sprawl
and the passage of generational memory, the Etobicoke Historical Society
was born in 1958, and it remains an active, popular volunteer organization,
with a newsletter and well-attended lectures and occasional exhibitions,
most often centered around the Ground Zero of Etobicoke's "historical
community", Montgomery's Inn.
And a lot of entrenched Etobian sensibility, political and otherwise,
would likely have preferred that it end there. According to the
Etobicoke-conservative school a la Doug Holyday, the best government (if
not the individuals involved) is fundamentally philistine; that is, it
shouldn't be meddling in arts or museums or historical regulation, at least
any more than necessary. In due time, the Etobicoke Historical Board (not
to be confused with the Society), a municipal body dealing primarily with
the operation of Montgomery's Inn as a house museum, was formed --and
apparently not without some reluctance, as much of the mid-Etobicoke
establishment preferred to keep Montgomery's Inn as something of a
private/personal clubhouse or community-centre institution. (Which in
retrospect might make sense as an "organic" continuation of its original
function, more natural than the period-costumed Williamsburgean
museological artifice that many of us have come to revile.)
Then, when the Ontario Heritage Act (1975) authorized the formation of
municipal LACACs --Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committees,
whose function was "to advise council on local heritage matters and to
assist the council in carrying out its heritage conservation
program" --Etobicoke decided that the good, red-tapeless move was to
incorporate its LACAC functions within the Etobicoke Historical Board,
which made sense as the latter's core membership (in turn, the cream of the
EHS crop) was, superficially at least, best prepared to "advise".
In effect, it was like a token LACAC function stapled onto the token
EHB --but at first, as with many other LACACs (and historic preservation in
general in the 70s), there was a touch of heroism involved, Etobicoke's
heroic contribution being a booklet, "Sidelights Of History", on
"Etobicoke's Century Buildings", and a century-building plaquing program.
In this case, legislation allowed the necessary support in order to "do
something" --and other publications with some LACAC underpinning followed in
the 80s (on Etobicoke's old villages) and 90s (on Kingsway Park). But
other than this, the LACAC stuff played a distinct second or third fiddle
to Montgomery's Inn programming matters at EHB meetings --and increasingly
so over time. It's almost as if with "Sidelights Of History", the
Etobicoke LACAC had performed its necessary, most fundamental function, and
the rest was regarded as but a tokenism. Even today, the local "historic
establishment" can be prone to unapologetically referring back to this
quarter-century-old (and recently republished) booklet, as if changing
methodology (or the fact that its methodology was already a bit parochial
in 1975) meant nothing.
And this being Etobicoke, there was a reluctance in properly following
through with the regulation part of LACAC activity. In fact, a gear
slipped in the local heritage ordinance, where it became the request of the
property owner, rather than panel recommendations, that preceded listings
and designations. What resulted from this inside-outness was an
ill-maintained, horribly inconsistent Swiss-cheese inventory of properties;
fundamentally, a flock of 1975-era "Sidelights Of History" entries, with
some other subsequent quick-issue tokenisms and an inadequate once-overing
of the Lakeshore communities, and nothing north of the 401 that wasn't a
SOH "century building". Not only was there a plethora of omissions, but
also a whole host of inclusions with no real discernable reason for being
on a LACAC inventory --perhaps a historical personage here or there, but
often perhaps for simple status or NIMBY or insipid "nice house" reasons.
An abuse of the whole rationale of the inventory of listed properties. (I
seem to recall, some years ago, a bemused anecdote from someone working on
the Shaver/Woodsworth house move/restoration about the EHB/LACAC, at one of
its meetings, suggesting the listing/designation of a c1948 house/office
building in Islington Village, simply on account of its nice historic-style
design.)
The Swiss cheese, in its turn, was aggravated over the years by
demolition; according to the Etobicoke system in extremis, the private
property owner had the right to do whatever, and the LACAC or whatever
passed for it could just as well roll over and play dead, advocacy be
darned. And it isn't just for simple "listed" properties (in Long Branch,
1/4-1/2 of those have apparently gone AWOL, without even a proper inventory
acknowledgment); actual designated properties, like the Montgomery
homestead "Briarly" or the original Thorncrest estate, have slipped away
under the most absurdly meaningless circumstances, with the LACAC allowing
the avowed, over-accepted "weakness" of OHA designation to run them over
roughshod. Or else, the "solutions" offered by the LACAC have been
well-meaning but naive, along the lines of offering to move buildings
(Briarly) or parts thereof (the ex-New Toronto Post Office, whose interior
was threatened with gutting) to Montgomery's Inn.
Thus it was that Etobicoke's "heritage community" was capable of
responding to the vast bulk of its real and threatened losses with little
more than a resigned "that's progress" regret straight out of the 1950s.
As a regulator and, just as important, as a motivator, the Etobicoke LACAC
was impotent, useless; relative to how a good LACAC ought to function, it
was like what a thalidomide flipper was to an arm and hand. And this
entrenched inertia grew over time; by the 90s, it seemed as if listing and
designation was actively discouraged, perhaps for fear of its bogeyman
characteristics. (According to Ontario's designated-property website, the
last of the handful of designations fully in Etobicoke were in 1983; there
were a pair of dual-municipality designated heritage bridge structures a
few years later.) There was a very worthy "flagship" exception, in recent
years, the Kingsway Park Heritage Conservation District proposal --but even
that had what could be easily interpreted as unfortunate self-serving
NIMBYish tones in its genesis (aggravated by the fact that its instigator,
the former LACAC chair, was a neighbourhood resident and lived across the
street from a controversial teardown-rebuild). Meanwhile, other active,
major (and quite successful) heritage projects like the current running
activity on the Lakeshore Psychiatric Grounds have been primarily
community-generated, with the LACAC involvement as such appearing to be
strictly nominal. The sinking feeling was that it was the same old Central
Etobicoke Family Compact in play, uselessly fiddling at Montgomery's Inn
while the rest of the jurisdiction was burning, and if anything was done
right, it was in spite of those fuddy-duddies. And many of them were
probably, relatively speaking, innocent in this matter --even I might have
been consumed by the entropy, were I part of the system.
Within the shadow of Toronto, it was particularly embarrassing --but it was
perhaps not an uncommon situation among Ontario's LACACS. And it was a bit
the nature of the beast; the state-of-the-art standards of the LACACs'
provincial-ministry landlords, whether in preservation methodology, public
outreach, or built-culture consciousness, didn't have an easy go in the
trickling-down process, especially among fragile municipal volunteer
committees whose membership consisted primarily of interested amateurs and
whose perspective remained, with few exceptions, largely parochial.
Insular "Family Compactness", in fact, verged on the rule rather than the
exception, and obsolete notions or definitions of "heritage" (including,
even, Etobicoke's early "Century Building" obsession) proved difficult to
be weaned from, or to grow from; not only might 1965-style methodology be
used in 1975, but that legacy of said methodology might have been
lackadaisically, uncritically be accepted a quarter century later! (As if,
they identified their relevant "heritage buildings" at the start, thank
you, goodbye.) Another pitfall is what I call the "historical designation
welfare bum" syndrome; that is, to either use designation as a
panacea-for-all-evils slap-it-on crutch, or to regard designated or
absolute designation-worthy properties as the only ones of discernable
architectural/historical interest and LACAC concern, and myopically turning
away from everything else --"if it ain't designated, I guess it ain't no
good". (And by extension, Etobicoke's designation-as-avoidable-bogeyman
syndrome simply seized up the whole system.) More often than not, the end
result was an insipidly grinning "We Are Your LACAC and These Are Our
Designated Heritage Buildings" impression --a good, healthy idea degenerated
into small-town tourist-bait kitsch. And to top it off, the individual
LACACs weren't always equally up to current-standards snuff as to how to
desirably maintain or encourage maintaining its heritage. Thus, if the Old
Mill proposal smacks of the same obsolete, disavowed logic as "preserving"
stones from a graveyard by setting them in a brick or stone wall, it helps
to know that this was done relatively recently in the Islington Burial
Ground --and a former EHB/LACAC member spoke about it with innocent pride to
a current member only months ago!
It isn't that either the Ontario Heritage Act or the LACACs they mandated
are a failure; it's just that, a quarter century later, they deserve a
good, thorough looking-at and strengthened renewal according to current
standards. But keep in mind that the malaise isn't only Etobicoke's or
Ontario's; as Richard Longstreth implied in a JSAH essay last year, the
pattern of the grassroots preservation movement resting on its laurels
since its 1970s time in the vanguard is an American one as well. Perhaps
it just takes a few, good, visionary leaders to shake the dust out...
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