Itinerary
Heritage MattersRead more articles about Community
How Doors Open Ontario activates the province’s communities
The Ontario Heritage Trust’s Doors Open Ontario program works with communities and partners to open the doors, gates and …
Quiet on the set
Shaftesbury is the company behind the hit television series Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries, both of which air on …
The economic halo effect of sacred places: Measuring civic impact in an innovative new way
Nestled in the old city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Old St. George’s United Methodist Church is a “mother church” of the …
Case study: Brockville Railway Tunnel
Location: 1 Block House Island Road, Brockville
Owner: City of Brockville
Case study: Mudtown Station Brewery and Restaurant (Owen Sound)
Owner: City of Owen Sound
Partners: Kloeze Family (Mudtown Station Inc.)
Learning from the past
Heritage has always been at the heart of the University of Windsor’s ambitious plan to preserve the century-old Windsor …
Museums and heritage: Building livable communities through soft power
Museums and heritage are engines of urban redesign and revitalization. Lord Cultural Resources has worked in 450 cities …
Nine ways that heritage conservation is good for the economy
Advocates for heritage conservation have traditionally made their case on the basis of architectural character, cultural …
Present. Preserve. Protect.
Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre, the Place of the Long Rapids, is a historically significant meeting place located along …
Case study: Thunder Bay District Courthouse
Location: 277 Camelot Street, Thunder Bay
Owner: David Sun, Business owner/Investor
From adversity to the stars
The rural Municipality of Huron East is a composite of rolling farmland and historical settlements dating back to the …
Heritage builds vibrant communities and cultural economies in Kingston
In 2010, the City of Kingston released its first Culture Plan – a document that shared a sustainable, authentic, longterm …
The economic value of heritage districts: How assessment growth in heritage conservation districts compares with non-designated areas in Hamilton
There are competing views about the value of heritage properties. On the one hand, there is a growing consensus on the esthetic …
Reside: When heritage preservation translates to affordable housing
Raising the Roof is a Canadian charity that provides national leadership in homelessness prevention through various …
Old places support a sound, sustainable and vibrant economy
In Why Old Places Matter, I wrote about the many reasons that old places help people flourish. Yet, I intentionally saved the …
Revitalizing communities – The power of conservation
Over the past few years, I’ve spoken and written extensively about value – exploring questions of what …
Communication – Forging community, building understanding, shaping society
Humans have always shared an interest in communicating with one another – to exchange stories, experiences, ideas, thoughts. To …
The conscience of our province
Ontario’s Legislative Building, completed in 1893, is a magnificent structure filled with stories from the most significant …
A story of two families
What a story the Macdonell-Williamson House and property can tell! Its location – with a commanding view overlooking the Ottawa …
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On the eve of war: Ontario in 1914
What was life like in Ontario during those years before the First World War? Before the war that saw men leave their families …
Fighting power: Ontario soldiers in the making
That Canadians are an unmilitary people has become something of a cliché. But a look back at Ontario in the summer of 1914 …
The end of an era
The years before the Great War are often romanticized as a series of garden parties, Sunday afternoon strolls in the park, …
Oil Springs Heritage District: Working from the ground up
In the mid-19th century, southwestern Ontario was Canada West’s last frontier, where lines of travel, civility and comfort …
Heritage conservation districts: The most popular tool in the heritage toolkit?
When the Ontario Heritage Act came into force in 1975, municipalities across the province suddenly had the authority to protect …
How districts change
Meadowvale Village – a once-small, rural village – is located on the Credit River at the north end of the City of Mississauga. …
Grassroots heritage: The stewards of New Edinburgh
Located in the City of Ottawa at the confluence of the Rideau and Ottawa rivers is the historical community of New Edinburgh. …
Heritage conservation people
Growing up in Port Hope fostered a belief that every community had an amazing main street. That ignorance was shaken when I …
The Goderich story: A lesson in survival
For the past 18 months, West Street in Goderich has been as much a construction site as it has a place of service and retail …
Coming together
Neighbourliness has always been a part of Ontario’s rich agricultural heritage.
Much of what we view in the rural …
Overcoming historical amnesia: Recognizing people of African descent as pioneers and community builders
Essential Canadian history often recognizes people of African descent solely through the heroic stories of the Underground …
Investing in preservation
It is an unfortunate reality that the preservation of our heritage remains the exception rather than the norm. What is a …
Into the Kawarthas
When visitors first enter Peterborough’s stately city hall, they should look down. Inspired by the City Beautiful Movement – …
CCM 3.0: Reimagining the Canadian Canoe Museum
A decade has passed since the permanent exhibits at The Canadian Canoe Museum (CCM) were opened to great acclaim. Funded with …
Peterborough’s Living History Museum
Hutchison House holds a special place in the social history of Peterborough.
Local volunteers built the house in 1836 …
The People’s park
Queen’s Park, Toronto, was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in September 1860, and was a …
Resources: Finding our place in Ontario’s history
On the shelf
Creating Memory, by John Warkentin
Becker Associates, 2010. Toronto has over …
Designations in bulk
Understanding Unionville, by Regan Hutcheson
A visit to Unionville is like a journey back in time. Located north of …
Leading by example
Ontario towns and cities have been designating properties under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act since the passage of the …
Cataloguing a community
The amalgamated municipality of Chatham-Kent includes a number of early settlements that encompass thousands of heritage …
Self-identifying
While we are all familiar with local archives, museums and libraries (and the materials they contain), you may be startled to …
Walkerville: The heritage of a company town
Among the shrinking number of 19th-century company towns, Walkerville – part of the City of Windsor since 1935 – remains an …
Exploring Ontario’s southern peninsula
As you roam the highways and waterways of Ontario’s southern peninsula, a tapestry of stories unravels. These stories speak …
The history of Chatham-Kent
Chatham-Kent’s rich cultural heritage began long before European settlement when large stockaded villages and Neutral Indians …
A legacy of support: Faith-based community
Reaching out to those in need has long been a part of Ontario’s religious tradition. Faith-based groups offering medical and …
Toronto’s synagogues: Keeping collective memories alive
Collective memory is cultural memory – what is remembered about an event by a social or cultural group that experienced it and …
From Hamilton, a municipal perspective
Places of worship are often stunning buildings, constructed in forms and styles that have existed for thousands of years around …
Form and function: The impact of liturgy, symbolism and use on design
During the 19th century, the location, physical condition and stylistic merit of churches were publicly discussed as reliable …
Enduring stewardship preserves a treasured heritage church
Located just east of Beaverton, the Old Stone Church, built in 1840 by a predominantly Scottish congregation, is a simple but …
The changing face of worship
The architectural style, massing, materials and date stones of a place of worship offer clues about the congregation’s history …
Religious freedom in the promised land
Eli Johnson toiled on plantations in Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky before making his bid for freedom in the “promised …
Places of worship in Ontario’s rural cultural landscape
The cultural landscapes of rural southern Ontario contain a variety of heritage resources – land patterns and uses, built forms …
Churches of “New Ontario”
In the middle of the 19th century, northern Ontario remained much as it had been under the French regime – a region of Catholic …
Ontario’s rich religious heritage
From the First People who for thousands of years conducted religious and cultural ceremonies at places they believed held …
Christ Church and the Queen Anne Silver
Located in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory on the Bay of Quinte, Christ Church houses a silver communion service dating to 1712. …
Launching the Places of Worship Inventory
Survey, documentation and research – these are the first steps in the conservation process. How can decisions be made about our …
Subsidizing demolition
In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Nature operates in an endless web of interconnected cycles of use, transformation …
Heritage in harmony: The integration of natural and cultural landscapes
Approximately 11,000 years of human culture are recorded in Ontario’s landscapes. Most existing natural landscapes in Ontario …
The sustainability of place
Located on the Lake Huron shore at the mouth of the Maitland River, Goderich is known as “Canada’s Prettiest Town.” It is …
Heritage off the 401
Highway 401, stretching from Windsor to the Quebec border, is one of the busiest highways in North America. Anyone who has …
Building on the past
Eastern Ontario offers an array of impressive historic houses. Some of these houses – owned and operated by the Ontario …
From mill to museum
The big oak door of the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte in eastern Ontario swings silently open as it has done for …
Ontario's eastern treasures
Inhabited by Aboriginal Peoples for 7,000 years, present-day eastern Ontario is rich with heritage. The area gradually …
Honouring Ontario’s premiers
The Ontario Heritage Trust launched the Premiers’ Gravesites Program at a memorable ceremony last November in Cornwall to …
Second chances for Peterborough’s priceless heritage
One of the greatest challenges to creating a healthy downtown is getting people to live there. While Peterborough’s historic …
Kingston’s heritage: Time and again
The City of Kingston sits at a strategic location, halfway between Montreal and Toronto, where Lake Ontario meets the western …
A renaissance of northern heritage
After railway development connected this once-isolated area to the rest of the province at the end of the 19th century, the …
Northern Ontario: An authentic heritage
Heritage is often associated with the distant past and, for many, a dusty museum.
Northern Ontario, however, is …
Routes through the wilderness: The development of a transportation network in Northern Ontario
Isolation, great distances, demanding terrain and difficult weather conditions challenged the fortitude and perseverance of the …
Adventurous workers wanted for remote locations – Housing provided
The exploration, settlement and development of northern Ontario were motivated by the exploitation of the region’s natural …
Our Francophone heritage
Fauquier. Moonbeam. Kapuskasing. Hearst. Val Gagné. Belle Vallée. Sudbury. Timmins. Sturgeon Falls. The history of northern …
Northern icons
The towering McIntyre Mine Headframe in Timmins. The Clergue Block House and Powder Magazine in Sault Ste Marie. St. Francis of …
The historical Cobalt Mining District – A community resource
At the turn of the 20th century, Cobalt was a small and isolated lumber camp. In August 1903, two lumbermen – James McKinley …
Community conservation: Ingredients for success
For the past seven years, a group called SOS-Églises has led the fight to preserve two century-old village churches in Essex …
Resources: Engaging citizens in community conservation
What's on the shelf
Old Canadian Cemeteries: Places of Memory, by …
Discovering the City Beautiful
On July 25, 2007, the Ontario Heritage Trust and the Town of Kapuskasing unveiled a provincial plaque to commemorate the town …
The R’s of conservation
An earlier generation spoke of the three R’s as “Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.” They were the fundamentals of education in …
Leading the way in municipal heritage planning
What’s happening in your community?
With significant amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act in April 2005 and a …
In the beginning . . . the first provincial plaque
Fifty years ago – on a fine fall afternoon, September 26, 1956 – I witnessed the unveiling of Ontario’s first provincial plaque …
Exploring Country Heritage Park
In March 2006, the Ontario Heritage Trust acquired a cultural conservation easement on Country Heritage Park. Located in …
Saving the Spencerville Mill – Preserving community heritage
The Spencerville Mill, a fine cut-stone flour and grist mill, is located on the bank of the South Nation River in the small …
Rush and remembrance
On a windswept summer day in 2005, a small congregation gathered beside a cloverleaf off-ramp at the western fringe of Toronto. …
The biography of a house: If these walls could speak
Researching family history is a popular pastime for many who want to uncover their family’s unique past and discover how they …
Winning the battle
There are countless examples across the province of successful restorations of Ontario’s treasured heritage sites. Although the …
Our cultural heritage places: how heritage buildings adapt
Although heritage remains a year-round activity for many of us, Heritage Day is celebrated annually on the third Monday in …
Small-town museums key to small-town success
For 18 years, my wife and I raised our two sons in the Town of Richmond Hill just north of Toronto. When we moved to the small …
Moving forward with heritage conservation
Thirty years ago, when the Ontario Heritage Act was new, I was a young planner with about a year’s experience working in …
The new Ontario Heritage Act: The evolution of heritage conservation
An important shift has occurred in Ontario’s legislative framework for heritage conservation. On April 28, 2005, the Ontario …
Hurricane Hazel 50 years later
There was little warning about Hurricane Hazel – one of the worst storms in Canada’s history. At the time, few Canadians paid …