A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Star:
Our heritage
Toronto's hidden history
Thousands of artifacts are languishing in storage until the city decides where to display them
January 21, 2007
Leslie Scrivener
Staff Reporter
Nestled in a neat specimen box are lowly treasures – pipe bowls, a glass button, a toothbrush – unearthed during a recent archeological dig beneath a parking lot at John and King Sts.
The most beguiling is a copper badge, oxidized green, of an Irish harp. The most familiar, a bone lice comb. The oldest, an 8,000-year-old spearhead.
The sight of these objects produces a definite frisson – more so when archeologist Ron Williamson lifts the spearhead and places it in a visitor's hand. "You are one of only 10 people to touch this in the last 8,000 years," he says.
Williamson's firm, Archaeological Services Inc., uncovered the artifacts in November at the site of the first Toronto General Hospital and of fever sheds that housed ailing immigrants.
Those invalids had fled the Irish potato famine of 1847 and arrived, sick with typhus, in tall ships at Toronto's harbour.
Over the past five years, Williamson has found tens of thousands of archeological fragments throughout the city. They are tangible guides, signposts that evoke the history of the city and the people who once found a home here.
Williamson developed the city's archeological master plan, and he has contracts with local planning and development firms, which pay for the excavations. "But there is nowhere in Toronto where you can see these artifacts," he says. "Half of my job is dedicated to telling the public about these things, but how can I do it with no opportunity to put these objects on display?
"Where is our museum of Toronto?"Instead of being centrally located in one building focused on the city's history, pieces of Toronto's past are preserved in 11 specific and small museums, such as Fort York or Colborne Lodge in High Park. Many items are stored out of sight.
Toronto will celebrate its 175th anniversary in 2009. But there is no museum to capture its 11,000-year story – from the post-ice age era, when migrants camped along local waterways, to the sweep of 19th- and 20th-century immigration.
The artifacts that were recovered from the old Toronto General Hospital site – future home of the Toronto International Film Festival and the 41-storey Festival Tower condominiums – will remain in boxes in a storage facility belonging to Archaeological Services Inc. until the city has a place to show them. Williamson's recent offers of historical pieces to the city's collection, which is kept in a west-end storehouse, have been rebuffed, he says. Williamson holds them in trust for the people of Ontario, taking care of the storage costs. "What else are we going to do?"
The objects from the Toronto General Hospital site are significant.
The spearhead, made of Onondaga flint, is "a startling find," Williamson says. Because it has a broken point, it was likely left behind intentionally, near an encampment on the banks of a small creek that has long since filled in. It is one of the earliest found in Toronto.
The badge, meanwhile, may have come from a military cap – The Royal Irish rifles served in Canada in 1840s, notes Williamson. A less-likely hypothesis is that the pin belonged to a patient in the hospital or the sheds, built to accommodate ailing immigrants.
Archeologists also found the foundation trench of the original hospital walls, along with flat-sided nails and bricks used in the construction of the hospital in 1819-20. One of the first brick buildings in Toronto, and set at an angle to the corner, it was torn down in 1861-62, when the architect and surveyor John Howard laid out building lots for row houses. The houses stood until 1889, when the Grand Pacific Hotel replaced them. Its name was later changed to the Arlington Hotel, which remained on that corner until 1933.
Williamson stresses that the thousands of artifacts from the site – some of which date from the hospital era, when sick Irish immigrants were treated there – are important for the stories they hold.
And he says, they should be displayed locally, in the area where they were discovered. A spearhead found at King and John has less meaning if it's in a display case in Manhattan or Madrid.
Which leads to the need for a museum to interpret and give them meaning.
"It's is a scandal," says former Toronto mayor David Crombie. "We don't have any place for arrowheads and stuff from the hospital and the stuff under lock and key." He's referring to more than 100,000 items – from a beaded dress worn by Lady Eaton to prison art from the Upper Canada Rebellion – stored by the city in an unmarked, six- storey bank building designed to house cancelled cheques.
The city's budget for displaying its collection is slight – about $40,000 annually for all 11 museums. Most of these are ill-equipped to handle sensitive artifacts, such as rare, fragile, pre-Confederation military uniforms that must be displayed in controlled environments. Toronto has no money for buying collections. "It reflects the terrible cuts museums suffered through the 1990s and into this century," says Carl Benn, chief curator of Toronto's museums and heritage services. "It's pretty typical and pretty sad."
And while the city is open in principle to accepting archeological objects, Benn says, there are other considerations: rules about ownership, the need for proper conservation and staffing to manage the collection.
"Then don't ask for stuff to come out of the ground, if you're not prepared to store it," protests Williamson, who has given five million artifacts to other Ontario museums. "And if you have a problem with space, get another building."
Historians and heritage advocates have been pushing for a city museum for decades. The idea of a city museum has been around for decades. The former post office building at the south end of Bay St. was once put forward, but it became the Air Canada Centre, home to the Raptors and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Old City Hall on Queen St. W. was also considered, but became law courts.
There's also been talk about creating a Toronto museum using the 11 existing sites, each interpreting a different aspect of Toronto history – Fort York, for military history, and so on.
"In some ways, the city has never really grabbed a hold of its own history," says Crombie. While Toronto recognizes city founder John Graves Simcoe and his era, it doesn't go any further. "We never grabbed onto the great multicultural stuff that happened in the later part of the 19th and the 20th centuries. And we still have a city that does not understand that it can make a living, as New York does, on its history and culture."
Ernie Buchner, head of Heritage Toronto, sums up the problem as "the lack of overall political will to push it. If you were to say, `Prove it,' I'd have a hard time, but if you went through all the minutes at council, that's the impression you'd have."
Crombie agrees that cultural and heritage centres suffer from the perception that they're "marginal and frilly" but says that advocates for something like a city museum have to be more innovative. "You can't walk in any more and say this is a really excellent idea, hand over the loot," he says. The challenge is to establish links with organizations that can help pay their way, everything from community colleges to libraries.
Currently, there are two serious proposals for a city museum. The most talked-about is a city proposal called Humanitas, which calls for an iconic new building, likely on the waterfront – the foot of Yonge St. is a possible location. It would tell the story of Toronto and look at how events a world away – such as the Irish potato famine – transformed it.
"We'd like it to be a global centre for the study of cities," says Rita Davies, the city's executive director of culture.
The name Humanitas emerged from brainstorming sessions when the consultants for the project heard that some people considered the word "museum" to be boring.
But it has no funding and no land. And some initial supporters say the project has become unfocused since a 2004 feasibility study by LORD Cultural Resources, with the Canadian Urban Institute, E.R.A. architects and Lura Consulting, proposed a waterfront cultural centre to illuminate "the broad themes, ideas and major stories that have created Toronto."
"I just don't know how real it is," says Crombie, head of the Canadian Urban Institute, who has essentially jumped ship. He says now that Humanitas has been caught up in the massive waterfront redevelopment, "it's not going anywhere, and they have to rethink it."
Architect Michael McClelland of E.R.A. Architects, also a consultant, says he's hesitant about institutions that open on a grand scale. "I'm not sure institutions grow like that. I think they should grow like the Stratford Festival, where you start by putting up a tent, not by putting up a whacking big building."
He adds that the scale of Humanitas has become too far-reaching, with too much vision and too little practical advancement. "It's telling the cultural stories of absolutely everybody ... I was very interested in Humanitas, but to see it go all smoky and lose focus was kind of sad."
The city's manager of museums and heritage services, Karen Black, addresses this criticism carefully. "Everyone has a stake and ownership, and their view of the story needs to be told. That's the challenge to keep moving forward. We are at the point of trying to refine the concept."
The city is also trying to find friends with money – "champions in the private sector," says Davies – to join in Humanitas. The key is to get support from all three levels of government, she adds, and private investment will follow. The city has earmarked $20 million in principle in its 2012 budget, with completion of the project in 2015. A design competition for a museum building is proposed for next year.
Meanwhile, the second proposal, led by Crombie, is to work with buildings the city already has – St. Lawrence Hall on King St. at Jarvis and, just south, the north building of the St. Lawrence Market. The Market Gallery in the south St. Lawrence Market was where City Hall council chambers were located in the 19th century. "It's the perfect place to begin a Toronto museum," says Crombie, who envisions an entire historical precinct in the area. The St. Lawrence Hall, beautifully restored, is a former performance venue – Jenny Lind sang on its stage, and John A. Macdonald spoke there – and a past centre of the city's social and political life. The city now leases it for private receptions; it also houses a bank, a restaurant and Heritage Toronto offices.
And even if Humanitas supporters do get their new showplace, the St. Lawrence proposal, which includes adding two more storeys to the north farmers' market, along with underground parking, could be useful in the what's likely to be a long interim, Crombie says. "I want to ... work with a real piece of land and building. We've got to start somewhere."
His model is New York City's oldest museum, the New York Historical Society on Central Park West, which combines research, display and public programming. When he visited recently, people were hearing a lecture on Hudson Valley painters while having lunch, as part of a fundraiser for breast cancer. He saw it as a linking of past and present while doing some "contemporary good."
Meanwhile Ron Williamson's artifacts, humble as they are, remain in cardboard boxes. "His findings are a gold mine," says Buchner. "And he has no place to show them. He can interpret them to academics until the cows come home, but it doesn't really impact on the public for two generations – it takes that long for the information in an academic paper to be filtered, sifted, agreed upon, and then passed along to people who write textbooks for elementary and secondary schools. If it was in a public institution like a museum of Toronto, the impact and knowledge would be immediate."
_________________________________________________
I wonder who paid for city museums in say Montreal?
AoD
Our heritage
Toronto's hidden history
Thousands of artifacts are languishing in storage until the city decides where to display them
January 21, 2007
Leslie Scrivener
Staff Reporter
Nestled in a neat specimen box are lowly treasures – pipe bowls, a glass button, a toothbrush – unearthed during a recent archeological dig beneath a parking lot at John and King Sts.
The most beguiling is a copper badge, oxidized green, of an Irish harp. The most familiar, a bone lice comb. The oldest, an 8,000-year-old spearhead.
The sight of these objects produces a definite frisson – more so when archeologist Ron Williamson lifts the spearhead and places it in a visitor's hand. "You are one of only 10 people to touch this in the last 8,000 years," he says.
Williamson's firm, Archaeological Services Inc., uncovered the artifacts in November at the site of the first Toronto General Hospital and of fever sheds that housed ailing immigrants.
Those invalids had fled the Irish potato famine of 1847 and arrived, sick with typhus, in tall ships at Toronto's harbour.
Over the past five years, Williamson has found tens of thousands of archeological fragments throughout the city. They are tangible guides, signposts that evoke the history of the city and the people who once found a home here.
Williamson developed the city's archeological master plan, and he has contracts with local planning and development firms, which pay for the excavations. "But there is nowhere in Toronto where you can see these artifacts," he says. "Half of my job is dedicated to telling the public about these things, but how can I do it with no opportunity to put these objects on display?
"Where is our museum of Toronto?"Instead of being centrally located in one building focused on the city's history, pieces of Toronto's past are preserved in 11 specific and small museums, such as Fort York or Colborne Lodge in High Park. Many items are stored out of sight.
Toronto will celebrate its 175th anniversary in 2009. But there is no museum to capture its 11,000-year story – from the post-ice age era, when migrants camped along local waterways, to the sweep of 19th- and 20th-century immigration.
The artifacts that were recovered from the old Toronto General Hospital site – future home of the Toronto International Film Festival and the 41-storey Festival Tower condominiums – will remain in boxes in a storage facility belonging to Archaeological Services Inc. until the city has a place to show them. Williamson's recent offers of historical pieces to the city's collection, which is kept in a west-end storehouse, have been rebuffed, he says. Williamson holds them in trust for the people of Ontario, taking care of the storage costs. "What else are we going to do?"
The objects from the Toronto General Hospital site are significant.
The spearhead, made of Onondaga flint, is "a startling find," Williamson says. Because it has a broken point, it was likely left behind intentionally, near an encampment on the banks of a small creek that has long since filled in. It is one of the earliest found in Toronto.
The badge, meanwhile, may have come from a military cap – The Royal Irish rifles served in Canada in 1840s, notes Williamson. A less-likely hypothesis is that the pin belonged to a patient in the hospital or the sheds, built to accommodate ailing immigrants.
Archeologists also found the foundation trench of the original hospital walls, along with flat-sided nails and bricks used in the construction of the hospital in 1819-20. One of the first brick buildings in Toronto, and set at an angle to the corner, it was torn down in 1861-62, when the architect and surveyor John Howard laid out building lots for row houses. The houses stood until 1889, when the Grand Pacific Hotel replaced them. Its name was later changed to the Arlington Hotel, which remained on that corner until 1933.
Williamson stresses that the thousands of artifacts from the site – some of which date from the hospital era, when sick Irish immigrants were treated there – are important for the stories they hold.
And he says, they should be displayed locally, in the area where they were discovered. A spearhead found at King and John has less meaning if it's in a display case in Manhattan or Madrid.
Which leads to the need for a museum to interpret and give them meaning.
"It's is a scandal," says former Toronto mayor David Crombie. "We don't have any place for arrowheads and stuff from the hospital and the stuff under lock and key." He's referring to more than 100,000 items – from a beaded dress worn by Lady Eaton to prison art from the Upper Canada Rebellion – stored by the city in an unmarked, six- storey bank building designed to house cancelled cheques.
The city's budget for displaying its collection is slight – about $40,000 annually for all 11 museums. Most of these are ill-equipped to handle sensitive artifacts, such as rare, fragile, pre-Confederation military uniforms that must be displayed in controlled environments. Toronto has no money for buying collections. "It reflects the terrible cuts museums suffered through the 1990s and into this century," says Carl Benn, chief curator of Toronto's museums and heritage services. "It's pretty typical and pretty sad."
And while the city is open in principle to accepting archeological objects, Benn says, there are other considerations: rules about ownership, the need for proper conservation and staffing to manage the collection.
"Then don't ask for stuff to come out of the ground, if you're not prepared to store it," protests Williamson, who has given five million artifacts to other Ontario museums. "And if you have a problem with space, get another building."
Historians and heritage advocates have been pushing for a city museum for decades. The idea of a city museum has been around for decades. The former post office building at the south end of Bay St. was once put forward, but it became the Air Canada Centre, home to the Raptors and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Old City Hall on Queen St. W. was also considered, but became law courts.
There's also been talk about creating a Toronto museum using the 11 existing sites, each interpreting a different aspect of Toronto history – Fort York, for military history, and so on.
"In some ways, the city has never really grabbed a hold of its own history," says Crombie. While Toronto recognizes city founder John Graves Simcoe and his era, it doesn't go any further. "We never grabbed onto the great multicultural stuff that happened in the later part of the 19th and the 20th centuries. And we still have a city that does not understand that it can make a living, as New York does, on its history and culture."
Ernie Buchner, head of Heritage Toronto, sums up the problem as "the lack of overall political will to push it. If you were to say, `Prove it,' I'd have a hard time, but if you went through all the minutes at council, that's the impression you'd have."
Crombie agrees that cultural and heritage centres suffer from the perception that they're "marginal and frilly" but says that advocates for something like a city museum have to be more innovative. "You can't walk in any more and say this is a really excellent idea, hand over the loot," he says. The challenge is to establish links with organizations that can help pay their way, everything from community colleges to libraries.
Currently, there are two serious proposals for a city museum. The most talked-about is a city proposal called Humanitas, which calls for an iconic new building, likely on the waterfront – the foot of Yonge St. is a possible location. It would tell the story of Toronto and look at how events a world away – such as the Irish potato famine – transformed it.
"We'd like it to be a global centre for the study of cities," says Rita Davies, the city's executive director of culture.
The name Humanitas emerged from brainstorming sessions when the consultants for the project heard that some people considered the word "museum" to be boring.
But it has no funding and no land. And some initial supporters say the project has become unfocused since a 2004 feasibility study by LORD Cultural Resources, with the Canadian Urban Institute, E.R.A. architects and Lura Consulting, proposed a waterfront cultural centre to illuminate "the broad themes, ideas and major stories that have created Toronto."
"I just don't know how real it is," says Crombie, head of the Canadian Urban Institute, who has essentially jumped ship. He says now that Humanitas has been caught up in the massive waterfront redevelopment, "it's not going anywhere, and they have to rethink it."
Architect Michael McClelland of E.R.A. Architects, also a consultant, says he's hesitant about institutions that open on a grand scale. "I'm not sure institutions grow like that. I think they should grow like the Stratford Festival, where you start by putting up a tent, not by putting up a whacking big building."
He adds that the scale of Humanitas has become too far-reaching, with too much vision and too little practical advancement. "It's telling the cultural stories of absolutely everybody ... I was very interested in Humanitas, but to see it go all smoky and lose focus was kind of sad."
The city's manager of museums and heritage services, Karen Black, addresses this criticism carefully. "Everyone has a stake and ownership, and their view of the story needs to be told. That's the challenge to keep moving forward. We are at the point of trying to refine the concept."
The city is also trying to find friends with money – "champions in the private sector," says Davies – to join in Humanitas. The key is to get support from all three levels of government, she adds, and private investment will follow. The city has earmarked $20 million in principle in its 2012 budget, with completion of the project in 2015. A design competition for a museum building is proposed for next year.
Meanwhile, the second proposal, led by Crombie, is to work with buildings the city already has – St. Lawrence Hall on King St. at Jarvis and, just south, the north building of the St. Lawrence Market. The Market Gallery in the south St. Lawrence Market was where City Hall council chambers were located in the 19th century. "It's the perfect place to begin a Toronto museum," says Crombie, who envisions an entire historical precinct in the area. The St. Lawrence Hall, beautifully restored, is a former performance venue – Jenny Lind sang on its stage, and John A. Macdonald spoke there – and a past centre of the city's social and political life. The city now leases it for private receptions; it also houses a bank, a restaurant and Heritage Toronto offices.
And even if Humanitas supporters do get their new showplace, the St. Lawrence proposal, which includes adding two more storeys to the north farmers' market, along with underground parking, could be useful in the what's likely to be a long interim, Crombie says. "I want to ... work with a real piece of land and building. We've got to start somewhere."
His model is New York City's oldest museum, the New York Historical Society on Central Park West, which combines research, display and public programming. When he visited recently, people were hearing a lecture on Hudson Valley painters while having lunch, as part of a fundraiser for breast cancer. He saw it as a linking of past and present while doing some "contemporary good."
Meanwhile Ron Williamson's artifacts, humble as they are, remain in cardboard boxes. "His findings are a gold mine," says Buchner. "And he has no place to show them. He can interpret them to academics until the cows come home, but it doesn't really impact on the public for two generations – it takes that long for the information in an academic paper to be filtered, sifted, agreed upon, and then passed along to people who write textbooks for elementary and secondary schools. If it was in a public institution like a museum of Toronto, the impact and knowledge would be immediate."
_________________________________________________
I wonder who paid for city museums in say Montreal?
AoD