Toronto Bathurst Quay Revitalization | ?m | 2s | City of Toronto | Kearns Mancini

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
 
Shame that this project seems to be perpetually a no go. I've always thought that the historic roundhouse on the rail lands would be a great place for a Toronto history museum.
 
It's nice to see this issue getting a little more attention. Torontonians in general seem a little more concerned, not to say perplexed, that a museum doesn't already exist.

Reading the article above I kept thinking of the Maison Cluny in Paris which serves as the French national museum of the middle ages. The exhibits are simple, almost minimalist, and the objects on display, that run from the commonplace (combs, clothing, household implements etc) to the more specialized (tapestry, carvings, religious iconography etc.) are all treated equally like pieces of art. The interpretivie information added helps to put the artefacts into some historic perspective, and the collection never feels overwhelming or boring.
 
A museum tied into the St. Lawrence Hall and North Market redevelopment would make a lot of sense.

I'd also propose the two bank buildings and scruffy little park on the east side of Yonge just north of the Elgin Theatre as another good site. The parkette could be replaced by a new KPMB, Teeple, Hariri Pontarini, aA (or similar) type building that would join the two banks together. It would be a very high-profile spot with good subway access and existing tourist traffic.

42
 
When I was at the St. Lawrence Market North flea market at 7 a.m. today, Bernie the bookseller was selling quite a few planning documents about various things - proposed developments of the waterfront from the 1960's, booklets about the development of the city in the 1950's etc. - for very reasonable prices.
 
Article

More than one plan in place for T.O. city museum
January 28, 2007
Duels, midnight escapes on horseback, public hangings, woeful sagas of unrequited love – does this sound like the history of Toronto you learned?

To artist and publisher Nancy Lang, such real-life episodes are an integral part of Toronto's past and worth preserving and passing on.

Lang is one of a number of Torontonians who are committed to seeing the birth of a museum devoted to the history of the city.

Last year, she released David Macfarlane's At the Ojibway, a picture book about the historic Georgian Bay hotel. This year she's researching a volume on Toronto, and she has proposed that the Royal Ontario Museum open a Toronto exhibit in the summer of 2009, to mark the city's 175th birthday.

If her proposal is accepted, she'd like to see the exhibit move to a permanent location, ideally in the Old Town district around St. Lawrence Market.

Others who, like Lang, are impatient for a city museum have come forward with a variety of ideas, as well as locations – ranging from the site of the first parliament buildings in Upper Canada, at Front and Parliament Sts., to a former dollar store on Lansdowne Ave.

At the same time, Toronto's Irish community is fundraising for a museum or memorial to tell the story of potato famine victims and other aspects of Irish history here. As reported in the Sunday Star last week, there is no single museum to tell the full story of Toronto – including its wild tales. There's the story, for example, of the first attorney general of Upper Canada, John White, who died in a duel with the clerk of the executive council at the foot of Berkeley St. in 1800. They were fighting over a dispute between their wives.

While Lang has come to the dream of a museum of Toronto only recently, David Crombie began campaigning for a museum nearly 40 years ago, starting when he was a lecturer at Ryerson and later a city councillor, mayor and a federal cabinet minister.

Now 70, he's still knocking on doors and bringing people together in an effort to get the thing built in his lifetime.

"I'm bound to do something," he says.

Toronto is rich in dozens of small, privately run museums devoted to shoes, ceramics, textiles, aerospace, police and hockey, as well as in city-run museums, which are most often restored houses and historic sites that reflect 19th-century life.

But no museum captures what Crombie calls the continuum of history, "from aboriginal times to the Somalis who came here yesterday." He has focused his energy on a site that he believes holds more possibility than several others that have been proposed: the St. Lawrence Hall, the Corinthian-columned building on King St. E., named after the patron saint of Canada. Crombie would like to see the hall linked to the north building of the St. Lawrence market, which lies directly behind it. There is a historic precedent for this: in earlier days, the hall was connected to the market by a central archway, which led to market stalls.

He has spent recent weeks talking to "kindred" organizations, including George Brown College and the Toronto Library, which might want to expand in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood and share the financial load that would come with a museum.

He's also met with the city's culture and real estate departments, as well as the Toronto Parking Authority, which was already interested in building parking under the north market. Discussions about reconstruction of the north market and the addition of two storeys to the market building were also underway before he proposed a museum site.

Heritage advocates see a natural fit in a St. Lawrence Hall museum. About 50 heritage buildings are within two blocks of the hall, and it would be a convenient hub for visitors interested in walking tours to other historic sites.

At the same time, the city's culture department is a third of the way through a seven-year project to build a mid-sized, $200-million museum on the waterfront. For now it's called Humanitas, but the name is still under discussion.

Another idea that's circulating comes from Ann Homan, chair of the Dupont Improvement Group (DIG IN), which works toward neighbourhood revitalization. She's lobbying for a Jane Jacobs Museum of the City in a former Savers Paradise dollar store on Lansdowne Ave. In earlier incarnations it has been a bingo hall and grocery store.

"It's one of the dreams in our neighbourhood," says Homan, an urban planner who works for SCOTT Associates Architects Inc. She likes the building because it's unoccupied and easily accessible. She envisions a bridge linking a Bloor St. W. corner building, now a Discount Optical, to the museum. That building could be the administrative wing of the museum, which would be financed by building condos on top of it.

Others have suggested the site of the first parliament buildings as a possible location for a Toronto museum. Archaeological excavations in 2000 revealed ceramics and charred remains of the first parliament in Upper Canada, built in 1797 but destroyed by American forces in the war of 1812. Today, the site is home to a car wash business, a city parking lot and vacant land

Two years ago, the Ontario Heritage Trust bought one parcel of the land, a Porsche dealership, for $1.2 million; the rest of the site has yet to be purchased. But since the location has archaeological importance and requires delicate preservation, it's likely not a good choice for a large museum.

Rollo Myers, a long-time preservation activist, recalls the museum of Toronto taskforce of 1987, which looked at three sites: Old City Hall, the Canada Malting silos at the foot of Bathurst St., and, improbably, the Gardiner expressway off-ramp at York St. (it was believed in 1987 that the Gardiner wouldn't be with us for much longer.)

The proposals didn't go far. "It (a city museum) failed to attract a champion with deep pockets," Myers, manager of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, says now.

While he likes the St. Lawrence site because of its central location, Myers also asks: "Why does it have to be a thing, a building, and not an idea?"

His notion is to maintain the city's existing small museums but to use an Internet site or newspaper notices to alert visitors to new programs and exhibits. Another thought is to have a central site, say at the CN Tower or the railway Roundhouse, which would have models of what's on display in the small museums. During non-peak hours, buses would take visitors to the various sites.

Meanwhile Eleanor McGrath, the fifth-generation descendent of Irish famine immigrants, and Tom Gallagher are working to see that artifacts found at the site of the first Toronto General Hospital at King and John Sts. are properly displayed. They want to ensure the Toronto International Film Festival headquarters, which is going up there, will display archaeological discoveries – some of which relate to Irish immigration – from the site. "To tell people, as they are walking by, `Ah! Here are the Irish.'"
 
Metronome is Dead, New City Museum Proposed

T.O. eyes waterfront for history showcase

Museum proposed at foot of Bathurst

Apr 02, 2007 04:30 AM
Martin Knelman
arts columnist

Toronto's future museum celebrating the city's history and the stories of its multicultural communities has found an iconic site on the central waterfront, the Star has learned.

Rita Davies, city hall's arts visionary, has set in motion a plan to build the museum on a 3.6 acre parcel of land at the foot of Bathurst St. adjacent to the giant Canada Malting Company silos.

"It's a wonderful place that resonates with Toronto history and links it to the waterfront," says Davies, director of culture for the city. "The people I've consulted are excited about it."

One big plus about this site: It is already owned by the City of Toronto, which could save millions of dollars buying land.

Toronto city council will now be asked to designate the site for the museum and the launch board will put out a request for proposal from potential private development partners to help cover a cost of $150 million to $200 million.

Davies, who scored a triumph with Nuit Blanche – a once-a-year all-night downtown arts festival – last fall, has already lined up some powerful allies for the city museum project, including former mayor David Crombie and Sarmite Bulte, former Liberal MP for Parkdale.

"Anyone who has visited the Newfoundland museum overlooking the St. John's harbour will understand how magical a waterfront location can be," says Bulte, who has agreed to be chair of the launch board for the new museum.

"It's a great site that makes sense for many reasons," says Crombie, "and I have to say that lately I've noticed Toronto's excitement about this kind of thing exceeds anything I've seen for decades. There is just a tremendous appetite for a way of connecting the past and the future. People have an appetite for something that tells the story of where they have been and where they are now."

Crombie also wants to turn St. Lawrence Hall into a heritage site where some artifacts from the city's rich collection about its past could be displayed. But that would be tiny compared to the waterfront museum, and he believes Toronto needs both.

Earlier Crombie expressed concern that the proposed waterfront museum was stalled because of the difficulty and expense of securing a site at the foot of Yonge St.

"I want to help make this happen," says Crombie. "I see my role as accomplice, and I was delighted to accept Rita's suggestion that I be the honorary chair of the launch board."

The concept for the museum surfaced in 2004, when Davies gave it the temporary tag of Humanitas. Toronto city council approved the idea, with a completion target date sometime between 2012 and 2015. But the name baffled many people, and the difficulty of securing a site and raising the money also seemed discouraging.

All that changed with the emergence of the silo site. It had been set aside for Metronome, a music museum planned by John Harris. But Harris was unable to secure enough funding to go forward with the project before his agreement with the city expired. So the city asked Davies to suggest an alternate use for the site.

And she did.

"We'll work up a decent concept plan, with details of costs and responsibilities," said Don Eastwood, general manager of the city's division of economic development, culture and tourism (to whom Davies reports).

Some of the money needed to build the museum would flow from the developer, who might be given rights to build a hotel adjacent to the museum and/or a restaurant atop the silos.

The museum, which has yet to be named but could be called the Global City Museum, would be a huge step forward in improving the waterfront.

"Toronto's stories connect us to each other and the world through the broad lens of universal themes," stated a report Davies commissioned in 2004. The museum would tell the stories of the immigrant groups that came here, as well as the story of how the city was created, and how it is part of Ontario and Canada. It would include an interactive component; a display of Toronto's collection about its past; an exhibition hall for temporary shows; and a global centre, showing how Toronto is linked to the world's other great cities.

The silos, built in 1928 and expanded in 1944, were part of a plan to establish industry on reclaimed waterfront land. The opening of the elevators brought the first shipments of grain to Toronto since the turn of the century, and marked the revival of one of the harbour's oldest trades.

"Prospects for this museum have improved," says Gail Lord, president of Lord Cultural Resources, one of the consulting firms Davies used. "Toronto has acquired more self-confidence, and that's something a project like this needs to succeed.

According to Lord, one of the exciting things about the location is the way the neighbourhood around it is developing, with the Music Garden and Ireland Park. People can come by streetcar or bike, and there will be boats as well. And it can be linked to both Harbourfront Centre and Ontario Place.

"This is just a rare and huge opportunity," Lord says.

Louroz
 
This sounds like decent news.

News that the museum will sit "on a 3.6 acre parcel of land at the foot of Bathurst St. adjacent to the giant Canada Malting Company silos" makes it sound like the silos could largely be part of the development phase, being condos or a hotel.

The proposals will be interesting to see. (on the other hand, I am not confident that this will move forward at a breakneck speed)
 
^I'd love to be surprised but I think given the history of other cultural institutions their projections of 2012-2015 might even be accurate or even overly optimistic.
 
It is encouraging though that the land is already owned.
 
Isn't this supposed to be the programming of the Humanitas museum project? What are they going to do with the Hummingbird Centre now?
 
thanks for picking out it says adjacent to the silos..

i wonder if this means they will still do with the silos as they planned it in west 8's proposal with the biofiltration and the nightclub and everything (i thought that was really great).
 
Good to know that the museum would be next to the silos. With the quality of museum design in this city so high these days (AGO, ROM, Bata, Gardiner), it would be anticlimatic if the silos themselves were proposed to be the museum.
 
Isn't this supposed to be the programming of the Humanitas museum project? What are they going to do with the Hummingbird Centre now?

I was wondering the same thing.
 
Good to know that the museum would be next to the silos. With the quality of museum design in this city so high these days (AGO, ROM, Bata, Gardiner), it would be anticlimatic if the silos themselves were proposed to be the museum.
Why? Reusing a power station doesn't render the Tate Modern anticlimactic...
 

Back
Top