Heritage Canada says, “The move to haul three blocks worth of irreplaceable historic buildings to landfill—without any firm plan for their replacement—is short-sighted at best and flies in the face of exhaustive efforts by members of the local community and heritage experts, including the Heritage Canada Foundation.”

Lloyd Alter, president of the ACO, has written a passionate article about how disturbing the event is. It appeared in his e-letter which you can subscribe to at http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=001QKOUjm76P7atNhc9cspLoQ%3D%3D.

For another point-of-view take a look at the Brantford Expositor’s story at www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2616182

41 Buildings of Obvious Heritage and Archaeological Significance Meet the Wrecking Ball in Brantford
As you read this, the first of 41 heritage buildings that could have been the core of a major historic redevelopment of one of Ontario's most important main streets has been torn down, the rest soon to follow. I can't tell you how disturbing it was to watch Council "debate" this issue and their apoplexy over the Federal Government's FedDev actually following the rules. All of a sudden they were libertarians who were going to reject federal and provincial funding from now on; one councillor, who was previously against demolition, switched his vote because he was outraged that the Federal Government had the nerve to come out against demolition!

You can watch the whole thing here on Rogers. (www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=205&rid=7&mid=38&gid=68090&arid=7)
It is a dramatic bit of TV; there are passionate deputants who made me cry; a dramatic, pregnant pause as we wait for the rude slacker councillor who does not bother showing up to hear them, and then complains about the strings that come with government money for social services and everything else, as if the town could function without it; the bizarre denouement as the Mayor reinvents history.

They decided to blow off the Federal grant of $1.38 million and not do the heritage and archaeological investigations that FedDev wants because a) they will cost money and time that for some reason they have run out of, and b) they might actually find something and not be able to take down the buildings. (Read the UEM report here) They don't even wait for Ventin Architects to finish their $90,000 documentation of the site, but flip the bird to everyone by starting Tuesday morning.

Our last hope was the Minister of Culture, and his powers under the Heritage Act, but the silence from his office yesterday was deafening. However I have nothing but good things to say about his staff, who have always returned my calls and listened to my rants. I know that Brant County politics are complicated, and that he told the Mayor his thoughts months ago; I can only note that it is not too late to act and I am standing by, waiting for the phone to ring.
Regards, Lloyd Alter.

LESSONS FROM BRANTFORD
Two months ago I wrote an article for the Acorn (ACO’s printed newsletter to members) that should be hitting ACO members' mailboxes around now where I suggested the lessons we should learn from this. For those who don't get the Acorn, I reprint them here.

1. We need better communication.
They have been discussing Colborne Street in Brantford for thirty years. Last year when hearings were taking place over the expropriation, questions could have been raised. The people of Brantford didn't know that there were groups like the ACO, the Heritage Canada Foundation or even people at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture that could have helped them, so we all come in, as Councillor Littell notes, "at the 11th hour and 59th minute." We all should have been there a lot sooner.

2. We need to know what is out there.
Nobody knows; until a building gets listed, there is no database that says it is important. It is a catch 22; in Brantford, they can say with a straight face that the buildings are not historic because they have never been listed, but they refused to take the advice of the Heritage Committee and list the buildings. This is happening all over Ontario; We are losing too many buildings not only because nobody is watching, but because nobody knows what to watch, and municipal councils are doing their best to ensure we never do.

We have been working on this since I wrote this for Acorn; I was going to show this in Chatham at the convention this weekend but will drop it here. We are developing an early warning system, a crowd-sourced real time database where people across the province can let everyone know about buildings at risk, under threat, that they think other people should know about. It is based on an open source system developed in Kenya during violence a few years ago and has been used for disasters around the world since; we are applying it to heritage disasters in Ontario. Soon you will be able to point your blackberry or iPhone at a building and add it to the database; in this very early alpha version you need your computer. Try it out at  www.thisplacematters.ca

3. We need the Province to take more of a Leadership role.
Having municipal councillors in control of heritage is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. Their campaigns are often funded by real estate interests and they don't like heritage, it slows down their development deals. Catherine Nasmith has often said that we should ban demolition; perhaps a first step is to have a requirement for a heritage assessment and provincial approval for all demolition permits.

4. We need ACO branches from border to border.
Tony Adamson said in 1976: "We cannot wear two hats if we want to be either successful advisors or successful activists.....We must learn to separate our aims if we are to succeed." Nothing has changed.

It is clearly not enough to have heritage committees; they are appointed by city councils and are often intimidated by them. We need organized activists right across the province.

5. (Late Entry, Today:) We need money to fight these kinds of disasters and make sure they don't happen in this Province again.
I intend to ask the ACO Council to create what I tentatively call the Alma College/Colborne Street Memorial fund, after our two biggest, most tragic, and completely preventable heritage disasters. I want to raise half a million dollars to ensure that we can hire the lawyers, the planners, the heritage consultants and architects required to ensure that we are there at the beginning and can put up a substantial defence of our architectural and cultural heritage. Want to get it going? Hit the donate button.

PHOTO credit: Angela Palaisy