Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Tragic’ decision, July 11.
When such a well informed and experienced person as Jean Innis writes a letter to your widely disseminated publication regarding heritage conservation visions and support in the Township of Centre Wellington’s Strategic Plan, we are all made more alert to these concerns.
Innis is a former township councillor and Wellington County councillor. However, she is not the only one who has brought heritage to the attention of our administration. I myself and numbers of other local members of Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) have written to staff and council frequently on these very issues.
In a letter to CAO Andrew Goldie dated September 2015, I wrote the following: “In analysing the Strategic Plan for the Township of Centre Wellington, I note that submissions (from the public) have been requested and are due by Sept. 10, 2015.
I am therefore making this submission on behalf of the ACO local members, as well as those who took part in our Nov. 8, 2014, Speak Out For Heritage Workshop. At that time there were 49 instances of specific recommendations for the development of a Heritage Resource Conservation Masterplan for the Township of Centre Wellington.”
The Cultural Action Plan adopted under Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj demonstrated that the community highly values its heritage resources and is committed to celebrating and preserving them; it advised that “Preservation of historic and heritage buildings and spaces ranks as the community’s number one cultural priority.”
The recently adopted TCW Strategic Plan undertakes four broad initiatives for the period 2019-22: Complete the heritage property inventory. Complete the cultural heritage landscape study, which will include potential Heritage Conservation Districts. Investigate heritage preservation incentives. Continue to support relationships with heritage-oriented organizations.
Provincial acts mandate that significant built heritage resources and significant cultural heritage landscapes shall be conserved.
But, as Jean Innis comments, on June 17 council approved the demolition of an 1887 yellow brick farmhouse that had been in the ownership of, and painstakingly maintained by, one locally active family for 118 years. This new council ignored the recommendation of the township’s planning staff as well as their own dedicated heritage committee in approving the demolition.
We must realize that studies and initiatives show good intentions. They may well lead to action. But in the end it is council who bring these visions to reality through their votes. We need to demand active public participation in identifying heritage assets that are valuable to our community and we need to communicate to our councillors our values and concerns.
We need, especially, to ensure that they are acted on in a timely manner before more of our heritage buildings, streetscapes, views and landscapes are lost under the present deluge of infill and real estate development.
Beverley Cairns,
Architectural Conservancy Ontario, Wellington Branch,
Elora