Obituary Text from Architectural Conservancy of Ontario

Peter John Stokes was born in England in 1926 where he acquired his love of heritage buildings through his travels with his father. He came to this country as a teenager in 1940, as a "war guest" of the British sculptor Jacobine Jones, who had lived in Canada since 1933. He studied architecture under ACO's founder, Eric Arthur, at the University of Toronto and graduated B.Arch in 1953. From 1958 to 1961, he was the Restoration Architect of Upper Canada Village at Morrisburg. He launched his private practice as Ontario's first Consultant Restoration Architect (CRA) in 1961, and later that decade he moved to the restoration of King's landing in New Brunswick. 

Back in Ontario, Peter Stokes restored buildings across the province, including Victoria College in Cobourg, of the cost of which he said, "If we'd ever had an estimate, we'd have a parking lot there." (In fact, there was an estimate: one fifth of the eventual total.) Of his many other restorations the best known include the St. Lawrence Hotel in Port Hope, the Grange at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Sandyford Place in Hamilton, the Apothecary shop and the Court House in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the Laura Secord House in Queenston. 

He worked as a consultant to the National Historic Sites, and the National Capital Commission's creation of the 'Mile of History' on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, to the Westmoreland Historical Society in Sackville, NB, and the restoration of Kingston City Hall, Old Hay Bay Church at Adolphstown (built 1792, the oldest surviving Methodist church in Canada), the South African Embassy in Ottawa and the Alberta Hotel in Edmonton. But it was in Port Hope and Niagara-on-the-Lake that he did his most extensive work. In Niagara-on-the-Lake he produced the town's restoration plan, of which he said, with some chagrin, after it was executed: "Niagara-on-the-Lake had six cheese shops and a shoemaker when I first went there. What's it got now? Tourist shops." Nevertheless, he lived there for 40 years.