1. Can Dawn Doty Save Alma College?
Catherine Nasmith

Post Card View of Alma College

Dawn Doty lives across the street from Alma College in St. Thomas. She works as a cleaner. Dawn Doty is passionate about saving Alma College, in fact so passionate that she has collected over 3000 signatures on a petition that she will be presenting to her MPP Steve Peters this week. This will be her second chance to discuss this petition with him, the last time she showed it to him, he threw up his hands and said “What can I do?” This time Dawn is taking several others with her to press the case.

She collected the signatures over the past year, leaving copies in local shops and other places in the community. She has attended all the meetings, including giving testimony as a participant at the recent Ontario Municipal Board hearing.

Buildings like Alma College inspire just this kind of grass roots organizing. St. Thomas Council fought for years to preserve this building, but after their heritage maintenance bylaw was struck down the wind seemed to just go out of the municipal sails. At the 11th hour before the OMB hearing, and behind closed doors, Council struck an agreement with the owners to allow demolition of all but the tower. With agreement between the municipality and the owners, and no party to the OMB hearing bringing expert evidence on behalf of saving the property, the OMB had little option but to accept the agreement to permit demolition.

At this juncture, the only hope lies with the Ontario Minister of Culture. Both Heritage Canada and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario have been pressing for her intervention. (I am the President, and met with Minister of Culture, Aileen Caroll recently on the matter.) The Minister of Culture has advised that she will not be making any comment on the matter until the appeal period of the OMB decision has expired.

Can Dawn Doty succeed in persuading her MPP to press the case at Queen’s Park? Sometimes it is just her kind of perseverance that hits the collective nerve.

Alma College was built to last and has withstood willful neglect for a long time. The Alma College Foundation and so many citizens in St. Thomas and across Canada are outraged at the neglect and government bumbling that has left this landmark in a shameful state. Citizens are making their voices heard in all corners of the province.

The McGuinty government has demonstrated its commitment to Ontario’s heritage through the passage of a new Ontario Heritage Act, and other measures. But when it comes to following through and actually using its new powers, the province has been extraordinarily shy.

Alma College is a real test of the resolve of this provincial government. If it comes down it will not be good enough to say it happened before we got here, or it was too late. If Alma College isn’t deserving of the Minister’s attention it is hard to imagine what might qualify.

I am dreaming of a press event in front of Alma, with the Premier and the Minister of Culture saying, “Never again, the neglect of Ontario’s heritage stops here.”

But make no mistake, if Alma is saved, it will be because of the determination of citizens like Dawn Doty.

2. Good News and Bad News from the Harper Government
Extracts from memo from Natalie Bull, Executive Director of Heritage Canada

Heritage Canada has confirmed that the financial support to the provincial and territorial government departments to support Historic Places Initiatives activities will end in 2010/2011, a $ 5.9 million savings for the government starting in that year. The Canadian Register and the Standards and Guidelines will be continued by Parks but the provinces and territories will no longer receive federal support to operate their programs after the next 2 years. This is extremely unfortunate as it ends a period of much needed capacity building within government that has greatly benefited the sector.

At the same time, discussions on the National Trust (unexpectedly announced in the budget last year) are now getting underway and the Minister seems dead keen.

On the one hand we have a government that seems interested in doing something new that could be very beneficial for the sector, but at the same time turning away from an existing initiative that is also an essential part of the ‘system’.

The Minister’s consultations on the National Trust held in Ottawa last week resulted in pretty solid consensus that the focus of a new National Trust initiative must be on getting funds to historic places in the form of grants and creating measures that engage the private sector. Canadian Historic Properties Incentive Fund and a tax incentive were front and center in the discussions. Citizen engagement and capacity building were also key topics of discussion. If the government takes the advice it heard at the meeting, it will invest in getting money and information into the hands of those who can save and renew historic places and strengthening the NGO sector.

3. Heritage Canada Foundation disappointed by Federal Budget
Heritage Canada Foundation /

Ottawa, ON February 27, 2008– The Heritage Canada Foundation (HCF) expressed disappointment that the federal Budget tabled yesterday afternoon by the Minister of Finance again missed the opportunity to help make landmarks, not landfill.

“A federal incentive for the rehabilitation of historic properties is absent from this budget. Also missing is a clear commitment to the Historic Places Initiative, an exceptional model of federal-provincial-territorial collaboration that laid the groundwork for such an incentive,” said executive director Natalie Bull.

A cornerstone of the Historic Places Initiative was the Commercial Heritage Properties Incentive Fund (CHPIF), which leveraged private dollars to rehabilitate landmarks like the Lougheed Block in Calgary and CenterBeam Place in Saint John. CHPIF ended early in 2006, and today’s budget was silent on its future.

“Municipal officials, developers and property owners from across Canada tell us that many more historic buildings would be reused and recycled if they could count on a predictable incentive or source of funding for rehabilitation,” said Ms. Bull.

Canada has lost more than 20% of its pre-1920 heritage buildings to demolition over the last 30 years. Demolished buildings account for as much as 30% of the waste in Canada’s landfills.

The Heritage Canada Foundation is a national, membership-based, non-government organization with a mandate to promote the conservation and re-use of Canada’s historic places.

-30-

For further information
Carolyn Quinn, Director, Communications, cquinn@heritagecanada.org <mailto:cquinn@heritagecanada.org>
Telephone: (613) 237-1066; Cell: (613) 797-7206; www.heritagecanada.org <http://www.heritagecanada.org/>
Heather Hunter, Communications Officer, hunterh@heritagecanada.org
Telephone: (613) 237-1066; Cell: (613) 797-7205.

4. Heritage Toronto introduces first Downloadable Audio Walking Tour
Heritage Toronto

Consolation

Heritage Toronto is pleased to introduce, in partnership with the Toronto Public Library, a downloadable audio walking tour based on Michael Redhill's celebrated novel Consolation.

Consolation weaves between two storylines: one of Jem Hallam, an English apothecary, who struggles as a new immigrant to Toronto in the 1850s; and another of Professor David Hollis, a 1990s forensic geologist, who is haunted by the city's past and the lost historical photographs of Jem Hallam.

The tour was written in collaboration with Michael Redhill, and recorded by Mr. Redhill at the CBC studios. It allows listeners to experience the Toronto of Jem Hallam and David Hollis, and to walk their footsteps in the modern city.  Each stop on the tour begins with a passage from Consolation, and connects the passage to the actual site visited. Along the way Michael Redhill highlights the inspirations behind the book and his passionate conviction that Torontonians must appreciate the city we have lost - a city that each wave of newcomers has made their own. The tour begins near the site of the original settlement of 1793, takes in King Street, and culminates by the edge of Lake Ontario, the site of the book's beginning and end.

Consolation received the 2007 Toronto Book Award, a prize given to "books of literary or artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto." The novel is currently being featured in "Keep Toronto Reading - One Book," Toronto Public Library's first annual community book read. Through discussions and events happening throughout the city, Torontonians are encouraged to explore and debate Consolation's themes, issues and sometimes controversial ideas.
 
The audio tour is available for download at: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ktr/onebook/audio/walking_tour.mp3 For more information:Rebecca Carson, Communications Coordinator, Heritage Toronto 416-338-1339
mailto:rcarson@toronto.ca Edward Karek, Communications Officer
Toronto Public Library
416-397-5925
mailto:ekarek@torontopubliclibrary.ca

5. Toronto Star: Alec Keefer Interview on Queen West Fire
Leslie Ferenc

Old buildings spoke of intimate streetscape

Photo from Toronto Star, Feb 21

What will become of street now that the sentinels of its story have been silenced by fire?

It's not the sound of the rolling metal wheels of the 501 Queen streetcars that reverberate in Alec Keefer's ears.

He hears the old buildings speak in a language the architectural and social historian understands.

Each block has a mix of styles – among them masonry-built Edwardian and timber-framed High Victorian. Many have patterned bricks, others artistic cornice work, windows arched and hooded.

But one block is now silent.

Wednesday's fire gutted four buildings on Queen between Portland and Bathurst Sts. leaving, at best, skeletal remains of the past.

It's no wonder it was a six-alarm blaze, said the president of the Toronto Architectural Conservancy. Built using "balloon construction," the frames were made of long timbers. They went up like tinder.

Structures built using that method are found in other parts of old Toronto. "But those lost were the best and biggest examples of balloon construction in the city," said Keefer. "They were very rare. We've lost a crucial piece of history."

Click here for Link

6. T.O Blog: Photos of Queen West Fire

This link was sent by Rob Rough at Goldsmith Borgal and Co. It shows the extent of the damage and the heroics of the firefighters. Councillor Vaughan is on the spot trying to save as much as he can.

Click here for Link

7. Toronto Star: Community Plans for Port Credit Lakeshore Site
PHINJO GOMBU

A bold idea for Lakeview

Residents come up with sophisticated 'phoenix' they see rising from rubble of coal power plant
8
For decades, the smokestacks of the Lakeview coal-powered electric plant towered over the shores of Lake Ontario just west of Port Credit, a standing testament to a gritty industrial heritage.

The stacks came down a few years ago with a dramatic thud and a cloud of dust, preceded by the departure of old industries that had grown around it. The closing of the plant also left in its wake a sprawling landscape in transition, the size of the CNE and Ontario Place combined. Much of it is publicly owned.

Into that vacuum – which includes talk that a natural gas-powered plant could replace the coal – has stepped an intrepid group of residents who say their long-suffering neighbourhood deserves better.

Rather than complain, they've taken the offensive, using the power of Google Earth and complex mapping information, only recently available publicly, to come up with a unique, citizen-driven planning model they will unveil to Mississauga council on Wednesday.

Their goal is the creation of a "destination" landscape – which does not contain a power plant. If embraced by council and the province, the proposal would redraw one of the biggest pieces of waterfront left in the Greater Toronto Area – more than 200 hectares largely ignored by planners and government.

It also could serve as a model for neighbourhood activism, and the idea that citizens can successfully band together and tell city hall what it should do. In this case, it is the 800-member Lakeview Ratepayers' Association, led by carpenter Jim Tovey, which has been working on it for more than two years.

"This really is one of those rare opportunities every 100 years in land development where there is a chance to revision the area and where ideas can come forward," says John Danahy, a University of Toronto professor of landscape architecture who was inspired by his neighbour Tovey to take charge of the plan. "This is a pregnant moment."

Click here for Link

8. Toronto Star: Restoration of Industrial Gem at 158 Sterling Road
Bill Taylor

Reviving an architectural 'jewel'

Besotted by the ceilings, a developer has high hopes for a former manufacturing monolith.

Through a fine mist of snow, the structure doesn't look like much. A 10-storey monolith in a derelict industrial complex south of the Junction. It would be dwarfed by any new downtown condo building.

But walk along Sterling Rd. from Bloor St. toward Dundas St. W. and around the S bend that it makes halfway, and the finer points begin to show through: The brickwork, the roof detailing ... this is "a jewel" of industrial architecture and listed for preservation, says developer Alfredo Romano. A building with a history and a future.

Opened in 1919 by the Northern Aluminum Co. – later the Aluminum Co. of Canada and then Alcan – it may have been Canada's tallest building until the Royal York Hotel opened in 1929. A second contender is a 12-storey tower built at King and Yonge Sts. in 1913 and now part of the 1 King West high-rise.

The ceilings at 158 Sterling are at least 4.5 metres high and Romano, president of Castlepoint Realty, thinks that could put it head and shoulders above the competition.

"It's as high as a modern 12- or 13-storey building," he says. "Without the `head house' on the roof."

This structure, containing the elevator gear, likely pushes the height past 53 metres. Another piece of history – this was one of the first buildings in Canada with an elevator. There's no power, though, and as Romano shows off the place, 10 floors of walking, without a flashlight he's reduced to trying to light the way on the first couple of floors with the glimmer of his BlackBerry.

Click here for Link

9. Toronto Star: Obituary, Ted Tyndorf
Christopher Hume

Ted Tyndorf, 54: Toronto's chief planner

Planner restored importance of design to development process during brief tenure

Even before he succumbed to cancer on the weekend, Toronto's chief planner, Ted Tyndorf, never had an easy go of it.

Appointed to the position in 2004, it fell to him to implement the city's new Official Plan, a thankless task if ever there were one.

Despite the optimism of the moment, Tyndorf knew the job would not be easy.

"We're at a watershed moment," he told the Star after delivering his inaugural State of the City address in December 2004. "We have a new mayor and new council."

Tyndorf understood that it would take years to pull together the "different planning cultures in Toronto." But he insisted he was committed to that and, more important, the beautification of the city.

Click here for Link

10. Globe and Mail: APPRECIATION: JEFF STINSON AND ADRIAN DICASTRI
Lisa Rochon

Hard architecture and urban grit will be missed

The first laneway house in Toronto. The first sculptural gateway to a Toronto ravine. The work of Jeff Stinson and Adrian DiCastri, two architects who defined architecture in very different ways, stands as a testament to their imagination, their urban grit and their tenacity. Both men recently died of cancer, surrounded by their respective families, on the very same day. Yet their architecture - their belief in the making of a triumphant city - lives on.

A writer leaves behind books. A musician the sound of a recording. An architect gives us permanent placemakers: Signposts. Cultural guides. Buildings to frame human experience. But, whereas a painting by an artist typically hangs behind walls in a contained space, there's an extra responsibility that accompanies the profession of architecture. Stinson (an Australian-born professor who taught with remarkable energy) and DiCastri (an Italian-Canadian whose large commissions often provoked his wry sense of humour) understood the heaviness of setting down acts of permanence. Still, they operated with lightness and grace.

5 Leonard Place, the laneway house which Stinson built with his sons in 1989, sits within the tight urban grid between Kensington Market and Toronto Western Hospital. A curved white concrete wall defines a discrete plot of privacy at the front of the house, an area graced with a fish pond and enough room for Stinson to enjoy a beer. The building itself is a rugged construction with cement block walls topped by a vaulted metal roof. There are beguiling flourishes - metal grates cut into the floors to allow air to flow, stairs arranged like a jigsaw sculpture that lead to the third floor, a banister made of metal cables that Stinson liked to play like an instrument when he passed by.

In front of the efficient wood stove, there's a table with a large disc of glass for its top impossibly supported by a large coil of chicken wire. It has sat there, explains Stinson's wife, Carol Branning, for about 20 years.

Click here for Link

11. The Globe and Mail: Review of Michael RedHill Walking Tour of Old York
Dave LeBlanc

New technology brings us closer to our heritage architecture

Top, 10 Toronto St. was Toronto’s seventh post office in the 1850s and, more recently, the headquarters of Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc.
Below, 167 - 185 King St. East is one of the oldest lines of commercial buildings still in the city.

As cities go, Toronto is more plugged in than most. It has been widely reported that we rank highest in North America on the popular public networking website Facebook — with more members than New York and Los Angeles combined — and, judging from the number of iPods on our streets, we have a love affair with private technology as well.

In the past decade or so, this younger, technology-savvy generation has also discovered a love for our architectural past and urban infrastructure, as evidenced by digital photographers (or photo-bloggers), the "murmur" cellular storytelling project, and publications such as Spacing magazine.

It was inevitable that the two interests should come together.

Thankfully, the marriage of technology and heritage appreciation has arrived in MP3 form courtesy of Heritage Toronto, the Toronto Public Library and Michael Redhill, author of Consolation, the award-winning 2007 novel that deals, in large part, with 1850s Toronto. Released just two weeks ago, on offer is a free, downloadable podcast walking tour narrated by Mr. Redhill.

Click here for Link

12. Toronto Public Library: Michael Redhill One Book Walking Tour

In case the link in News doesn't work here it is again.

Click here for Link

13. Spacing Magazine: Public Art Competion-Watertable Wins
Shawn Micallef

Fort York public art competition open house

Fort York’s formidable fortifications seem small and defenseless next to the great span of the Gardiner Expressway — but our favorite flying freeway actually marks the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Though it’s possible for one to interpret its blue-green turquoise underbelly as reference to the clean and sparking waters that attacking American ships sailed in on during the War of 1812, the City of Toronto has initiated a public art competition to better mark the shoreline, and the winning and short-listed entries are on view this Thursday during an open house.

Most remarkable about this competition is that the Gardiner itself is being used in the selected artwork. Though it may send shivers down the engineering and roads departments from a technical point of view, this is a major first step in activating the underside of the Gardiner and hopefully more sections will follow. Once that happens, and the underside of the expressway is made pedestrian friendly and welcoming, we might just forget it’s up there.

Editor's Note:
I attended this opening, and the other four entries were also very interesting, and suggest all kinds of ways of using public art to tell missing stories.

Click here for Link

14. Globe and Mail: The Right to put up Billboards!
PAUL WALDIE

Oakville's billboard war rages on

Town's council is appealing court ruling that struck down its ban on outdoor ads

Most Canadians see billboards as a common, if not always welcome, fixture of everyday life. Not in Oakville.

For years, Oakville's town council has fought hard to keep billboards out of the community, arguing that they are visual clutter and contribute to urban blight. But those efforts have been dealt a major setback.

An Ontario Superior Court judge has struck down Oakville's sign bylaw, ruling that it's too restrictive and attacks freedom of speech.

It's the latest decision in a long-running war between municipalities trying to control public spaces and billboard companies vying for eyeballs. From Vancouver to Montreal, legal battles have been waged between residents, city officials and sign companies over billboards that are becoming larger and flashier.

"Marketers are increasingly desperate to attract the eyeballs of people," said Rami Tabello, who runs Toronto-based illegalsigns.ca, which tracks the sign wars. "The advertising industry wants a captive audience and with billboards you have no choice but to look at the sign."

The Oakville bylaw was introduced in 2005 after a previous bylaw, which banned billboards, was quashed on constitutional grounds. The new bylaw limited billboards to a handful of industrial areas on the farthest reaches of the suburb, which is home to about 165,000 people.

The result of the bylaw "is to effectively ban billboard advertising in Oakville," Mr. Justice Douglas Gray said in his recent ruling. "Oakville has failed to demonstrate that this bylaw is rationally connected to the objectives [of preventing urban blight] and that it does not minimally impair [sign companies'] constitutional rights."

Editor's Note:
I find this case unbelievably perverse. What about my right to quiet enjoyment of the public realm? To be able to avoid visual assault at every corner? God Bless Oakville Council for taking this on.

Click here for Link

15. Toronto Star: Letter to the Editor re: Family Day
Catherine Nasmith

A Real Reason for a Holiday

Family Day: The holiday that isn't really a holiday

Since 1973, when Heritage Day was established, Heritage Canada has been working toward making it a national holiday on the third Monday in February. Heritage Day events are held all across Ontario and Canada to celebrate our history and communities. Why not go with the momentum instead of inventing a holiday that no one quite knows what to do with?

Catherine Nasmith, Toronto

Click here for Link

16. Orillia Packet and Times: Save the Sundial
Colin McKim

Sundial Inn piece of history; History buff raves about architecture

If futuristic Californians had travelled to Orillia in 1961, the Sundial Inn could have been their spaceship.

The landmark building, with its round restaurant topped by a giant sun- dial, has always in- trigued Joanna Fonseca, past chair of the Orillia Municipal Heritage Committee.

"There's so much history there," she said.

Attention has focused on the restaurant and adjoining hotel following Friday's collapse of the round metal can- opy over the hotel entrance.

Editor's Note:
I am not the only one who loved to stop here, it has one of the best preserved modern interiors of that period. Canadian novelist Giles Blunt mentions the Sundial restaurant in two of his novels.

Click here for Link

17. Orillia Packet and Times: Collapse at Sundial

Canopy collapses at Sundial Inn

The saucer-shaped canopy at the Sundial Inn caved in Friday afternoon, tearing a hole in the roof of the Orillia landmark beside Highway 11.

Orillia firefighters responded to a call reporting the collapsed overhang at the closed-down hotel around 4:45 p.m.

“Right now, because of this kind of stuff, it’s in dire need of repairs,” said fire Chief Trent Elyea, suggesting snow load contributed to the mishap. “Here’s a perfect example of if you don’t clear your snow off your roof, this sort of thing can happen.”

With Mayor Ron Stevens on scene surveying the damage, Elyea said the fire department would wait for direction from the city’s chief building official as to what to do next. The building owner had not yet been located by late afternoon.

Click here for Link

18. Brantford Expositor: Heritage crusader to be honoured by province
Heather Ibbotson

A crusader for architectural conservation, who for years waged a local war against the demolition of heritage buildings, has been recognized with a lieutenant governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Lifetime Achievement. "It's a very great honour. I'm surprised and pleased to be nominated," Audrey Scott said in an interview. Scott, who now lives near Cambridge, will receive her award along with more than 150 other Ontario volunteers on Thursday at Queen's Park. Special guests are expected to be Lt.-Gov. David Onley and Lincoln Alexander, chairman of the Ontario Heritage Trust.

Click here for Link

19. St. Thomas Times-Journal: Treasure rising at CASO - Window phase of restoration is now complete
Patrick Brennan

A treasured piece of St. Thomas history is rising from the once-neglected walls and floors of the Canada Southern Railway station. Wednesday, the public got a chance to get a close-up view of the CASO station, now home to the North America Railway Hall of Fame. The occasion was a National Heritage Week open house. Highlighting the day was the symbolic installation of the last window to be restored at the building as part of a long-term project to bring it back to life.

Click here for Link

20. Brantford Expositor.ca: Our brutal city hall
Tim Philp

It has been derisively called The Wellington Street Bunker, but architectural aficionados know that Brantford's city hall is one of the finest examples of a style known as brutalism. This style, in vogue in the 1960s and '70s, was a reaction to the curtain wall architectural styles that completely hid the structure of buildings under non-structural facades of glass and steel and stone .

Click here for Link

21. London Free Press: High hopes for city core
PATRICK MALONEY

London's downtown has huge potential, says a noted Vancouver architect.

James Cheng says city planners should 'think big.' A noted architect who helped transform Vancouver into one of the world's most livable cities says the pieces are in place for London's downtown to become a similar, small-scale success. That assessment by James Cheng, a staple on Vancouver's planning commission, was made during a visit Friday that coincided with the release of an independent report calling for major changes to London's core by 2018.

Click here for Link

22. St. Catharine's Standard: Port Dalhousie OMB Hearing

Tower's shadow will have little impact, architect says

Sunbathers and dog walkers won't have to fear the Port Dalhousie tower's shadow, said the architect who designed the proposed development, because "it has very minimal effect."

The proposed 17-storey condo tower will have little impact on Lakeside Park, said Michael Kirkland, architect for Port Dalhousie Vitalization Corp., displaying shadow studies he prepared to show the building's impact at various times and on various dates.

At its maximum, the tower will only shade five per cent of the park, Kirkland said, "and the shadow is not there for long because it moves" over the parking lot and the harbour.

It won't hit the carousel, the beach or the children's playground at all, he said.

Kirkland, who started giving his evidence at the Ontario Municipal Board hearing at city hall last Thursday, continued all day Tuesday, describing the benefits of the project and answering criticisms of the many people who have appealed the controversial development.

Kirkland said his shadow studies only modelled the shading effect at 10 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. because those are the key times people are using the park. After 3 p.m., the shadow is on the parking lot and the harbour, he said.

Kirkland also said Albert Berry, whose heritage house on the northeast corner of Lock and Main streets is the only residence next to the tower, should be pleased he'll have a view of the development.

Click here for Link

23. NiagarathisWeek.com:Heritage is the defining OMB issue: city, PROUD
Mike Zettel

St. Catharines - Of all the components of the Ontario Municipal Board hearing into the Port Place development, heritage may turn out to be the defining issue. Certainly the city and PROUD (Port Realizing Our Unique Distinction), which both oppose the proposed development, are working hard to steer the hearing in that direction. Annette Pouline, the city's solicitor, said in her opening remarks to board vice-chair Susan Campbell Thursday afternoon that the heritage permit should take precedence over the other three matters to be ruled on, which include the site plan, the official plan amendment and the zoning bylaw.

Click here for Link

24. Hamilton Spectator: City eyes Lister deal pegged to seniors' homes
Nicole Macintyre

The city is continuing negotiations to buy the Lister Block, but wants a guarantee there will be a second phase to justify the high price tag. Councillors voted 10-6 to keep the deal alive after the cost per square foot jumped to $38.60 -- nearly double what the city pays to lease elsewhere.

Click here for Link

25. Guelph Mercury: Lorretto Abby Project Moving Forward
MAGDA KONIECZNA,

$1M boost to help restore convent

The Loretto Convent yesterday looked just like it did the day before, and the day before that.

Which is to say, tired. Maybe even sad. Encased in broken glass and peeling paint, with an empty pedestal in front. Inside, it's dilapidated 1960s -- shag carpeting and dated wallpaper.

These days it seems more like a haven for teenagers -- many of whom leave their mark in graffiti -- than the stately building that once housed close to 50 nuns who ran a private girls school.

But yesterday, that building came one step closer to being returned to something of its previous grandeur.

After much anticipation, the federal government announced yesterday it was giving Guelph $1 million to help move the Civic Museum into the convent. The city had applied for $3.3 million.

Click here for Link

26. Northumberlandtoday.com: Robin Long to take look into the past at ACO branch meeting

Robin Long, whose family has been downtown Port Hope building owners for generations, has delved into the Long Brothers Limited collection and put together a fascinating look into the past. This slide presentation will be delivered with the assistance of Michael Wallace and additional commentary by Paul Bailey at the Port Hope Branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario's annual general meeting. It will be held this Thursday, Feb. 28, upstairs at the Capitol Theatre.

Click here for Link

27. Moose Jaw Times Herald: A city full of heritage buildings
CARTER HAYDU

The story of how Moose Jaw came to have so many heritage buildings is an interesting piece of history in itself, as well as an ongoing one. Glenda James, Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation vice-chairwoman, said the Moose Jaw of the early 1980s looked a lot different than the one of today. All the old buildings of the city's downtown were still there, but they were old, ill kept and eyesores for the local population, she said. "(Residents) were viewing them as a bit of an embarrassment," she said. Most of Moose Jaw"s elaborate downtown was built, either during the local economic boom of 1911, or again during the 1920s. With Moose Jaw's strategic location along the railroad and the Moose Jaw River, James said many people thought the Friendly City would become the next Chicago. Thus, "grandiose" structures such as the library and city hall were built to accommodate the expected long-term prosperity. "These are remarkable buildings for a town this size."

Click here for Link

28. Winnipeg Free Press: Panel trying to save church - Current owners plan to demolish Village landmark
Joe Paraskevas

A city hall committee is recommending a 98-year-old Osborne Village church be added to Winnipeg's list of protected heritage buildings in order to thwart a plan by the property's owners to demolish the landmark. The historical buildings committee wants the First Church of Christ, Scientist, on the northeast corner of River Avenue and Nassau Street North, to be put on a list that exempts it from demolition. "Usually when we're talking about heritage buildings, you hear about it in the Exchange District or St. Boniface" said the committee's chairwoman, Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry Coun. Jenny Gerbasi. "But this is Osborne Village. And Osborne Village has a (neighbourhood) development plan which has a section on heritage and it speaks to this. And it's very clear that we should not be demolishing buildings except as an absolute last resort." The First Church of Christ, Scientist was already on the city's historical buildings inventory awaiting evaluation before the city received an application for demolition late last year. The inclusion on the inventory meant the historical buildings committee would have to evaluate the church's significance before the city could issue a demolition permit.

Click here for Link

29. Winnipeg Free Press: Former factory selling high
Murray McNeill

THE owners of the latest heritage buildings to hit the market are aiming to set a new high-water mark for Exchange District property values and to extend the northern boundary for redevelopment activity in the area. The former Prosperity Knitwear factory at 146 Alexander Ave. E, which is actually two buildings being packaged as one, is listed for sale at $4.95 million.