More on Heritage

This is a bit of a continuation of my Heritage Reflections series I did back in February on West End Dumplings (see below).

Some bits and bytes from the world of heritage preservation....

It's not just us.

Back in January, a six alarm blaze destroyed a vacant heritage building on Yonge Street and caused some soul searching in Toronto about how to get a grip on heritage conservation.

Also see The problem with preservation (Toronto Star) and Toronto's Heritage must be protected (Inside Toronto).

Just four weeks later Heritage Voices, the final report from a year long study into the state of heritage conservation in the city of Toronto, was released. Strikingly similar issues to Winnipeg: demolition by neglect, bureaucratic malaise, a lack of any solid policies on how to deal with the issue. Hume sums them up well here.

The report makes a wide-ranging series of recommendations and policy changes. Something I will visit in a future post. (Also see Heritage report paints a bleak picture Toronto Star (Hume)

More online features.

The Globe and Mail had a neat story on how a now-abandoned mining town has been brought back to life thanks to a web page.

The Vancouver Archives now has a blog page that is out to preserve Vancouver's digital heritage. Some great image and video footage has been newly added. This is on top of their pretty nice regular webpage. For more on the story see this City Caucus post and if you have an interest in Van history also check out Past Tense)

The Alberta Advantage.

Yet another example of how Alberta is becoming the best place to go to check out Winnipeg local history.... I was interested in looking up something about the GWG building. Of course, the Royal Alberta Muesum was the place that had information on it !

And finally ....

Built Heritage News continues to be a great place to find urban heritage related articles.

Silver City is continuing on their classic movie series. This weekend is the original Wizard of Oz !

I've had great response to my Elmwood's Inferno series and particularly the Life and Death of Lena Huckan. Starting later this week I will start another, shorter, series on Blake Latta and the Canadian National Express. The Deanna Durbin series will come in early April.

Past Heritage Reflections:
Part 1. The state of MB's online heritage resources
Part 2. 2011 Heritage Winnipeg Conservation Awards
Part 3. It doesn't have to end this way for Winnipeg's Heritage Buildings