It’s a flash of green off the Gardiner Expressway, a hazy memory of a field trip most Torontonians took in elementary school.
Dump trucks rattle past on highway ramps overhead and joggers zip through it on their way to somewhere else. Many local dog owners don’t even know the 43-acre expanse is there – one man who does revels in how “dead” the place is for his game of fetch.
A living reminder of Canadian history in the heart of Toronto, Fort York goes largely unnoticed, save for the moments when it is imperilled.
“I think a lot of Torontonians don’t even know it exists. If they missed that school trip in Grade 7, they didn’t know about it,” says Sandra Shaul, who is co-ordinating bicentennial festivities for the War of 1812 next summer, when Fort York will finally be fêted.
The latest attack on the fort isn’t so much a threat as a step back: After spending three years and $1.3-million on planning, the city is halting work on a $22-million pedestrian bridge that would have linked the historic site to the communities that are sprouting up around it.
When the double-helix design ran $4.4-million over budget, the city’s public works and infrastructure committee sent it back to the drawing board. Now, proponents are scrambling to trim the frill, get city council’s approval on a new, tighter budget, and have the bridge erected ahead of celebrations next summer.
Critics say the resistance to the bridge and several earlier close calls for Fort York speak to a maddening apathy on the part of the city toward its heritage sites.
“We’re always forgetting about preserving what has been important to us,” says John Scott, a history teacher from Cornerstone Montessori Prep School who brought his Grade 7s and 8s to the fort last week.
“[Fort York] is the reason we are not Americans,” Mr. Scott said as his charges played on the grassy ramparts.
The threats have been plentiful since Americans torched the fort in 1813. The British rebuilt the following year, a move that drew borders and was key to the development of a Canadian identity during the War of 1812 (which ended in 1814). But in 1905, the national historic site was threatened by a proposed streetcar line that would have sliced through its middle on the way to that other local attraction, the Canadian National Exhibition.
A greater menace surfaced in 1959, when municipal backers of the Gardiner Expressway pushed to build a raised highway above the property, skewering the fort’s historic ramparts with support beams. They later agitated to have the entire site relocated south of the Lake Shore Boulevard.
“It has been attacked more often by its own body politic than by the enemy,” laments Stephen Otto, director of the Friends of Fort York, founded in 1994 to ward off more attacks.
In each case, citizens resisted the city’s whims and won. So the fort still stands, welcoming grade school children who invariably climb atop its cannon, as well as history-bent tourists taking tours throughout the summer.
But while the site attracts students and history buffs in droves, to the average Torontonian, the slice of green is viewed ambivalently at best.
“I don’t think it’s the site. I think it’s Toronto generally, which really doesn’t have too much regard for its past. We treat it very casually,” says archeologist Andrew Stewart, who chairs the Fort York Foundation.
Mr. Stewart is at the helm of an archeological dig beyond Fort York’s gate to excavate musket balls and other relics from the vast battlefield before a modern visitor’s centre is built on the site ahead of the bicentennial.
“People are just too busy getting on with their lives. They’re not reflecting or taking advantage of historical assets, which are a springboard for stories that can raise this city’s profile internationally.”
