Opinion - Catherine Hennessey, Prince Edward Island Historian & Activist

The Heritage Movement is not new. It is a long time since we began hearing about Gastown, Niagara on the Lake, the fight for Toronto's City Hall and the preservation of Old Town in Montreal.

These developments were the reactions to the planners view that new would be linked with the future not the past.. These were the answers to peoples' screams "Stop before you destroy everything."

Here in the Atlantic region we picked up on that direction and we saw a struggle to preserve the best in St. Andrew's, the everyday in St. Johns and, the big project in this area, the Halifax Waterfront. Although this type of project, too,. has suffered the usual ups and downs of the mercantile world, it would be difficult to imagine life without them. The success of these projects need not to be pointed out. A look through any tourism marketing material confirms their popularity. The direction and influence they established has been copied far and wide throughout our area.

"The preservation movement has one great curiosity. There is never any retrospective controversy or regret. Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact" so said John Kenneth Galbraith.

The good thing about all of this was that it took history out of the museum context out onto our streets and countryside making it more meaningful in people’s everyday lives. The bad thing is that it once again cleared the way for planners to do what they wished in the areas outside these focal points just as if history had such lines of demarcation.

So why are we still struggling with heritage matters. Why is planning not starting with heritage rather than snapping it on after. It is amazing how many community plans have been produced without an historical base. Planning in my mind should begin there. Planners should let the landscape speak. 'They should let the buildings speak.They should let the stories speak. They should let the. scale speak. Limitations in the design process are challenging and enriching if addressed creatively and the results can often be outstanding. With all the mathematical skills we have at our disposal today why not work out a .formula that goes something like this: Size of space divided by age of landscape, plus richness of built environment, plus story line = scale and quality of development allowed and then we can let all planning go sailing on, retire all heritage planners and let the heritage activists relax. That is the day I look forward to, but I'm getting impatient

"The buildings, streets, parks and monuments that we have inherited - and not merely the best of them, mind you, but rather the most characteristic nourish us from one ordinary day to the next, and so become indispensable to our well-being." A Brendan Gill quote.

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