[URBAN NOTE] Torontoist on making Old City Hall a civic museum
Torontoist's Erica Ngao makes the case for making Old City Hall a Toronto museum, of Toronto.
As the fourth-largest city in North America and one of the most multicultural cities in the world, Toronto is a place of many stories, with a history that spans 11,000 years. Bringing its collective story together isn’t easy. Current mainstream narratives are filled with gaps, particularly about First Nations history and the post-1950s immigration wave. Weaving together all of the events, people, and stories that have built this city would be an onerous task.
Amalgamation also creates challenges. According to Kaitlin Wainwright, director of programming for Heritage Toronto, the vision of a civic museum was put on hold when the city’s six municipalities merged and the central museums and sites of those municipalities blended together. Today, staff manage 10 historic sites across the city-from Montgomery Inn in Etobicoke to the Scarborough Museum.
A charitable agency of the city, Heritage Toronto works with local community groups and volunteers to provide city-wide programming and services. Wainwright fears that with all the focus on a singular city museum, resources will be drained from smaller local museums that are already fighting for attention.
“Too often in our public conversations that we’re having about museums, that’s ignored, that really great work is going not unnoticed but under-noticed,” Wainwright says.
For her, the best possible outcome is opening Old City Hall up to the public, as it was originally built to be. Whether it’s a museum or not is another question.
“The advantage to using Old City Hall as a museum, as a heritage space, is that the heritage integrity of the building will be maintained and that’s foremost what’s important to us,” she says. “Would Heritage Toronto want to see more resources allocated to the museum and heritage services sector within the City of Toronto? Yes, absolutely. Does that have to be through Old City Hall? Not necessarily.”
As the fourth-largest city in North America and one of the most multicultural cities in the world, Toronto is a place of many stories, with a history that spans 11,000 years. Bringing its collective story together isn’t easy. Current mainstream narratives are filled with gaps, particularly about First Nations history and the post-1950s immigration wave. Weaving together all of the events, people, and stories that have built this city would be an onerous task.
Amalgamation also creates challenges. According to Kaitlin Wainwright, director of programming for Heritage Toronto, the vision of a civic museum was put on hold when the city’s six municipalities merged and the central museums and sites of those municipalities blended together. Today, staff manage 10 historic sites across the city-from Montgomery Inn in Etobicoke to the Scarborough Museum.
A charitable agency of the city, Heritage Toronto works with local community groups and volunteers to provide city-wide programming and services. Wainwright fears that with all the focus on a singular city museum, resources will be drained from smaller local museums that are already fighting for attention.
“Too often in our public conversations that we’re having about museums, that’s ignored, that really great work is going not unnoticed but under-noticed,” Wainwright says.
For her, the best possible outcome is opening Old City Hall up to the public, as it was originally built to be. Whether it’s a museum or not is another question.
“The advantage to using Old City Hall as a museum, as a heritage space, is that the heritage integrity of the building will be maintained and that’s foremost what’s important to us,” she says. “Would Heritage Toronto want to see more resources allocated to the museum and heritage services sector within the City of Toronto? Yes, absolutely. Does that have to be through Old City Hall? Not necessarily.”