Welcome to 2012!

2011 was an extremely busy year for Heritage Ottawa: our walking tour season was the most successful yet, which Rick Belliveau reports on in this issue of the Newsletter. The lecture series for 2011-2012 is well underway. No doubt many of you enjoyed the January lecture, Anthony Leaning’s wonderful presentation on the rehabilitation of the Old Ottawa South Fire Station. After that, look out for Heritage Ottawa’s Seventh Annual Bob and Mary Anne Phillips Memorial Lecture in February. Designer/developer Ian Johns and author Sarah Jennings will be speaking about the restoration of the Jeanne d’Arc Institute on Sussex Drive, as part of Heritage Ottawa’s contribution to Heritage Week. Please see full details elsewhere in this Newsletter.

We’re busy on activities for 2012 right now. Planning is underway for the 2012 walking tour season, and for the 2012-2013 lecture season. Work will continue in 2012 on our publications program. We are looking at two publications, one a walking tour of the Glebe by long-time Glebe resident and former Heritage Ottawa board member, John McLeod; and a profile of the work of Ottawa architect Werner Noffke, by architectural historian Shannon Ricketts, illustrated by Ottawa photographer Brian Glenn. Our big event this year will be the April conference that will mark the 50th anniversary of the expropriations at LeBreton Flats. We’ll have more information on that closer to the time.

Advocacy issues continue for Heritage Ottawa. We have spoken out in support of the development of a Heritage Conservation District for Briarcliffe, an enclave of Modernist houses in a Modernist landscape in Rothwell Heights. If this heritage conservation district is created, this will be the most modern of any such designation in the province, a really pioneering effort in heritage conservation. We continue to support the heritage conservation district for the Glebe, although that will be going to the Ontario Municipal Board in 2012. In support of advocacy efforts, we offered our Heritage Keepers a training session in December of last year; our network of Heritage Keepers continues to grow, and puts us in a much better position to respond to issues that might affect heritage.

Last November, Heritage Ottawa asked the City to identify funds in order to put the Heritage Reference List online and make it searchable and accessible to the citizens of Ottawa. The City, however, was not forthcoming, citing its efforts to keep a rein on expenses. Fair enough. Nevertheless, Heritage Ottawa is considering a pilot project that might make part of the list accessible online. The value of having the List accessible to the citizens of Ottawa, is so that we can better understand what is considered of heritage interest, what has been demolished or utterly altered since the list was developed, or what is indeed missing from the list and should be on it. The idea is to put this significant tool for heritage conservation in the hands of the citizens who need it, so that we can respond to heritage issues in a more proactive way.

Leslie Maitland, President