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Resources: Engaging citizens in community conservation

Photo: Ottawa’s Rideau Canal – recently designated as a World Heritage Site – is enjoyed by people year-round. © Ontario Tourism 2008

By

Ontario Heritage Trust

Community, Tools for conservation

Published Date: Feb 14, 2008

What's on the shelf

Old Canadian Cemeteries: Places of Memory, by Jane Irwin with photographs by John de Visser (2007)

Firefly Books. Canada abounds in historical burial places. Once you begin noticing their presence, old cemeteries seem to be everywhere. But these important links to the past are in danger of disappearing forever. The expansion of cities and roadways reclaim valuable land, and inscriptions are worn away by weather and time. Older cemeteries may be important records of immigration, settlement, armed forces, epidemics, class and religious schisms, and upward mobility of ethnic groups.

In Old Canadian Cemeteries, Jane Irwin invites the reader on a visual tour of historic cemeteries across Canada, examining such diverse topics as:

Burial traditions, including customs from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Ukrainian, Quaker, Pioneer, Acadian, Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, First Nations and African-American cemeteries
War memorials
Graveyard symbols and motifs, and their meanings
Materials used in cemeteries – stone, wood, bronze and cast iron
Historic graveyard conservation.

Old Canadian Cemeteries is a must for anyone interested in Canadian history.

Wilderness Ontario: by Gary and Joanie McGuffin (2007)

Boston Mills Press. A stunning celebration of Ontario’s vast and diverse wilderness. Ontario is wild. The province’s more than 12 million people live in densely populated urban centres, but Ontario is larger than France and Spain combined. Over a quarter of a million lakes hold one third of the world’s fresh water. No matter where you go in Ontario, you are never far from wilderness. Nobody knows this better than veteran adventurers Gary and Joanie McGuffin.

The McGuffins’ Ontario is full of favorite places: rock promontory campsites where the swimming is perfect, lakes where loons and eagles nest, cliffs where peregrine falcons soar, ancient forests where only the sounds of nature are heard. Here, one can paddle whitewater rivers, sea kayak to distant granite islands, hike mountainous trails, and snowshoe the fresh forest trails left by foraging moose and wolves.

The diverse, wild beauty of Ontario is celebrated in this breathtaking collection of images taken during two decades of travel to every corner of the province.

Concrete Toronto, edited by Michael McClelland and Graeme Stewart (2007)

Coach House Books. Toronto is a concrete city. Looking at its international landmarks, civic buildings, cultural institutions, metropolitan infrastructure and housing . . . it is clear that much of Toronto was born of an era when exposed concrete design was the order of the day.

Underappreciated and misunderstood, the more than 50 concrete projects considered here represent an exciting era of cultural investment and design innovation. A product of Canada coming into its own culturally, economically and artistically, Toronto’s modern concrete heritage is a testament to Canadian optimism and nation-building following the Second World War.

Concrete Toronto brings together the perspectives of a diverse group of experts who reexamine and explore these buildings. You will find the insights of many of the original architects, local practitioners from some of Toronto’s leading architecture and engineering firms, city planners, university faculty and students, historians and journalists. Together they explore, with new and archival photos, drawings, interviews, articles and case studies, the past and future of our concrete buildings and the role of concrete as a material in their conception.