Evidence of meeting #23 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was heritage.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Fabian Manning
Thank you.
Our next witness, I believe, is from the Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association.
9:25 a.m.
Robert Square Chair, Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association
My name is Robert Square. I'm the chair of the Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association. We take care of the 150-year-old, this year, Cove Island Imperial Tower.
I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to speak before you today. It's an honour to be able to do this and speak passionately about something I care so deeply about preserving.
The close association that our country has with the water is fundamental to our identity. Canada developed along the water, whether it's the east coast, the west coast, the Arctic, or the Great Lakes. Lighthouses have played an integral role in the development of our nation. Without these majestic towers and the people who kept the lights burning, Canada’s role as a trading nation would not have been possible. I don't think Canada would have developed as it has without the lights guiding people.
The establishment of many coastal communities is fundamentally linked to their lighthouses, and the historic significance of these lights to these communities is irreplaceable. Our lights are important to Canadians. They stand against winds, tides, and storms and are, I believe, a symbol of Canada's strength.
I am not alone in my love for lighthouses. Canadians and people around the world are familiar with the beauty of one of Canada's most famous lighthouses, at Peggy's Cove. It is as Canadian as the maple leaf. It is unique.
Preserving these special places provides Canadians with outstanding opportunities to learn and personally experience our marine heritage. They are integral in what Canada is and what Canada could be.
The light I represent, the Cove Island Lightstation, is an example of these precious landmarks. It is probably one of the most completely intact light stations anywhere in North America. All the facilities are there. For 150 years this magnificent light has faithfully stood guard, warning the mariners navigating those narrow channels between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. It is a symbol of an era long past, with the walls of this circular limestone tower and stone cottage built in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. It holds very many fascinating stories. When Cove Island Imperial Tower was built, that area of Canada was essentially the end of the earth. There was nothing there. It was wilderness, extreme wilderness.
Visiting the light station and opening the heavy wooden door as you enter the tower, you are immediately greeted by worn grey circular stairs rising upwards within the tower. The darkness inside the tower is broken only by a small, single window on each landing. Personally, I can envision the ghosts of the lightkeepers walking up those stairs every night carrying their cans of sperm whale oil or kerosene to light the lamp, and throughout the often long night, they kept constant vigil tending to the lamp and keeping the area safe for mariners. They were always there for mariners, standing out as a symbol of security. Some of the surviving Cove Island logbooks have numerous references to mariners, whose ships had been destroyed in storms or run on the rocks, seeking refuge at the light station.
In the tower itself, under the eaves, there are bronze down spouts, lion's head gargoyles, on each of the windows. They're a symbol of a less complicated age. It was a touch of class, a real work of art in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
The original stone cottage that housed the lightkeeper and his family remains. The second lightkeeper, David McBeath, and his wife, Mary Jane, managed to produce a family of 10 children in that little light. So there are a lot of stories in that house.
West of the tower sits the fog alarm building, and it is one of the only completely intact diaphone fog systems. When you enter the building it looks like you can just turn those Lister diesel engines and away it will go. It's immaculate.
We are encouraged by the pending passage--I hope--of Bill S-215, as we believe this will do much to preserve these historic monuments and to ensure that Canadians have the opportunity to experience and learn first-hand.
As volunteers, we are smitten--I guess that is the word--with these lighthouses. We're almost obsessed, to a point, in our efforts to preserve and protect them for Canadians of all generations. When you see young children having their first experience visiting the light, their sense of wonder and awe--their eyes just light up--it's priceless. This past summer we had a family group that came out to visit the light. They rented a boat in Tobermory and made the effort to come out to visit the light. This visiting family was from St. Petersburg, Russia. They had heard about the light and they wanted to see it and experience it first-hand.
I believe that the preservation of lighthouses, Bill S-215, is a shared responsibility, shared between the government and our groups, the non-profits. There's a wonderful opportunity here to do some really good work in preserving our lighthouses.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that Bill S-215 allows future generations to be able to visit and experience first-hand our unique and priceless marine heritage. We must be able to preserve the legacy and the lore of these lights for future generations.
Thank you.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
April 8th, 2008 / 9:35 a.m.
Rick Goodacre Executive Director, Heritage BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't know I was next, but I'm ready to go.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for the opportunity to speak to you this morning about this very important piece of legislation.
I'm Rick Goodacre and I'm the executive director with Heritage B.C. We're a provincial non-profit association. We have about 160 member groups in our membership around the province. That means community heritage societies, historical societies, museums, local heritage committees, and things of that sort.
I'm not here as an expert on lighthouses and lighthouse history. This is what I do for a living. My expertise—and I've done this job for about 18 years now—is in the general business of heritage conservation. I'm not going to say a lot about lighthouses or their worth. I've been through the testimony from last week. I know the committee has heard a lot already from very authoritative personnel about why lighthouses are important. From reading through those minutes, I don't get the impression at all that there's really any resistance on the part of this committee to that notion. I think it's a kind of given; we're already there. We know these things are important. It's more a question of what to do about it.
I'll keep my opening remarks brief because I'd rather spend the time on discussion, which I think will be more useful. But I certainly can speak to the general business of what heritage conservation is and how it works. When I say “how it works”, I'm speaking very much as a pragmatist, because heritage conservation is a very pragmatic business, believe me. There's idealism, there are values at the root of it, and without the values, without the idealism, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but the business of doing heritage conservation on a day-to-day basis is very pragmatic.
Heritage conservation is really a continuing process, an ongoing process. It's a planning, implementation, review, and “plan and move on again” kind of cycle. It usually starts with identification. We have a notion that some things or some part of our life or our community have some historic heritage value and that we really need to identify those if we're going to understand them.
Identification usually gets into another stage, which is a kind of official recognition. The creation of a register, in British Columbia, is what you would usually see in a community heritage plan. You get onto the register, and it becomes officially adopted by council, for example.
You then have a conservation plan. You've identified these places, but then there are the “So what?” questions: “So these things are historic; so they're heritage; so what?” We think we care, but what are we going to do about it? You really need to move on to that next stage of it, a conservation plan, and that plan must be something that's workable.
Then you're dealing with the ongoing maintenance and repair of these places, because heritage always comes back to something physical. History is about ideas, things that happened. Heritage is invariably about something physical that you can get your hands on. It has an historic connection, but it's also about right now, today. This is a building. What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with it tomorrow? How are we going to keep this building going? How are we going to keep it alive?
There has to be a legal framework to make all of this planning process happen, because we're always dealing with property, and property comes back to the law at some point.
There also has to be a financial framework. These things always have a cost factor. Or more to the point, rather than dwelling on the cost, there's always a choice factor, a resourcing factor. We only have so many resources; where are we going to allocate them? Where does heritage fit into this allocation process? What right does it have at the table to claim some of these resources? Or more importantly, in a lot of cases, does it even have a right to be at the table? Often, what we're doing is scrambling just to get to be at the table.
More importantly, I want to stress that there has to be a will to conserve. There has to be a desire, and that desire is always based on the understanding of values. I think you've heard a lot about that already at this committee concerning lighthouses, but you will always have to go back to it. If there's no will, if there's no real desire to make these things happen, regardless of the best framework planning process, legal framework, and what have you, nothing much will happen.
On the pragmatic side, the best guarantee that a place will survive is that it have a purpose. If you have a building that's identified as a heritage building, but it has no purpose—the owners don't want it, the owners leave it empty—it stands there empty and derelict for years, it goes into decline, and eventually you get demolition.
I work in the city of Victoria, live in that area, and work out of my house. I've been on the City of Victoria's heritage committee for a number of years. I'm not on it now—I've been cycled off—but I've been through that process of heritage building maintenance and conservation planning for many years there.
Right now we have a couple of historic buildings for which demolition permit requests have come forward. Why? Well, because the owners have let them sit literally for decades, and that's really been their plan--to do nothing. Now they're at the demolition stage, saying that things have come to this point--the roof is falling in--and they can't do anything else. So now the city and the owners are at loggerheads, and it's getting in the newspaper, and the whole process is kind of getting out of control.
The problem has been that those buildings have not had active use. Therefore, they're not making money for the owners. Therefore, there's no investment in them. That's the kind of cycle you get into, and that always spells doom for heritage.
This is an outline that applies to all heritage buildings and all heritage resources. But I think lighthouses and their history are unique. They are unique in the sense of their ownership. They are unique in the sense of their history and their function. What else is like a lighthouse? An office building is an office building, but it could be something else. A lighthouse is a lighthouse. I don't know what else it's going to be, except that its future use will have to evolve around its maritime reality and its very particular function.
Also, the situation is unique. These places are all on the water. They're usually in some remarkable outpost of our country and are often in very scenic places. I think that's why, in this case, special legislation is valuable and necessary. I don't believe the general blanket of federal policy for heritage buildings is sufficient to deal with our historic lighthouses.
I'd also say that these unique settings are a particular opportunity. Last year, about eighteen months ago, we had a case of a federally owned building in the control of the Canadian military. It was an historic building, an officers' mess, at Work Point in Esquimalt, near Victoria. The military didn't need this building. It sat empty for years and was falling apart. Eventually they decided to take it down.
There has been a hue and cry about this historic building being destroyed. The problem is that this building exists in the context of a very large complex of buildings. It's a secure area. It's within a complex of an institution that defends Canada. It's business; it's not heritage conservation, or at least the base commander doesn't see that as part of his job description. His job is defence of our country.
How do you deal with that building inside that large complex? Can you evolve that into another use, to turn it over to other hands? It's a very difficult situation.
You think of a lighthouse, and it's a completely different situation. You have a completely integrated system that's distinct, unique, and stands apart. It can be turned over from one set of hands to another, and a new process can be, I think, isolated or extracted from that overall context of our coastal waters.
So there are actually unique opportunities for each one of these sites. If we are going to evolve them into other uses, I think there are lots of things we can do with these sites.
I would just like to say, in conclusion, that if Bill S-215 is put into effect, Heritage B.C. will strive to see that it is implemented and that its intentions are realized. We'll do whatever we can to make this work.
Thank you.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Fabian Manning
Thank you, Mr. Goodacre.
I would like to welcome the vice-chair of the Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association, Mr. Brian Beatson, I believe. Welcome, Mr. Beatson.
We're going to go to our questions now. I think Mr. MacAulay is leading us off.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Well, I'll start if you want me to, and if you don't want me to, I'll be very pleased not to. Whatever.
You are very much welcome. It's an important issue.
Ms. Toxopéus, how many lighthouses are you dealing with or in charge of or concerned about?
9:45 a.m.
Chair, Bruce Coast Lighthouse Partners
I am chair of Cabot Head. That's my home lighthouse. The Bruce coast lighthouses include Point Clark, Kincardine, Chantry Island, Cove, Flowerpot Island, Big Tub, Cabot Head, and Lion's Head.
9:45 a.m.
Chair, Bruce Coast Lighthouse Partners
Yes, it's quite a number. There are about ten.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
Chair, Bruce Coast Lighthouse Partners
Well, no. I think you need to basically pick and choose, as far as heritage goes, which ones are valuable. We have identified several that we're using, as a tourist-oriented group in Bruce County. Each one of those lighthouses.... For example, Point Clark is part of a provincial park. Kincardine is part of a marina.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Okay, there would be a number. And thank you. I don't want to take all the time from my colleagues.
Mr. Square, I was very interested in your passionate presentation. For Cove Island, I just wanted to ask if you will have a major do or ceremony for the 150 years.
9:45 a.m.
Chair, Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association
We are currently planning a Year of the Light program to commence with Cove Island this year, in 2008. That's the 150th anniversary of Cove. It will be in conjunction with the two other imperial towers within Bruce County, which were first lit the following spring.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Of course, that's fully tied in with your tourism in the area.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
I have just one question.
Mr. Goodacre, you mentioned a number of things that I could ask you about, but you spoke about what was considered a historic building inside of a complex that couldn't remain. I just wonder if you have an opinion on this. I had a situation where we had what was an historic site, but it was in private hands. It's unfortunate; it has now burned.
I'm just asking for guidance. It's most unfortunate that those things take place. In your situation it was impossible because it was inside of a military area, I take it, and when these things are in private hands there's nothing you can do if they fall down. Isn't that a serious problem?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Heritage BC
In British Columbia, I would say if it's in private hands I'm a lot happier, because it's a lot easier to deal with. We have legislation in place that gives local government the power to offer any number of incentives to that private owner, if they wish to offer the incentive. The wish to offer is based on a political decision. Council will sit around a table like this and deem whether or not their community really cares about this. If it's an individual building, that city council has the power to offer tax incentives, to offer development opportunities, to offer relaxation on regulations, to offer cash outright. So it's a lot easier to deal with an owner of a building.
The case of the two buildings that are under demolition permit requests right now in Victoria actually is the exception. Most owners of commercial buildings in a city in British Columbia, at least in the larger cities, are aware of these opportunities and can work with them, or they will sell it to someone else who wants to.
Buildings in public hands are a different story, because what do you do to the base commander in Esquimalt, on the Work Point Barracks? I have nothing to offer that person. I have only to go to the minister to get the minister to try to persuade that base commander that it would be a good idea to find a solution for the building. It's something outside of his military mandate, and that is very difficult. Publicly owned buildings actually are the most difficult to deal with, because there are just not the same kinds of leverage tools.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses.
Mr. Square, how long has your association been in existence? You said your light station is about 150 years old, but how old is your association?
9:50 a.m.
Chair, Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association
We've been taking care of the light and keeping an eye on it for approximately three years.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Do you own it, have you leased it, or what's the arrangement?
9:50 a.m.
Chair, Cove Island Lightstation Heritage Association
We don't own it. We have an agreement with Fisheries and Oceans. It's a Fisheries and Oceans-owned property.